We used non-busy areas during filming to limit unwanted sounds but also to develop the narrative by increasing the danger/threat of the antagonist. It is far more intense when the audience feels that there is no way out for the girl in the trunk of car or the girl who hears her. For a thriller to be successful the viewer must feel on edge, which we believe we succeeded on by making the location fairly secluded. The locations were: car park at Imperial park and the car park at the Windsor local community centre. This again, challenges typical action thrillers because they are mainly based in a metropolitan city. For example the trilogy of Batman movies all take place in made up city of Gotham. This is due to the danger usually being aimed at the government or a collective group of characters rather just one protagonist and this furthers displays how our media piece challenges usual conventions.
On a whole we challenged the typical sounds found in action thrillers. We did not use fast paced music in our piece to differentiate our media piece from others. The opening sequence is being used more as a build to later event in the narrative. We used a contrapuntal piece of music by Gnarls Barkley called ‘Crazy.’ It overlaid disturbing images of a girl trapped inside of a car boot. This disorientates the viewer, which is our aim. This challenges typical action thrillers because they are generally use more parallel sounds/songs. Generally, the sound is fast paced. We wanted to have a slowly build up of adrenaline in our opening sequence. Also, we used eerie white noise sound effects to create a moody atmosphere and this challenges a typical action thriller. Our narrative develops the form and conventions of real media products. We wanted to take a typical action thriller but manipulate its typical forms and conventions by playing around with the camera angles, sounds etc. Our piece is most similar to films such as: Silence of the Lambs, Taken and Eden. All of which involve abduction in the narrative with essences of violence. We used typical low-key lighting to form a moody atmosphere. This is similar to the abduction scene at the beginning of the movie Salt and the majority of the lighting during Silence of The Lambs. All characters wear simple and modern clothing. This is to allow viewers to relate to characters. The antagonist wore dark colours to resemble his danger and also wore a beanie hat. This helped strip his identity, as you could not fully see the antagonist until the very end of the opening sequence. Both girls wore everyday, middle class clothing. The girl inside of the car boot wore a white top this is shown towards the end of the sequence and this is done intentionally to resemble her as pure and young. Body language in our opening sequence develops typical conventions in action thrillers and thriller on a whole. The girl character in the car boot is scared and attempts to escape which is a normal reaction to the situation. The other female character showed clear concern and confusion when she hears the screaming. This is displayed by the scrunching of her eyebrows in her close up. Lastly, the fact the antagonist is not revealed immediately creates mystery and danger. Therefore the costumes and body language develop typical form as and conventions of action thriller movies. Due to them displaying the expected aesthetics/reactions. Here we have practised on Garageband as we will have to create our soundtrack for our opening sequence using this software. We have played around with layering and varying sounds in order to create suspense.
This is our rough cut which we have created to give us a general direction of where our 2 minute sequence should be heading. We chose a group to specifically show our rough cut so that they can give us successes and criticisms.
The group said that when watching, the story line makes sense and we have a wide variety of shots. However, we needed to swap the first two shots so that the phone torch makes more sense as it is turned on in the first scene, not in the second. Our audience also said that the boyfriend of kelly didnt seem very bothered by her phonecall, however this is expained in the rest of the narrative as the boyfriend actually exchanges her, which is why he is not that shocked that she has been taken. We still have alot of the story board to follow which creates the question of whether we will fit it all in within the 2 minutes. Furthermore, we also got feedback on our actors saying the main characters reaction to being locked in the boot was very realistic. We will use these points to now direct the rest of our opening sequence and make sure that the narrative makes sense in the first two minutes. To make our production logo we used photoshop on a mac. We used different layers and effects to achieve our finished design. We decided to use a glow effect on the words illuminate because it reflects the definition of what the word represents. The black background used helps emphasise the vocal point of the logo which is the title and the light bulb image used. The font is also in black so that the letters did not fade into the light bulb. We agreed that the light bulb was a good image to convey our process of working together asa group. We are constantly coming up with new innovative ideas. For the image we used a pen tool to cut out the background and added an outer glow to the text and image. We used varied opacities so the light bulb image did not overpower the text.The Memento - Analysis of Opening Sequence The film opens with the credits of directors and follows with actors names. It then progresses into showing a close up view of a polaroid photo, which shows lots of blood and a person, which interprets the photograph to be of a crime scene, however this is not obvious to the audience. The development of the polaroid and the photograph being taken is shown in rewind in the first two minutes, which then shows the first character, which is not clear whether he is the antagonist or the protagonist. Furthermore, the character shakes the polaroid which shows the polaroid progressively developing however in rewind. The character has a fresh cut/scar on his face which suggests vaguely that he has been in danger, and has been hurt. It is not clear wether the photograph and the cut on his face is associated. The film starts with lots of non diegetic background music which continues throughout the opening sequence until the first character is introduced. The music is slow paced and uses stringed instruments which suggests that something bad has happened, especially in relation to the polaroid. The sounds used is parallel as it matches the scenes used. The music then fades out when the rewind goes back to when the photo was taken, which then the audience can hear the camera flash. This shows that the photo and the scene it captured is a key event throughout the opening sequence. When the film title is shown, the screen then fades from black into the first scene which is showing the full developed polaroid. It is at a close up low camera angle, which is almost suggesting the characters point of view. When the character is first shown it is the same scene however a different angle is used, and it is less close up. The camera then progresses onto a extreme close up of the characters facial expression which shows a look of concern whilst taking the polaroid.
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Paige, Anna, Fiona, Natalie
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