In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In a real life film opening sequence, many codes and conventions are used to set up the structure of the entire film that follows. From film opening sequences that I have previously analysed, it has been made apparent to me what similarities and differences they all share, irrelevant of the genre. For example, some films may begin with an establishing shot (this being to give the audience an idea of where the film is taking place, e.g The Shining); Juxtaposing that, some opening sequence may start with no introduction to characters or settings and will create Roland Barthes' enigma code by beginning with something which will question the audience and create a sense of mystery, for example 'who are they', 'where are they', 'what are they doing' (an example of this being Se7en). Many will begin with an equilibrium, as the destruction to follow will excite the audience later on. Most importantly the opening sequence may give away some foreshadowing to let the audience understand what may happen further into the film.
In our opening sequence MUTE we made sure to follow certain codes and conventions to make our product as realistic as possible. We took into account various codes such as Roland Barthes' enigma codes as, we believe, without them it would simply make the opening sequence uninteresting. The way in which we used Barthes' enigma code was by our usage and the early introduction of the character of Hannah. To the audience, they will have no clue who 'she' is and why 'she' is doing what she is doing, her transition from good to bad may leave many questions for the audience to come up with that would be answered later on in the film; we found the narrative enigma very successful for making a realistic product. We haven't given too much away in the opening sequence at all, we have used a convention of introducing the main character very early on but still the audience doesn't know who she is at all.
'Bad' Hannah
Another conventional code of an opening sequence in which we used is the audio to build an uneasy atmosphere with the use of non-diegetic sounds (such as music and sound effects). As the characters on screen can not hear the sounds that the audience can the noises may startle the audience. Many production companies use this technique to draw their audience in - an example of an opening sequence which uses this convention is the opening sequence to Insidious 2010. After watching the opening sequence to Trainspotting I really liked the conventional usage of a voice over as it makes a more in depth connection to the audience; so in our opening sequence we used a voice-over, however ours being in Spanish. We began our opening sequence with the conventional usage of production logo (Glitch Studios) which was created by Blake, we chose our name due to our editing techniques as it does involve many 'glitchy' images; this made our product seem more professional in addition to mirroring a 'real' product. Additionally, at the end, our title is also a conventional code of an opening sequence - adding to that, the font and colours in which we have used for it are very professional allowing our product to seem more realistic.
Mute; Title
Mute; Production Logo
However, even though our aim was to make something that seems realistic, for my group it was our aim to create a product which is more challenging and unconventional even if it meant using different codes to many 'real' products. In MUTE we decided to use the unconventional Alvorado's four key racial theme; we achieved this by the usage of our Spanish voice over by the antagonist of the film. The predominantly English audience may find the Spanish voice over as a threat and create a dangerous element which foreshadows events later on in the film. Another unconventional code in which we used to create our opening sequence is, our usage of motif's throughout; for the opening sequence we decided to stick to the unconventional non-horror-genre colours of blue and white because we felt it made our product appear slightly uncomfortable for the audience. As our entire film is based upon our fictional clean-freak antagonist, so the colours blue and white- these connote and signify a very clean and sterile atmosphere which completely juxtapose the evil intentions in the film aimed towards Hannah. Another unconventional feature in our opening sequence is the fact it was a montage of short clips with no diegetic audio, this allowed us to enforce an uneasy/confused atmosphere to the audience as the placements of the clips are non-chronological; we found this to be a successful technique as many horror/thriller films begin by throwing the audience straight into the action, we challenged this common theme by easing the audience into a background of the main character. Another unusual and unconventional feature of our opening sequence is graphic matching, we managed to do this by matching a clip of Hannah's eye to food colouring in a bath. We liked this as we thought it was unusual and interesting - we achieved this by cross-fading the two images together.
GIF of our usage of graphic matching
Some conventions that we have used in our opening sequence were inspired by other horror films. As our opening sequence is stylized as a montage we managed to get our inspiration/starting point from opening sequences such as The Girl and The Dragon Tattoo; this opening sequence being extremely successful and unforgettable. However, we managed to challenge the convention of montage's in an opening sequence by dividing our opening into 3 separate (and distinctive) parts - these being 'Good Hannah' 'Taken Hannah' and 'Bad Hannah' as before I haven't seen an opening sequence with 3 separate parts to it. Our usage of ambient and non-diegetic sound is also very similar to the sound effects in the opening sequence of Insidious as it creates an enigmatic atmosphere. I believe that these conventions make our opening sequence seem 'legitimate' to the observing audience.
