In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

After looking at many different opening sequences I have decided to stick to norms for an opening sequence, this included the use of titles to show production companies and distribution companies as well as adding in titles of what actors will be staring in the movie and finally the name of the film and who was the director. Even though in some of the sequences the name of the film was the last title to appear I decided to go against this structure as I believe this would make it look like a trailer rather than an opening sequence.

The title of our film is called The Hand Print, we decided on this name as it was linked with our plot for the whole film, which was the common link between all the murders. The title of our film appears quite early on of the opening sequence. We have chose to use the same style of font though out the opening sequence so it was fluent. We chose this font as it was clear, sharp and make an impact to the audience. For all our titles beside the name of the film, we chose to leave the font white against the black background as it made it prominent. However we changed the colour for the name of the film to red as we felt it reflected the blood from the handprint. In films that are associated with crime and violence it is common to see the use of fonts that are bold and hard rather than the use of italics or large colours. I believe this is reflecting the hard times a criminal life and the large impact it has upon people lives. The use of fonts with hard edges was common in all the crime films I looked at of example in the opening sequence of The Italian Job.

We decided to create a film with the genre of crime. We came to this conclusion as we found from our research that it was a very popular genre at this moment in time. I feel that what is seen in our opening sequence breaks away from most conventions for example, our film starts with how the film will be ending. This is very unusual and is normally seen in television programmes rather than films. The main genre of our opening sequences is Crime however we do see some violence and can start to see drama building. From the opening sequence I think that it’s clear that the film will be about crime due to the Detective and the forensic scientist. The use of many genres within on film is very common and can be seen in films such as batman Begins, which is an Action, Crime Drama.

Characters are introduced into the opening sequence very quickly from the start. The first person we see in the opening sequence is the Detective and soon after the murderer, this is common in most opening sequences so we can start to identify with them and start to understand their story. I think that the first words we here from the detective shows to the audience that we will be following him and trying to find the person responsible for the murders and to get justice.

Within the opening sequence we have used short shots, and tried to make the cuts between then quick and sharp. This creates the image that the film is fast moving and is full of exciting drama, we was able to create this image when editing but putting a cross dissolve before each shot however not at the end which goes against the norms of an opening sequence. Through out we used a range of shot sizes to make it interesting for the audience and the cuts for the different shot sizes made it fast passed, the use of different shot sizes can be used in the film Hot Fuzz. This opening sequence is very fast passed and is creating by the editing.

We decided to add lively fast music to our opening sequence rather than a slow; by doing this we found that it made all the difference to the overall effect of the sequence. With slow music we found that it become boring and uninteresting to watch however, with energetic, vigorous music is made our opening sequence more exhilarating and created a speedy and rapid story line. We chose to have the music playing all the way through our opening sequence as we found this was the case in all genres of films and gets the story going.

For the opening sequence we only used a few special effect, which was, changing, our flashbacks form a different time period into black and white. This was easily done during editing and helped show the audience the difference in time period. The second special effect we used was adding in a light source during editing which again was easily done and made all the difference. The special effects I have talked about aren’t very common within films are more likely to be seen in films such as Star Wars which is a sci-fi / action genres.

The location in which our opening sequence is set is a flat. This is a location that can be easily identified with, as it’s a common living accommodation, and most people of our target audience will know what a typical flat looks like. The use of housing in an opening sequence to films is very common and helps by setting the scene for the rest of the film. Within our opening sequence we used many props to help see the scene and to make it look believable to the audience that the location was a real flat. We see a desk, sofa, table and magazines, which is all furniture and recourses in which you would expect to see. The characters costumes we decided to use was a smart suit and tie for the Detective to give the impression that he is of a high power and standard, we had the forensic scientist in lab coats which is commonly seen in other films. Finally we had the murderer wearing dark clothes that covered his face making sure his face was never seen to the audience so that it keeps suspense.