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

We decide to make a film opening sequence based on the horror/thriller genre. We wanted to create something that followed the conventions of these genres and so looked at other opening sequences such as Flightplan and Strangers to see similar conventions both these films had in their openings. From this, we constructed an opening sequence with these similar conventions to make it recognisable to the audience.


Conventions of opening sequences:

• Production/Distribution companies
• Introduction of main character

• Introduction of the narrative

• Music

• Other titles

We made sure we incorporated the above into our opening sequence in order for it to follow conventions.



I looked at the Flightplan opening sequence to see whether it follwed typical conventions and so i had an idea of exactly what to include.
From the above opening sequenc. we can see that it does follows the general conventions and includes:

We also tried to make typical themes of the genre evident.

Our opening sequence contains some of these typical themes for example danger and fear which is shown through the characters emotion in the opening.

Our film opening does conform to narrative structure. Specifically to classic narrative pattern which during the course of a film, there is:

EQUILIBRIUM --> DISRUPTION --> RESOLUTION --> NEW EQUILIBRIUM

This happens throughout the course of the whole film so as we only filmed an opening sequence, it would be much unexpected to have all four of these.

At the very beginning, we have equilibrium as the girl is returning home from a night out and everything is normal, as there is no disruption. However as the opening progresses, we have a small disruption at the end which will then develop as the film continues.

Our character that we have introduced is the victim. At the end of the opening, we realise she is in danger. We have therefore introduced a villain who is not yet known and which will be revealed as the film progresses.

Finally, we made sure our opening sequence had the style of the horror/thriller genre

These include:

• Eerie music

• Darkness

• Odd lighting

As our opening had dialogue, we wanted to keep the music to a minimum so found a track that was scary but not too much so it wouldn’t drown out the sound.

The music we used was called ‘Eerie Angel’ and ‘Evil Eyes’.

This music was tense and fitted in with the thriller genre and the style that is usually expected.

Our film is brightly lit however we did film at night so it was clear it was dark at the time following the style of the genre. Also some parts, for example at the beginning, the lighting is very yellow which is typical of the genre.