Here I have created a possible film poster for our opening sequence MUTE. I have used the combined online editors of Pixlr and PicMonkey. I have included the film title in bold and large writing, this may attract the audience as they would be intrigued to see what 'MUTE' is. Additionally, I have added only the age rating in the corner to reiterate that the poster is for a film. The black and white poster is juxtaposed by the blue eyes - this signifies the uses of our motif's throughout.
Today at school we gathered a group of students and teachers to watch our opening sequence 'Mute' and we asked for permission to film them leaving their feedback on it. Overall the comments were positive. Although, there were a few negative comments this will help us to improve our opening scene. Here we put together a video of the responses:
Whilst filming, I took photos of the costumes, hair and make-up which I put together earlier on in the day. To begin with I will look at the hair and make-up followed by the costumes.
In this first look, I gave Hannah a very sweet and innocent feel, the pink eye shadow denotes femininity. Additionally, the lack of makeup suggests and denotes youth- she has a long life to live, she is happy and has no worries. Her hair also backs up the idea of innocence with her soft and bouncy curls in the bottom of her hair; this is quite alike to how a conventional little white girl would have her hair.
In this look I used a smokey eye and a deep wine red lipstick. The smokey eyes connote that she is a dark character 'the eyes are the window to the soul' and hers are covered in blacks and greys this suggests that her soul may be dark and malevolent. The wine red lips definitely give off sexual connotations, it signifies availability but also, her maturity is emphasised. Reds and blacks are both colours that can be associated with horror and blood and death, this follows our genre of horror/thriller. The hair is slicked back away from her face, this could denote confidence, on the other hand, it may denote vulnerability.
COSTUME
We chose to place Hannah in this outfit to make her appear as child-like as possible, The white tennis skirt resembles a school girl skirt which exaggerates how young she is. Also, converse pumps are seen as very juvenile. The reasoning behind her whole outfit being white is the colour white connotes purity, innocence and clenliness - Hannah resembles all of these at the beginning of the opening sequence where she is seen as happy.
In this second outfit Hannah is dressed very differently, she is in very dark colours of black and navy blue - which connote her unstable emotions and dark soul; black in general connotes death, hate and nothing (she feels as if she is nothing). The jeans which she was wearing are more masculine as opposed to her previous outfit which was extremely girly. Her outfit shows her to have a different persona and signifies how something has happened to her to make her be like this. The high heels represent and denote maturity whilst the fur coat connotes that she may be a cold-hearted person.
For our opening sequence the group and I have found and made some music, sound effects and voice overs to use. Here is what we have uses, more specifically:
MUSIC
Originally, we found it quite hard to find music suitable for our theme. Our opening sequence is really split into two sections where Hannah is innocent and where she is rebellious and dark, so we really needed two separate soundtracks to represent this change.
We decided on using 'Little Cloud' by Johnny Ripper for part 1 and 'Techtonic Shift' on Free play music.
'Little Cloud' is a very calming slow paced song, it fits our beginning half of the opening sequence as it creates an angelic atmosphere.
'Tectonic Shift' contrasts this with the eerie-ness in which it creates. However, to achieve the atmosphere in which we have it was with help of the sound effects.
In our opening sequence, the sound effects have played a vital role in building up an atmosphere. We have used a series of sound effects such as:
Glitch noises
TV glitches
Reversed laughing
'Boom' effect
Ear ringing effects
'Shh' sound effect
Without these sound effects the audio would sound bland and would leave a dull atmosphere. Although, we did find it quite difficult to place the sound effects at the appropriate times; it took a while for us to get the hang of it. In my opinion, the best person to do it was Hannah.
VOICE OVER
For our voice over we chose to take Alvrado's Four Key Racial Theme into play and decided on a Spanish man (the actual killer) to do a voice over in Spanish. To a predominantly white, British audience the idea of a foreign man having a conversation to the audience may throw them off-guard. On a Friday after school, Alice and I went to Alice's house to start filming with her older brother Harry (who studies Spanish at Portsmouth University) saying our script but in Spanish, On the whole, it took us about an hour and a half to begin and finish this, Here is a sneak peak of our voice-over in MUTE:
In an opening sequence it is a convention to include the production logo before the beginning of the film so the production company is recognised. Some conventional horror production companies are Blumhouse Productions (producers of Insidious), another example being Twisted Pictures (producers of SAW). In our opening sequence it is essential for the group and I to create one of our own
production logo to feature at the beginning of our opening credits. We are thinking of naming our production company something along the lines of 'Glitch Productions' or 'Glitch Studios' as the editing we have used whilst creating it includes several glitches to create a confusion and retrospective views.
