Question 1 Sharina Jade Smith

In what ways does your media product use, devolop or chalenge forms and conventions of real media products?

There are 4 different types of film opening: 

• Narrative opening (the most common and traditional type of film opening and is therefore, the mostly used type.)
• Discrete opening (use of, what can be described as, a short mini-film within the actual film.) 
• Titles of blank screen (literately uses credits over a blank screen)
• Stylised opening. (uses rapid, fast editing with graphics.)

These are the main conventions of film opeings , and each has their own set of rules in order to differentiate their opening from the rest. 

The convention of a Discrete opening is the introduction of a sequence which is seporate to the actual film. (For e.g. a mini film within the film.) Discrete openings tend not to give a lot of information away to the audience and usually includes fast jump cuts and might appear blurred in the viewers mind. The film, Se7en has a perfect example of this. 

The conventions of an Opening with titles over a blank screen is giving information of the film to the audience through text and and sound choices. This is used mainly in thrillers as, because the screen is usually black, however simple it may seem it can be used to great effect. The film Dead Calm uses an example of this. 

Finally, the conventions of a Stylised opening is the use of rapid editing, whilst incorporating the use of  graphics. This type of opening usually sees the images and pictures specially edited to make it fit in with the theme of the movie. This can be used to create immense effect of action. an example of a film where this type of opening is used is Peltham 123.

For our film opening we decided to use a Narrative opening, as we felt this would give the best effect for our film. 

The conventions of title sequences are as follows:

• Movie Title and Appropriate Music

Our Thriller used minimal music, and really made use of the massive, significant impact that silence can make. The movie title was placed inside the movie, in big, bold writing in order to capture the audiences attention. 

• Cast and Crew 

• Characters and Setting

• Mise en Scene and Editing

The costume selected within the opening was relevant and connected to the thriller itself as we wanted to portray the character as an average, young teenage girl so her costume had to be selected in order to reflect this image to the audience. The setting was selected in order to reflect the thriller element of the opening to the audience: we chose an isolated, location of a graveyard as they are spooky, and is usually associated with horror/death.  unexpectedly but helpfully, during the filming the weather was a grim, dark, day that was pouring with rain which helped a lot in creating the atmosphere for the film. 

• Cinematography/Camera work