1. Arnold Baker
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. My film opening uses conventions of a real media product by being similar to other film openings. Our film opening is for the neo noir thriller genre, we used film openings such as Se7en and Shutter Island as inspiration.

3. We were inspired by the narrative from Shutter Island and the atmosphere that the film opening gives the audience.
Using establishing shots like this one that add a creepy and dark atmosphere just by the setting alone. A dark, old dock that’s looks to be in the middle of nowhere is shown. This is the kind of atmosphere that I wanted to achieve in my film opening.

4. We used Se7en because of the montage that included rapid cuts, we were liked how Se7en was edited together.
All of these shots are well shot on their own, even if they are only on screen for a couple of frames. The way all of them have the same crescendo lighting and the creepy feel while also being rapid and making the opening fast paced was what got me to be inspired by the opening.

5. I think that the editing is quite similar to Se7en’s editing for its film opening as we used the green tint that Se7en uses and similar music. I do think that we have made our film opening unique as it is a montage of murders instead of an introduction to a character like in Se7en.
Se7en’s film opening
My film opening

6. The narrative of our film opening is like shutter island but with rapid cuts instead of a long introduction, making it feel like we have just thrown the audience into the plot of our film right from the start. We have challenged the conventions of film openings as we have almost told the audience what they need to know already and we have a non linear narrative. We cleverly foreshadow the film just from the opening. Showing the murders that take place in the film without spoiling who the murderer is or what happens to the detective. We did this because we want to use a lot of cognitive pleasures with some sensory pleasures to make sure it looked athletically pleasing as well as having a well thought out plot.

7. We represented this in our film opening by having a montage of the story unfolding with many mysteries throughout. We wanted to make it so that the audience is one step ahead of the detective at all times just like the murderer is, making the detective seem weak and not smart enough to catch the killer. We made sure not to show off the killer too much so that the audience don’t know who he is. We gave him a very concealing costume that covers his face and is all black.