Evaluation - Part 1

"In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"


One of the media products that I focused on the most during the planning and creation of my opening sequence was the movie "Se7en" and its opening sequence.

I focused on the unconventional approach that it had in comparison to other opening sequences that we had studied within class and sequences that I had watched in my free time. This unconventional approach caught my eye as the opening sequence uses a series of documents and actions, but the only thing that is given away is the characters hands (this is what we assume) and it was mainly focused on titles, which is something that wasn't as prominent in other opening sequences. I decided to apply this to my opening sequence as I was working on my own therefore I didn't want to have to rely on other people to make my piece successful - so I decided to challenge myself and try and attempt something similar to that of Se7en's opening sequence. I first went onto www.artofthetitle.com and searched for Se7en and also for Alfred Hitchcocks film "Psycho" as it was an openings sequence that I felt could help me with my titles as the opening sequence is pure titles and cartoon figures - which is also similar to another sequence that I watched from "Catch Me If You Can". After watching these opening sequences (and also others that we had been given on a list by Mr Go) I made a list of things that I liked from each one that I watched and tried to apply this when planning and filming for my opening sequence. I did this not because I wanted mine to be the exact copy of the opening sequence that I favored (Se7en) but I wanted to use a similar style and apply the same attributes to my opening sequence to make it look as professional as possible but also as original and unique as I could make it.

The main convention that I decided to challenge as mentioned earlier, was the use of just photographs and letters (also my titles) instead of using people for the reasons that I mentioned earlier. In addition to this I wanted to mainly use these attributes to give my audience a feel for my film without having to use people as I think that is the usual media convention, and after a while this can become boring despite the amount of useful resources we have at the media department, I didn't feel that I would be able to create enough of an impact if I used people. In addition to this, my story line is something that has historical aspects to it, so I used the old photographs, letters and candles and the dim lighting to set the mood and scene -  but without giving too much of the story line away, and I got my inspiration for this from Catch Me If You Can's opening sequence as you can tell from the opening sequence that there is some sort of chase going on due to the way the cartoon like characters are moving, but you don't see the faces of the characters and the story line isn't given away.

My media product also challenged the conventions of titles in some aspects as some of my titles weren't made on LiveType but were instead written by me and then filmed and put onto iMovie which is something that I didn't see that much on other titles apart from a few that we were showed by Mr Go in class which were done by other schools but nothing of a professional nature