Our final opening sequence

Here is the final opening sequence of our film, "Road Kill":

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

- The first thing the audience see in our film is our production company credits: "Dinodow Productions"; the outline of a dinosaur in white with orange writing, with fog moving across the screen. We didn't want our production company to be or look like a typical name; therefore we came up with this unique and professional sort of name. Even though the company credits are only shown for approximately 8-10 seconds, we didn't want to bore our audience, so we put a lot of thought in to it. Most company credits have their own distinct element, so to finalize ours, we added in the sound of a dinosaur roaring. For example in "MGMs" company credits they have the sound of a lion roaring, this distincts them from other film companies:

- With the rest of our credits we used a font that we downloaded called: 'you murderer'. We chose this font because it suited the genre of the film. And to add to this feeling of horror we wrote our credits in the colour red. This gave a sense of blood and death for the audience. We saw some films use this sort of font and we felt that it really portrayed the genre of the film, so we decided to take the idea and make it our own. For example in "The Grudge 3":

- The first part of our opening sequence is a flashforward. In this flashforward we used some shots inside a car, we filmed it from the back seat. This gave us a really interesting view of the two characters in the front seat and the road ahead of them. During planning our film, we looked at some influences. One of them was "Eden Lake", which is where we found the idea of these shots inside the car. This first image is the shot from our film and the second image is the shot from "Eden Lake":

- In the flashforward we have flashes of a young girl lying on the side of the road with blood on her top. We came up with this idea ourselves. We wanted to create tension so we had these flashes come up for just half a second, this lead the audience to wondering what it is and whats happened. We had a challenge as we were worried that the flashes wouldn't fit in properly with the scene as it's difficult to make something like this effective, but we were successful. In order to make the young girl look like she had been hurt and dumped there by someone, we positioned her laying on the floor with half of her body up against a tree. We got this idea from an advert about speeding, made by a company called: "Think". The first image is the shot from our film and the second image is the shot from the "Think" advert:

- Another influence that we looked at during planning our film was a horror film called: "The Last House On The Left". We found this very useful because it gave us ideas for our location and it helped us find out different ways that horror films build tension for the audience. We felt that the location in "The Last House On The Left" had a really good effect because it made things seem creepy and eerie. Therefore we searched for a similar place where we thought that we could create this effect for our film. We chose a narrow lane by our school surrounded by fields and trees, this made the shots look dark and scary which added to the suspense rising. And we also discovered that in "The Last House On The Left" they built tension by using a frightening, non-diegetic sound getting louder and louder. So we created our own non-diegetic sound for the first half of our opening sequence which built suspense for the audience by getting loud
er and louder. Here is the trailer of "The Last House On The Left" and some screen grabs from our film where we used our non-diegetic sound to build suspense:

- At the end of our opening sequence, we have a scene where the two main characters are relaxing and watching tv at home. We wanted to give the audience a bit of information and whats happening in the film to keep them interested and to keep them watching. Therefore we decided to make our own police report of a news reporter reading out some breaking news about a young girl who has been brutally murdered, this relates to the body that they previously found. This scene is 4 weeks earlier from the scene where they found the body, as that was a flashforward. We wanted to include this scene of the news so that the audience would know that the rest of the film is going to be leading up to the flashforward and finding out who is the murderer. So we made this police report and then put it on to a disc and played it on the tv with the two characters watching it. We felt that this made it look more realistic and didn't make Justin look as suspicious, so the audience can see both sides of his character. To see what police reports look like we watched a few news reports on tv, this gave us an idea of how it should look. Here is an example of a news report that is similar to our police report and then some screen grabs of the two main characters watching tv and the police report that we created:

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

- This is a shot of Justin Jones, who played the teenage boy in our film. We chose him because we wanted someone who could look and act suspicious. Justin's character represents the troublesome teenagers of today. Over the past ten years, the number of teenagers that have murdered or hurt someone has increased, therefore Justin shows a teenage boy that could be responsible for murder. For example in the teenage drama film: "Kidulthood", teenagers are represented in a similar way to this. In "Kidulthood" one of the main characters: Sam (played by Noel Clarke), is very violent and murders a teenage boy, this relates to Justin Jone's character in our film. Here is a picture of "Kidulthood" and a picture of Sam (Noel Clarke) who plays a similar role to Justin Jones:

- However, what differentiates our film from "Kidulthood" is that our film is part of the horror genre, where murders take place and characters are trying to find out who did it. Whereas "Kidulthood" is a drama about teeangers dealing with problems, crime and peer presure. But the similiarity is the teenage murderer.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

- A production company is responsible for the development and physical production of performing arts, film, radio or a television program. The company may also be directly responsible for the raising of funding for the production or may do so through an intermediary. A production company may be a small or large.

- A distributor is someone reliable who can draw attention to the film, draw in it's audience and support it fully throughout it's release.

