Se7en Opening Sequence

1. Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our film Tainted is a thriller, but our film also contains conventions that are found in the horror genre and more psychological films. It conforms to this genre as the plot is based around a “hero” trying to defeat the villain. The horror elements within our opening sequences would be the use of blood and also the “Final Girl” which are found in slasher horrors. The psychological elements within our film would be the sadistic nature of our villain and why he is doing this. I think our film does break the conventions of the genre as it contains elements from different genres we did this by accident as we wanted to make a psychological thriller but we then realised it was becoming more thriller and when we reached the editing stages we discovered it had elements of the horror genre. But I think this has worked as it plays with your emotions more and gets you more involved in the film and the story.

2. The film that inspired the idea of this film is se7en this is because the plot of our film is very similar to the one in se7en, when coming up with an idea we looked at many opening sequences and had discussions about film ideas and we came up with a plot similar to se7en. In the opening sequence of se7en all you can see is a man working on a “project” in a sadistic nature. And this is what we wanted to achieve in our opening sequence Se7en Opening Sequence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY The themes within our film are death, murder, psychosis and obsession and these themes are iconic of the thriller genre. Our opening sequence follows the narrative structure told by Tzvetan Todorov it has all five stages and these are: Stage 1A state of equilibrium is defined. Stage 2Disruption to the equilibrium by some action or crisis. Stage3The Character(s) recognition that there has been a disruption, setting goals to resolve problem. Stage4 The Character(s) attempt to repair the disruption, obstacles need to be overcome to restore order. Stage5Reinstatement to the equilibrium. Situation is resolved, a conclusion is announced. And because of these 5 stages it adds suspense to the film and making the audience want more and discover who is the killer etc. We have also incorporated twists into our film which add more suspense and thrills the audience.

3. The characters we have in our film are young students at college we used this type of character as the audience that we aimed our film at were young people. And this group of audience would be able to relate to the characters within the film and they are able to emphasize what they might be going through and this will make the audience want to watch more and see how it ends.

4. Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups? In our film the main characters are young female students and these are the victims of the film the victims in this film are all involved with drugs in some way, the villain chooses female students with a drug problem as he sees them as having “impure” blood and he is trying to purify their body. we chose Female victims as they are iconic victims of the thriller and horror genre the main victim in our film is iconic within slasher horror films as she defeats the villain at the end as “the Final Girl” The Villain in our film is older than the other characters this is because he is the colleges drug councillor and this is how he gets to know his victims and knows how and where to find them, our villain is an ordinary man and know one would suspect him to b the killer. When the killer finds his victim in his sessions he will get to know her and wait for his best time to strike and purify her, in the killers mind he believes he is doing good and he sees him self like an angel destroying the evil inside someone. The villain is a very intelligent man who knows how to stay under the radar and not get caught and also be able to lure his victims to their death. This is a typical villain of this genre as the audience are left in suspense and mystery to who the killer is.

5. Within our opening sequence we tried to use props to set the atmosphere and give clues to the plot and the rest of the story. The ring in the opening sequence is a clue that you will see later on in the film to help identify the killer. The candles are used in the opening sequence to hide the villains face and add mystery to him so the audience are left guessing. The setting of our opening is a dark cave/lair we did this as it is both dark and hidden to add mystery and suspense to he film I would say this is iconic of this genre as the audience are trying to discover where he is and who he is all the time. The costume in our opening sequence is smart clothes to show he is intelligent and has a good job, it also tells the audience that he is an ordinary person. The use of blood in our opening sequence tells the audience hat he has killed someone so from the start you know that there is a killer but throughout the film you are left guessing to who he his. The villain in our film can relate to the villain from se7en this is because they are both intelligent males that seem ordinary at first but later on you will discover their sick and sadistic ways. Also the villain in our film and in se7en they believe that what they are doing is the right thing and thy are “god like” in a way as in our film he is purifying the bodies by removing their impure blood, and in se7en he kills them because they have committed one of the seven deadly sins. Also both of these villains collect mementos/ trophies of their victim’s, in our film the villain collects the victims blood and in se7en he documents what he has done to stop him forgetting his work.

6. Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

8. Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media project? The audience that would see our film would be young people but not too young around 18-30 this age is good for our film as any younger and they may not understand the plot of our film and get disinterested. Any older and they may not understand the problems that young people go through and because the actors are young they may not relate to the characters as well as the younger audience, they will be able to relate to the characters as they could be going through college like in our film or have recently been in college so they will know what they are going through. This film would also appeal to most thriller lovers male and female as it has a strong narrative and a good villain driven plot. But I think the audience that it attracts would be more male dominated because of the male villain being more “superior” than his female victims. Our film would be rated 18 and this is because it does have violence and inclusion of a lot of blood it will also have a lot of drug use and drug references not suitable for a younger audience. The film Se7en attracted its audience in many different ways the first is the inclusion of “stars” into its film and they did this cleverly by making their main characters Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, and because of this they are attracting both a young and an old audience. Because of the age of these actors, also these stars attract a massive audience as people like to see films with actors in that they like so including a famous actor into a film increases the audience massively as people will see the film just because of the actor.

9. Q5. How did you attract your audience? We attracted our young adult audience by featuring mainly younger actors in our film. This is because our film is based around college and college students. The way this film would be distributed would be by using the internet and sites that have a younger audience similar to Facebook. This is because there would be no point advertising in a newspaper when most young people wouldn't read one. But we would use magazines as younger people are more like to read this than a newspaper. We would also set up interviews and teaser trailers that will be put online and spread across the internet, this will create a “Buzz” for the film and when people start talking people will want to see it more and more. Another way we attracted our audience was the inclusion of our star actor Emma Watson and this will attract people that liked her as an actor. Because she played a big part in a very successful franchise harry potter, people would see our film just because her last set of films were so great.

10. Question 6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?

11. Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Before I did my preliminary exercise I had some knowledge of camera techniques and the rules to follow but doing the preliminary task I was able to test out ideas that I would use on our final piece. Because of doing this we were able to go “crazy” and mistakes made back then would not be as drastic as making them in our final piece. In our opening sequence we used the 180 degree rule by making sure that when we recorded we didn't go outside the 180 degrees and we did this by trying to stick to an imaginary line. We didn't use match on action or shot reverse shot in our opening sequence as match on action wouldn't have worked in our opening sequence as it was a slow paced clip. Also we didn't have any dialogue or an extra character in our film so we couldn't use shot reverse shot in our clip. If it wasn't for the planning that we did as a group I don't think that our final piece would be as good as it is now and this is because we had studied the genre and made sure that everything used was iconic and worked in our film.

12. Do you think that your final piece is good.