Evaluation of openning sequence.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?As a group of three our film opening sequence uses the forms and conventions of a real media product. My media product “Deadly sins” is based on the horror film and also due to research which included plot keywords e.g. thriller, blood and death.”Deadly sins” is based on a class of five student who are facing detention for various reason therefore each had committed a sin, the popular (girl)Bianca represents Vanity, the Goth( boy) represents Anger, the geek (girl) represents Jealousy, the class clown (boy) represents Selfishness and the basketball player (boy) represents Greed. Each character is killed one by one except for the geek girl, and at towards the end we realise that the unrelated incidents all lead to the geek girl were she actually helps to kill the students.

Our opening sequence involved the typical forms of a opening sequence as we start off by an establishing shot of the classroom and then grasping a sense of character one by one having individual shots of each character but not including any speech this was to tie in with the theme of thriller therefore we kept the first scene simple and clear to what is going on but still leaving the audience with questions. Throughout the opening sequence we used several hints which were similar to other horror/thriller movies we had researched.


The stereotypical themes include:
• Teen
• Danger
• Trauma
• Killing
• Dead body
Our film includes various conventions, one obvious convention we show within our opening sequence is when Bianca has a nose bleed and stands up and walks towards the door this is similar to the film “i know what you did last summer” because the killer wears a white mask which represents a hidden identity and our in film the blood represents death but is also a disguise due to the blood being a suttle clue but in contrast with “i know what you did last summer which is a quite drastic clue”. During walking towards the door we show a close up of her hand where she unconsciously wipes blood on the wall and leaves her hand print of blood this gives a sense of innocence and vulnerability. This also links to the theme of death which is shown later on in the movie. In “Deadly sins” we experience a range of killing which are uncalled for and most of the time never seems to make sense this is also common in other horrors and thrillers such as “Final destination” where a group of friends boards a plane to France on a school trip, when one character “Alex” has a vision that the plane they are boarding will explode he eventually convinces his friends not to board the flight and the plane does crash. Soon after though, the teens are stalked and killed by Death who is intent on collecting the souls of those who cheated it.





Throughout the films that I have chosen to compare horror/ thrillers that all include conventions of the which includes conventions of the unaware humble teen this compares to the film “sorority row” where a girl who is in love with her boyfriend is unaware that he hates her sorority sisters and eventually kills them one by one this relates to my film because both films share a similar storyline where a sequence of deaths occur but know one knows who the killer is which shows a equilibrium, disruption and a new equilibrium for instance my equilibrium would be the normal class room which lead to Bianca having a nose bleed which is the disruption and as the film continues the new equilibrium is the mysterious geek girl finally captured.
Also for mise on scene as a group discussed what the convention could help us to create a horror/thriller feeling this is represented in the film “Saw” where they use low key lighting in the opening sequence this created suspense, low key lighting is also identified within many other horror/thriller films which we used in our opening sequence where we showed the first shot of the flickering which adds importance to our idea of not being able to control what happens next.
Our media product develops the forms and conventions of real media products due to my research in horror films such as “Jennifer’s body” this is represented by the setting as we see the stereotypical American high school although our setting is in a stereotypical English secondary school the forms and conventions are the same.

We developed this idea by instead of having one main protagonist we had five main protagonists. Our media project challenges the forms and conventions due to my research where protagonist are normally the good idealistic person seen as the hero this is shown also in the film “saw” where five contestants signed up for a competition which included a cash reward with selfish intentions of winning but eventually down to two contestants figure out that if they had worked together they would have been able to win as a team.
For “deadly sins” we managed to develop this idea and make the protagonist individually belong to different social groups but still have one thing in common which is that they all have committed a sin. And towards the end we realise that their original sin links to why they end up in detention and end up dying. And also involved real media films by challenging the forms and conventions where we used the most unlikely character (the geek girl) to be the killer but also makes sense due to being smart, quiet and reserved.