- "Rogue Pictures" could be a possible distributor for our film "Road Kill". "Rogue Pictures" was originally launched by "Focus Features" and "Universal Pictures". It's first film was made in 1997. In 2005, Universal expanded the operations of Rogue Pictures so it would become a stand-alone division and it made an objective of distributing 10 films annually. "Rogue Pictures" now has over 35 films and already has films being produced for 2012. "Rogues Pictures" would be a good distributor for "Road Kill" because it's a relatively typical horror film with an average, quite low budget of £15million. And as "Rogue Pictures" is not a huge well-known company; yet it's not unknown, it would work perfectly with distributing "Road Kill". "Rogue Pictures" also produced one of our main influences: "The Last House On The Left", this showed that it is capable of distributing a film with similar elements to "Road Kill". "Rogue Pictures" also distributed other successful horror films such as: "The Unborn", "The Strangers" and "Cry Wolf".

- The £15million budget for "Road Kill" could come from the UK Film Council. The UK Film Council is the Government backed lead agency for film in the UK ensuring that the economic, cultural and educational aspects of film are effectively represented at home and abroad.

Who would be the audience for your media product and how did you attract/address your audience?

- Audio commentary:
Niamh: Hi, i'm Niamh Dilworth; director and producer of the upcoming film "Road Kill". Your backstage with me to talk a little bit about the opening sequence and target audiences of "Road Kill". We begin with a very dark and mysterious scene, where the audience can't really tell who the main characters are. "Road Kill" is aimed at teenagers. As soon as the radio report starts to play while the two main characters are driving along, the audience are informed of what's happening and the horror genre is immediately established as the non-diegetic suspense sound starts playing in the background. This is one of the reasons why "Road Kill" is aimed at teenagers. Because this genre is very popular amongst that age group, they generally like a film that could scare them and that has a twist to it. It may not appeal as much to an adult audience because they may not like the plot and they may find it uninteresting as it's a 'typical horror'. And now as we see the main characters a bit more clearly, the audience can see that they're teenagers. This is another reason why "Road Kill" is aimed at teenagers. Because they may feel more involved and interested in the film because they may be able to relate to them as they are of the same age group. This helped us attract a wide audience of teenagers to our film. We also attracted our audience by making the opening sequence quite revealing, so the teenagers wouldn't get bored and they would want to keep watching to see who is responsible for the ocurring muders. Teenagers like to see gore, murder and drama in horror films, so we included some of these elements to draw more of our target audience in to watching our film.

What have you learnt about techonolgies from the process of constructing this product?

- During filming and creating our opening sequence, I have learnt a large number of the new things about the techonolgies of Macintosh computers and video cameras.
- Starting with video cameras. This is the video camera and tripod that we used for filming "Road Kill":- During the filming process I found using the video camera and tripod relatively straight forward. I learnt that the tripod allows you to take all different types of shots from a variety of different angles. Such as panning, closeups, etc. I enjoyed using this equipment because it really made me feel involved with the production of "Road Kill".

- I felt that I learnt a lot of things about Macintosh computers, especially iMovie:


- With iMovie I learnt how to edit a film; by cutting different shots and putting them together using different things such as transitions (fade in, fade out, etc.). I also learnt how to record voiceovers and put them in to our film, I learnt how to insert titles and images, how to insert sound and how to create special effects to make our film look and feel realistic to the audience.
- With Macintosh computers I also learnt some things about GarageBand. A programme that allowed us to record our radio commentary for our opening sequence.

- Blogger; this is what we used to update our process on. Things such as our research, planning, etc:


- After the experience of using Macintosh computers and video cameras, I feel that i've learnt a lot of useful things that helped me achieve my targets for creating my opening sequence.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

- This is my preliminary task. Looking back at it now after completeing my opening sequence, I feel that i've learnt a few things and improved in some areas. For example; sound. Throughout the whole of the preliminary task that we made the sound wasn't very good, there was a buzzing sound which effected the way the final piece looked. But during creating my opening sequence I learnt how to improve this by adjusting the volum, adding in non-diegetic sounds and more dialogue.
- Another thing that i've learnt is transitions. In my preliminary task we didn't use any transitions, therefore the cuts between shots didn't look as good and felt too quick. Whereas in my opening sequence we used a variety of transitions to make the shots fit together.
- I've also learnt how to frame shots better. In my preliminary task theres a panning shot at the end where one of the characters gets up and walks away, this shot cuts off her head which makes it look unprofessional and doesn't show the audience the whole view of her walking away. In my opening sequence we made sure that before filming we had the camera steady and at the right angle to include everything we needed in that shot.
- The final thing that I felt i've learnt was to shoot things more than once. In my preliminary task we only filmed everything once, which meant that when we came to the editing stage, we had to cut a few things out that had gone wrong. And during filming my opening sequence, we filmed things 2-3 times just incase anything went wrong, so we would have extra footage during the editing stage.