Evaluation Activity 1 =]

1.    In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

1. Special Effects        

2. Genre and how the opening suggests it

3. Title font and style

4. Story and how the opening sets it up

5. Costumes and props

6. Camerawork and editing

7. Setting/location

8. How characters are introduced

9. The title of the film

Special effects make it look mature and professional, use of blue and white are modern bold colours and similar to police colours, the use of red in the titles creates and indication that there will be death involved in our film. The smoke also creates that eerie thriller mist and makes the audience feel uneasy.

The most important thing is getting the genre across, we chose the handcuff clip as this shows the audience our main character is obviously a policeman and this is a main part of the narrative. The handcuffs are a good convention to portray the crimes that may be committed and that our main character will have to arrest people.

The title font is the same as our actors names font as we wanted to keep the continuity going, we kept the font white to carry on the continuity colours and this is also the colour of interrogation lights and spotlights which make the writing bold and eye-catching yet also relates to our film genre. It is thick and bold text all in capitals which make it stand out, we placed it at the bottom of the frame so it doesn’t distract the audience from the main focus of the particular shot yet it still gives enough impact with a black shadow behind it to blend in with Michael’s police uniform.

The next shot is Michael kissing his girlfriend. This is the simple outline of one part of the narrative structure, yet as the whole film progresses so does their relationship. At this moment it shows that they are happily together, through her smile after the kiss. For the audience, it gives another interest into the story line and makes the film seem slightly less about the police, thus broadening the target audience; however his girlfriend becomes a very key character as the film progresses, but the audience are unaware of this as it is not seen in the opening.

Costumes and props are very important for our whole film, especially keeping to the conventions of crime thrillers. In this shot you can see a case file made by Sally. This was an effective shot as this tells the audience, Michael is a key character that the audience should admire, and realize that he is the main character. This case file was very good to show Michaels importance and as he has lots of writing on the file shows that he is hard-working and very dedicated to his job. This impacts the genre conventions, as we have a ‘good cop/bad cop’ situation which is popular with many police dramas. Pieces of costume also help show a character. Michael is quite smartly dressed showing he takes pride in his appearance, and in our opening he takes the time to pin his officer badge in the right place showing this pride.

Camerawork and editing is crucial in a crime thriller as the use of the camera needs to use a variety of shots to keep the audience interested and build suspense, therefore the editing is very important as this is the place the editor selects the best shots to portray the films genre to the audience. We used our CCTV camera shot as this shows how our editor, Ryan, created variety in our shots and also made the verisimilitude and the presence of the piece seem like it was set in a real police station, which is vital in making the genre of our film believable.

The simple shot for the location of our film was chosen as it shows the plain, white corridor of a police station, again this helps the verisimilitude of the film as it helps the audience realize they are in a setting of significance to the film and this is a place they must familiarise themselves with as many of the shots for the rest of the film would be shot here. The blank walls really help to emphasise the cold and lonely feeling of a police station.

Characters are introduced literally by seeing there faces appear in shot, however in this shot there is a voiceover stating his name ‘Dan Johnson’. The audience understand from the tone of Michael (voiceovers) voice that this is his boss, and they don’t get on well. The camera is on a slight low angle shot which gives Dan the slight superiority over Mike. But apart from that the shot is a very simple, head on shot, almost like Dan is so important that the audience can understand him through his use of characterisation.

The Last shot is of the openings title, ‘Hidden Crime’ this was created on the programme ‘After Effects’. We wanted it similar to our production title, so we kept the blue and white colours but swapped them over, like I mentioned earlier this helps to reiterate the genre of our film as the colours are significant to storyline and conventions of the Police Force.

Advertisement