Evaluation of Film Opening

Our film opening conforms to the thriller genre's conventions by our use of low key lighting in the narrative section, which gives a sense of foreboding and fear, while the use of quick cuts creates pace in the production, adding to the effect of the story-line. The idea of our opening was to begin the film immediately making the audience ask questions, so our title sequence is actually part of the film, this challenges the conventions of many films because they are usually very simple and don't have much to do with the film. In order not to detract from the piece, we used small titles in white, whereas many film use larger fonts that fill the screen. The shot angles we used were also interesting, using high and low angles to disorientate the viewer an to make it seem as if the character was being watched or surrounded,  dutch-angles to heighten this effect, and close-ups to show the emotion of the character.

The use of flashbacks is not a new idea, but I think it works well in our piece because the quick cuts make it look like the thoughts of the woman, which we wanted to achieve. The mise en scene of the piece was largely already in place, as we wanted to portray an ordinary house and ordinary woman, so we just filmed at night in one of our houses. In the flashback sequences we added sepia and other effects to make the distinction between present an flashback. For the props we used a kitchen knife, and used tomato ketchup mixed with water to make fake blood which worked quite well. In one scene we shone a bright light to create a silhouette, which had a thriller cliché quality. 

Our production piece also used a lot of non-diegetic sound, with eery music to create the mood of the film.

There aren't really any social groups represented in the piece apart from the little girl, who wears a dress and holds a doll to show she is young and female. The woman is perhaps middle class, which we can construe from her house, but she is also quite young because she wears pyjamas rather than a night-dress. Her apparent youth is partly because we used one of our group as the actress, but we wanted to portray a young mother anyway. It is not obvious from looking at her that she is a killer.

For our media piece, because it is a small and very low budget production, it would be most effective to distribute it independently, on Youtube or Myspace for example. These networking sites would allow many people to come across the video and watch it. The internet has great potential for distribution because there are such a large number of users, and there are likely to be some people there who want to find something like our film.

Our production would appeal to many different types of people; it would probably carry a 15 certificate because of it's shocking content, but there is no graphic violence or obscenity to make it an 18. Thrillers are one of the most popular genres, with many different sub-genres, and our piece largely conforms to this genre. The most likely people to target are in the age range 18 - 30, because they will enjoy the challenging aspect of the mystery in the film, and it's dark , disturbing overtones.

We used the conventions of a psychological thriller, ie. a crime, a perpetrator, and a mystery to be solved, which would attract our target audience. From the start of the piece there is a sense of urgency and action which would attract audiences, and the introduction of an enigmatic story grips the audience immediately. The idea is also a slightly different one, so this might appeal to people bored of watching the same sort of thing over and over again.

Producing this piece was the first time we had properly used the Mac editing suites, so we were able to learn as we went, utilising the effects and the timelines to make our piece exactly as we wanted it. I also used the Music software on the Macs to create our soundtrack, which added a further personal touch to the production. We were already familiar with the camera's we were using, though our shots and angles were more complex and deliberate than before. The only limitations we found were in the length of time we had to produce the piece, as there was some further tweaking of the piece which we wanted to do.

Looking back at our preliminary exercise, we have progressed and improved dramatically, and this is mostly due to further experimentation with camera angles and effects, and the use of flashbacks to break up the narrative structure. The continuity is preserved, however, in our production piece because of the way we edited it. Our use of the editing facilities was greatly aided by the increased time we spent on it, and having already produced something helped us to work faster and get better results as we were more familiar with the programme. A new factor of our production was the incorporation of titles, but this was fairly simple once we discovered how to do it.