Our ideal is to create something along the lines of this:
As the hand hits the window the production logo will show; It is our idea to include an ambient bang sound effect to make it seem more dramatic to the audience whilst using an earthquake effect to make the screen shake once this has happened.
SHOOTING AND EDITING
Previously we unsuccessfully shot a brief production logo, as it did not go to plan we ended up shooting it for a second time. After shooting we edited the production together by using programmes on the mac called LiveType and Final Cut Express. Here is a GIF and a video of our final production logo.
For our film Mutethe group and I have decided on a suitable target audience:
Breifly, to establish the gender; Because our film theme is horror/thriller a predominantly male audience would like to view this. This is because men are conventionally seen as more 'risk takers' than the more conventionally 'vulnerable' women. However, the secondary audience may be women as one of the main characters is a woman, so they can empathise along with her character.
The age group of which I believe is suitable for our opening sequence is 18-30 as it is of a mature theme. Mature themes such as: mature language, torture, violence and rape. As the film is based in the United Kingdom the ethnicity of majority of the characters are Caucasian and British, therefore the audience of the film would also predominantly be White, British. The social class for this film would be C2 Working Class because it is not very sophisticated or formal so it wouldn't apply to anyone above the Working Class. The sexuality would most likely be Straight as there is no representations of homo/bisexuals in the film. The demographics of the audience would be explorers, as I find our opening sequence has something very different to offer. The type of people to watch our film would be a male and female couple late at night (as it does include the aforementioned mature scenes).
In many films certain motifs are used throughout; this may lead someone being able to identify a film just because of the motif that is repeated throughout. Some examples of this are in Human Centipede 2 with the representation of the centipede itself; and in Sinister being the child killers. The use of motifs is very effective as it can give a film a theme to go from.
MOTIF'S IN OUR OPENING SEQUENCE
In our film Mute we have based the whole of our opening sequence around the colours blue and white. In horror films, conventionally, the usage of the colours red and black are most common as they denote death, blood, war etc- so for our film opening sequence we wanted to create something more uncommon and unconventional. To do this we have used to motif of the repetition of the usage of the colours blue and white. With these colours we were able to create an uneasy overly-clean atmosphere to fit our story line - it contrasts the conventions of horror but it still works.
Also, I like that we have used blue as a motif as towards the beginning of our opening sequence because we have used it to edit the colours of the actual footage, it makes it appear very vivid and cold and I think it works very successfully.
Before each film it is essential to have an age rating for the target audience to depend whether it is suitable for specific age groups. This basically means, the youngest suitable age to view the specific film. Our film is targeted at an audience over the age of 18 because of its mature topics.
PG Rating:
PG stands for Parental Guidance. On a whole, these films are suitable for all ages but some scenes may be a little too much for a young child, so they may need the support of their parents/carers in some scenes. All the footage would is however of clean material.
12a/12 Rating:
A 12a rating is one of the lowest- it literally means if you are under the age of 12 you have to be accompanied by a parent/guardian in the cinema to see the specific 12a film. This is because the content may upset somebody below this age, but in general, it is safe for a child to watch. As every child is different it may be fine for even an 8 year old but not okay for a 12 year old - it depends on the child, so 12a gives them choice.
A 12 rating is rated on films genuinely suitable for the ages of 12 and above, the majority of the content is clean. In the cinema if you are age 12 you can view the specific film without a parent/guardian. The 12 symbol also allows children of the age 12 and over to be able to buy a 12 DVD/Blu-ray in a shop.
15 Rating:
A 15 age rating is suitable for only children if 15 and over; this is because the content of 15 films is a lot more raw and mature. 15 rated films may contain some sexual scenes and/or taboo language which is unsuitable for anyone below 15.
18 Rating:
An 18 rated film is strictly for adult viewing only, This is because the content may be extremely explicit.
Here are some examples of what an 18 may contain, from the BBFC website.
"18 works are for adults and can contain strong issues such as:
very strong violence
frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***') and / or very strong language (e.g. ‘c***’)
strong portrayals of sexual activity
scenes of sexual violence
strong horror
strong blood and gore
real sex (in some circumstances)
discriminatory language and behaviour"
In our opening sequence the content isn't too harmful, there's no swearing or sex scenes involved. It includes a few innuendo's but on a whole it is clean. But when looking at the whole of our film the content will be lot more explicit making us rate our film an 18.
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