EVALUATION activity 1 - Kim Bradbury

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

In general, my film does not challenge many forms of the convention of real media products for my film genre thriller; at first I thought of ways that I could do this, but to include a brand new idea that no-one has ever thought of in my first two minutes I thought would be quite hard, instead I focused mainly on developing and using these conventions. Something that I thought was quite different though from many of the film openings from my school at least was the fact that I had made my own production logo that moved which was made in photoshop.
When using inspiration from other films I have not copied them exactly and therefore have adapted them slightly. For example the idea of the car coming towards the camera in the first shot is inspiration from the film Fargo however I have only made this clip last seconds however in Fargo it lasted several minutes.
A convention of a thriller could be filming something inbetween the camera and for example the characters. I have used this convention to symbolise that someone is watching others as the camera is assumed to be from another person's point of veiw.


The nine frame grid shows shots I feel best repersents the general feel of my film which I was trying to achieve:

 
Frame 1

This first shot was from an inspiation of the film 'Fargo' where a car is driving towards the camera. This shot sets the scene and allows the voice over of the phone conversation to be heard without too much distraction. It is the first shot that appears on screen (excluding the production logos) and builds up atmostphere.

Frame 2
This shows the car pulling into the drive from behind a hedge tracking slightly from left to right as though someone is watching; this shot also gives this illusion as it is filmed without a tripod and is therefore quite jumpy as if it is from the intrudor's point of veiw. This shot is just after the voice over so it allowes the audience to wonder if it is the ex-employee who has just threatened the father who it stalking them.

Frame 3

This shot is only one second long, and I have editted to make it alot faster then it was when filmed by increasing the playback speed, and if you are not paying attention you might just miss it. It leaves the audience confused as to weather they saw anything at all. Although you may not always register that you see things your brain registers what you have seen and is therefore in your unconcious. However if you do see the figure you will understand that they are in black and are looking mysterious.

Frame 4

This shot is completely relevent to the first 2 minutes as her father has just told her to make sure she locks the doors but through this close up of the hand we are totally focused on the fact that she hasn't actually locked the door which therefore builds up the suspence.

Frame 5

Here we see the girl greeting her dog and we can totally focus on her costume - looking like she has just come back from school and wearing a neat jumper completed with a black skirt portraying that she is quite smart and therefore not the rebellious type to get herself into trouble. This leaves the audience to question why a stalker would want to harm an innocent girl. The dog walks off from this scene and we do not see him again leaving his destination unknown.

Frame 6

This shot shows the father leaving the house which emphasises the fact that the daughter is indeed alone in an unlocked house.

Frame 7

In this shot we see once again apart of the intrudor with the use of a tracking shot which edges nearer to the house. Here is an almost establishing shot as you can see that the girl is in quite an expensive house, which emphasises once again how she is not the typical rebellious type that would get herself into trouble (and therefore be stalked). On this shot we can also see the font that I have used throughout, it is called 'Nirvana Engraved' and I even used it to make my animation Production Logo. I used this font of text especially because I believe that it is quite eerie looking. The shot also gives credit to the composer of the soundtrack which I used, "Pulses and Drones" and because it was copywrite it had to mentioned as I wasn't going to allow the audience to believe that it was my own. 
 

Frame 8

This shot includes the sound effect which I found on soundsnap.com along with the dialing and ringing tone found earlier in my film where the credits first begin. The sound effect is of a dog yelping and the daughter reacts perfectly to it, she then looks around for the dog. I used the shot from above to portray that the daughter was very small and in danger. It also looks like once again that someone is watching her and the blank space of the balcony allows space for one of my credits to fill it perfectly.

Frame 9

This is the very last shot in the sequence (apart from the title of the movie). It pans from the worried daughter to see that the door is open and she wonders who could be in the house. The title of the movie then comes straight after, "Daddy's Little Girl" which matches the movie perfectly because it symbolises just how young and defencless this girl is and how one decision from a father can cause a huge regret. This suggests the genre, of being a thriller/horror.