Evaluation 1

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.