Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products? Emily Newell

Our Sequence Our title sequence conforms to the genre of thriller, we created this by using eerie music throughout the OTS. Our opening title sequence doesn’t challenge the conventions of a thriller genre, nothing we used within our piece didn’t fit into the bracket of thriller. We tried to make the OTS as suspenseful as possible and have the audience viewing our piece to be on the edge of their seats. We looked at films such as Phone Booth and Collateral, both films start with a man in a suit, as a group we thought that this was a good way to convey that the main character is an important businessman. We also got inspiration from the film Insidious, we liked the eerie music they used “Tiptoe Through the Tulips – Tiny Tim” and thought we may use it as our soundtrack. We also took inspiration from Blue Velvet as that was also set on a suburban street.

Title of the film: We used the street sign as the title of our film. It helps develop the generic convention of the thriller genre because the sign is quite run down and has paint coming off of it, it looks quite eerie, and as it is one of the first shots the audience sees it makes them think about what the rest of the street and film will look like. The mise en scene of this shot reflects other films in this genre by the use of foreshadowing.

Setting/location: Our opening title sequence was set on a suburban street. We did this to contrast the idea of a thriller and something mysterious to the normal side of the street. In this frame it shows the street in which the main character lives on. It develops the main conventions of thriller with the fact of a twisting and unsuspecting narrative. From the shot above, by itself you wouldn’t expect that it would be from a thriller genre, for the fact that it looks completely normal. Like many thriller films they use to locations to be slightly different and throw people off point, much like in the film “Blue Velvet”.

Costumes and Props: When thinking of our OTS, one of the main things we thought about were our costumes and props, since this is one of the key features that an audience pays attention too. With our first main character, we put him in a suit to show that he is a hard working business man, and that he is clean cut. With our second character, his costume was a green parka, gloves and a hat. We used these to show that he wasn’t as well worked as the first character and that’d he’d gone through a lot. We tried to make him look like a homeless man without using the stereotypical costumes. We used props such as the radio to show the music being turned on and off. With the radio when it comes on it says ‘Hello’, we all agreed that this would add something quite eerie to the OTS.

Camerawork and editing: Whilst filming our opening titles sequence we tried to film at many different angles to make the piece more interest. We used a lot of close-up of the 2 nd characters hands to show exactly what he’s doing with out showing his face. Also with the main character as he is walking down the street we included different shot sizes such as establishing shots, mid shots and panning shots. One thing we had to do whilst editing was change the lighting etc, to make all of the shots look the same.

Title and font style: We got our font from the website ‘DaFont’ we chose this font because we thought that it looked like it would be featured in a thriller film. To me, the font looks like someone has scratched the words into something eg. a table. We decided to put only the last names of everyone involved in this font ‘True Lies’ because we felt that it gave a better effect then having it all into, it would look too much.

Story & how the OTS sets it up: The narrative throughout our OTS is of a man walking home from work, the piece cuts from this man to another man inside a house. The 2 nd man is in a house, puts on a song and starts changing things around, moving ornaments, moving a picture, and changing the position of a table. The 2 nd character then sits down and makes himself at home. It then cuts back to the 1 st man walking into the house were you realise that it is in fact his house. He runs in to turn off the music when the living room door closes and the 1st character can see the silhouette of the 2 nd character through the door, then it flashes to the film title.

Genre & how the OTS suggests it: The genre of our opening title sequence is a thriller. Throughout the piece there are hints as to the genre. One major thing is the soundtrack of the OTS that makes the piece thriller, with a soundtrack it adds atmosphere and eeriness to the project. Without out this it would be difficult to make the audience feel suspense. In the frame above you can see the silhouette of the 2 nd character looking into the room. With this is makes the audience feel on edge, by not knowing what his face looks like or what he’s going to do next.

How characters are introduced: Many thrillers that we researched introduced their characters in stages. With our OTS we thought that this would be a good way to make our piece more like a thriller. We started by introducing our first character through the side of his body to start with then his feet, finally to reveal his face. With our second character, we only introduced him through his hands whilst he was changing factors within the house. We then introduced his whole body yet his face was hidden with a hood, so throughout the OTS you still don’t know what the second character looks like creating suspense.

Special effects: In our OTS we didn’t use many special effects to create the thriller. With thrillers, it’s based more on the narrative of the film rather then on special effects. One thing that we did use was when the 2 nd character was in the living room dancing to a song was to put a ghostly effect on it, by slowing it down it fitted in better with the music that was playing. This was the only thing that we used to change to footage to create suspense within the piece.