Evaluation Question 1

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

The chosen genre of our film was Action Horror. We chose this genre for our film as not only did we like it as a group ourselves, but it was also very popular with our primary target audience who were 15-25 year olds males.

I Am Legend (Lawrence, 2007) was an influential film for us as it fit into the genre of Action Horror and also had a similar theme to our own film. The ‘beasts’ in our own film were also based on the antagonists from I Am Legend, as they hide in the shadows and attack humans.

Another film which influenced our costume choice was Green Zone (Greengrass, 2010). In this film they enter a dark area wearing gas masks and suits. These soldier costumes helped us to really visualise how our own soldier would look in our opening sequence.



In our film we followed typical conventions of our Action Horror genre. Our main character in our opening sequence is portrayed as the tough military sergeant who inevitably ends up getting killed by one of the antagonists. We have also followed conventions as our film also has typical events and settings for the Action Horror genre e.g. dead civilians, empty residential streets, unseen ‘beasts’ etc. In post-production, we added an effect to our whole film which gave our whole sequence the typical ‘post-apocalyptic washed out’ look, which I think was very effective.

Continuity is also a big convention of films. In our sequence we tried to stick to continuity techniques such as match-on-action, eyeline matching and the 180 degree rule. However, we found we had one continuity error in our piece. When one of the Forensic officers turns to call the Soldier over, you can see the Soldier through the gate. In the next shot, however, he is a few metres down the street from the gate, and he then walks to the position he was previously standing in a few moments later.

The narrative structure to our film is also quite conventional, as it uses theories from Propp, Levi-Strauss and Todorov. We used Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary opposites to help us plan our film’s plotline. The binary opposites we used were:

·                     Good vs. Evil

·                     Known vs. Unknown

·                     Humans vs. Creatures

·                     Normal vs. Strange

·                     Life vs. Death

·                     Light vs. Dark

·                     Guns vs. Claws/Teeth

(Known vs. Unknown and Normal vs. Strange were used particularly in our opening sequence)

We also used Propp’s 8 character theory, which as you can see in the table below, can be compared to James Bond: Casino Royale which is a popular Action Film for our target audience:

Finally, we used Todorov’s theory of Equilibrium:

IMG[1]

Our film uses screen effects to wash out the colours and this gives the film a ‘post apocalyptic’ feel to it. Our soundtrack also backs this up as it is mysterious and builds tension at the start, but becomes more and more fast paced until the end where it builds up to its maximum before suddenly stopping. In one of our establishing shots we also use a gunshot which helps to establish the action part of our genre early on in our film’s opening sequence.  

Specific narrative techniques we used in our opening sequence include Real Time editing (i.e. our film does not contain montages or dissolves to show time has passed so that it flows as one continuous sequence). We use enigma codes (there is the enigma around the soldier in the gas mask as to who he is before the reveal, also the enigma of what is watching the forensics/who has killed the girl)

We also use action codes (what’s going to happen to the soldier when he goes into the garden, what has happened to the forensics/ why are they screaming)

I believe our opening sequence follows the typical features of an opening sequence of the Action Horror genre. It starts off with an establishing shot of an empty public area (a park) and then dissolves into the action of the soldier wandering down the street. I think our opening sequence sets up the rest of the film and straight away, through the dialogues and costumes, the audience can tell the genre and some of the background information they need to know for the plot of the film.

Our film opening sequence is very similar to that of Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) as both sequences start with an empty shot and then gradually build in the characters and the tension. The Night of the Living Dead opening sequence shows a car driving along an empty road to a graveyard, where two characters are then introduced through dialogue. In a similar way, our sequence opens with a soldier walking down the street where he meets two forensic officers, who are introduced through dialogue.

Chart showing how our film compares to the typical conventions of Costume, Camera,
Setting and Posters for our own film