In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The genre for my opening sequence is action.
The forms and conventions for this genre are firstly; that it can be set anywhere and usually in action movies the main character is seen in many different places and usually countries. However for the sequence I am doing, the majority of the similar scenes I have looked at it is usually set in a large old country estate. I have therefore used the conventions of media products and used a large country house for my opening sequence. I feel that this really helps the audience be engaged and not be distracted by the set as it is rather isolated.
The main character is usually male, as these are seen as more dominant and stronger and are therefore stereotyped to do all the action scenes and fighting. However as my sequence is only a title scene I have developed the conventions of media products and decided not to have a ‘main character’ but instead, only show the intruders and to leave the rest to imagination as to not spoil too much and to get the audience interested before the film. If I were to carry on the film I may even include this as the end scene so that the movie actually goes back in time then forward again to this point. If I were to do this opening again I would probably include some shots of a ‘main character’ or something before the action begins as I feel it starts too suddenly and there is no story to why they are there and its quite sudden and confusing.
I have followed the conventions of media products actors, costumes and props by using a man in tactical gear as an intruder as all of the similar scenes and genres I looked at had male intruders dressed in black tactical clothing. I think that this worked well with the team of men that I created being the unidentifiable, faceless intruders I intended them to be. If lots of people look the same and are unidentifiable they are seen as being able to get away with violence. E.g. In Lord of the flies the boys all pain their faces and kill piggy and hunt Ralph.
In my Camera and editing use I have tried to make the scenes short and broken up by the titles like many real media products do, however I feel that it is too focused on the men and there are too many angles of the same scenes leading it to be boring at times instead of fast paced and intense like it is meant to be. Therefore I feel that another storyline must be followed and sliced into the intruders’ footage to make it more like a real media product of this genre.
I followed the conventions of real media products with my font choice for my titles as it’s the typical ‘top secret spy’ font which fits with my action genre and especially my characters in tactical gear. This can lead the audience to infer that these men are military or working for the government which is exactly what I want and therefore I am happy with this choice.
I did not follow conventions of media products with my sound choice as most action movies have fast paced intense action music, however due to having to find loyalty free music I had to go for a classic soundtrack rather than an actual song as it fitted the most. I think that to an extent the music can fit the scene and add to the feel of mystery; however I would like to instead use more of traditional fast paced action music. Despite this I do like how the music gets faster as it goes on and I edited it so that it also gets louder as it goes on building up tension and drama.
The ident I believe fits with the genre as it is also quite dark and mysterious and has some aspects of idents for companies that produce similar films.
E.g Dolby Digital:
Joseph McComb 