Jess Gell- Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The lighter suit of the innocent man contrasts with the
darker suit of the villain

1)The title of the film- We chose to have the white title against a black background as it reflects the contrasting themes within our film: injustice/justice, good/evil, and sanity/insanity. After conducting some product research, we discovered that contrasting colours are frequently used in thrillers to reflect some of these themes. For example in 'Strangers on a Train', the lighter suit of the innocent man contrasts with the darker suit of the villain. Black and white are also colours that are often used in thriller titles such as 'The Ghost Writer'and 'The Manchurian Candidate'. The contrasting colours suggest a sense of inner conflict, which is something that we wanted to convey in our film. We chose black as the dominant create a sense of darkness, fear and suspense.

The dark lighting in 'Brighton Rock' reflects the element
of mystery

2)Setting/location- The entire opening sequence was shot at a table under the stairs. This enabled us to have control over the lighting, as it provided shelter from the light outside which enabled us to create the conventional dark lighting that the thrillers we researched featured, such as Goodfellas and Brighton Rock. The dark lighting reflects the element of mystery and suspense in the plot. However, although we tried to block out the majority of light using black cloth, we still didn't manage to obtain the exact level of darkness we required, so we had to change the lighting in post-production on iMovie11 to make sure that our film still conformed to the conventional dark lighting of most thrillers.

3)Props

We collected a variety of props from different sources. Rather than explicitly using actors to show this violence, we wanted to create a symbolic opening, (similar to Seven or Dexter) so therefore the props were our biggest priority in production. One of the formal conventions of any opening sequence is that it hints at the narrative to follow, and so we were careful to make sure that every prop we used foreshadowed an event that would happen later on in the film.

A few of the props collected
from the Art department

For example:

 Photos of policemen: at the beginning is burnt, and later on one of them is covered with drops of red wine., This foreshadows that later on one of the policemen will be murdered through burning, and the wine represents blood, suggesting he will be shot/stabbed. We developed the idea of the violent symbolism in Dexter by featuring pictures of the victims.

Wine and cigarettes: in our opening reflects the protagonists' troubled mental state, as he has to resort to these things as a temporary escape. In many psychological thrillers, alcohol/mind altering substances are used to portray themes of obsession, insanity and depression.

4)Camerawork and editing

We wanted to make sure that there was constant movement in our opening sequence, so we used pans, tilts and tracking shots to ensure that this would happen. Using storyboards, we planned to shoot a variety of shots including medium-long shots, mid shots and close-ups. Inspired by Seven, we chose not to use too many long shots, as we wanted the viewers to be able to see the detail of the shots. Furthermore, the closeness of the shots also makes the viewer feel more involved, and even trapped.

'Cutaway' Technique on iMovie11

In post-production, once the shots had been sequenced, we found that the movement in the shots actually made the film quite tedious to watch. As it is an opening sequence, we needed it to be engaging so that audience would (if it was a full-length film) continue to watch the rest of it. To overcome this problem, we used the 'cutaway' technique on iMovie to overlap shots, giving it more depth and therefore it became more interesting to watch. We also used fades to make the transition between some of the shots smoother.

'Mom's Typewriter' font

5)Title font and style

After researching a few different titles, we decided on an eroded typewriter font called 'Mom's Typewriter', similar to The King's Speech title font, which we downloaded from Dafont. I think that although we did a lot of research on titles before production, when it came to production they were left till last.

Title for 'The King's Speech'

Originally, we wanted our titles to be diegetic (similarly to our pre-preliminary task), and feature within the film rather than being added later in post-production. However, we ended up adding the titles in post-production, as during production we realised that including the titles diegetically required a lot more planning than we originally thought. Ideally, I would have liked to have created our own titles using an animation software on the Macs. I think that we should have allocated more time to the presentation of the titles so that they reflected the themes of insanity and conflict (for example if they were flickering/more eroded).

However, I do feel that our titles did reflect the generic conventions of thrillers, as the fade effect on the text reflected the element of self decay  and lack of control of the protagonist in the film.

6)Story and how the opening sets it up

As mentioned in Costumes and Props, we made sure that each element of our opening sequence foreshadowed later events in the film, to make sure that we conformed to the formal elements of opening sequences. For example the photos at the beginning show the policemen he is going to murder in order to avenge his brother. Also, the close ups of the protagonist marking Xs on the maps show that he is finding out where they live so he can hunt them down. The slow movement of the camera also suggests a gradual build up of suspense later on in the narrative, and the 'cutaway' effect suggests that there will be lots of overlapping of different stories and events.

7)Genre and how the opening suggests it.

Using our knowledge from the Prezis we created illustrating the generic conventions of the Thriller genre, we were able to make our film use conform to them. 

Wine used to reflect the sense of alcoholism/self destruction

We used many aspects of the Thriller Genre in our opening sequence for example

·         Wine /cigarettes: Reflect the element of self destruction and lack of the character.

·         Dark lighting to create a mysterious, grave atmosphere, and to suggest that there will be conflict later on in the plot

·         Contrasting colours (such as black and white) to reflect themes of  injustice/justice, good/evil and sanity/insanity within the film

·         Similarly to 'Transsiberian', we used atmospheric synthesisers and strings in the soundtrack to create suspense, and a crescendo of cymbals to create tension and a sense of conflict.

8)How characters are introduced

Iconic shot of Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining'

At the beginning, a tracking shot is used to show the victims of the killer, showing that he is psychologically disturbed and has an obsessive nature. This sort of character is similar to the main characters in 'Dream House' and 'The Shining'. The repetition of wine in the shots suggests that he is an alcoholic, and also implies that he has problems he must escape from using alcohol. If we had had more time, I would have liked to have developed the narrative behind each of the victims further by using more techniques that foreshadow their death, which would develop the idea of obsession and violence in our film.

9)Special effects

To add show that our main character was psychologically disturbed, we used certain effects in post-production to demonstrate this. We were inspired by the flickering effects used in 'Seven' when adding these effects.

Jump cuts: These suggest that parts of his mind are missing, and furthermore disorientates the viewer

Overlap effect in 'Se7en'

Overlapping clips: This suggests the different layers of thoughts that the main character is having

Flashes of x-ray/'aged film' effect: These flashes also disorientate the viewer and give a sense of flashbacks

Reverse effect combined with fast motion: Again adds to the effect of flashbacks and memories.