evaluation-Q1

The overall task was to create an opening sequence which adheres to the general conventions of a thriller film which in which i was given time to research.My group members are Samantha Apperley and Tyler Osman, we all has specific tasks that were defined later on, for example during the production one of my many roles was to find filling soundtracks for the opening sequence and to film majority of it as i had a small role in regards to the acting.As a group we worked relatively well as we were able to communicate in a sufficient manor and come to conclusions quickly as we all had a similar mindset for the opening sequence however certain elements like organisation need to be improved upon in the future.As a whole the opening sequence we produced was above par and contained many conventions which was one of my main aims.

As previously mentioned thriller films contain conventions which are elements of the film or certain objects which have become affiliated with the genre due to their fitting nature in terms of the thriller genre.So from this i was able to spot trends in thriller films, for example in halloween which contains a male antagonist and a female victim which seems to be a very popular convention among thriller films as if the antagonist is of a male gender it makes the scenes more intense especially if the victim is female as it reinforces how helpless and threatened the female victim is.

There were other conventions that were observed such as the use of iconography, specifically objects like knifes and mobile phones which were used in the film scream 4 very effectively as the use of the knife made the scene more intense and more violent. The audience are often able to relate more when objects that that see everyday used in eerie/alarming situations therefore making the scenes seem a lot more shocking. The use of a knife in itself is quite gruesome as the killing seems to be a lot more horrifying due to the blood shown and so forth.

Another convention which was noticed in my research of scream 4 was the variation between normal lighting and low key lighting which was used in scenes which were more dark in nature in terms of the actions such as a killing for example which low key lighting is associated with. The change in the lighting let the audience know that something terrifying was about to happen and the darker lighter also made the actions that were occurring seem far more scary as the audience are not completely sure of what they are seeing.In the same scenes the time of shots would also increase which proved be conventional in practically all thriller films as this created more excitement and added panic to the situation.

In order to create a successful thriller film i  had to create an opening sequence that contained a large amount go generic conventions which i did in the early stages of planning, as a group we all individually listed conventions of we needed to include , trying to cover every element of the four micro elements.The most obvious was to have a male antagonist and a female victim which was suitable to my group perfectly, however there were other sub conventions,per se, that also filled in well such as a blonde female victim to signify innocent which was again made easy as Samantha fitted the description well. I decided to include conventions like low key lighting , enigma, certain camera shots like the high angle and a hidden identity for the antagonist to be dressed in all black ,baggy clothes as well as a possible mask which would not let the audience know his true identity which should hopefully make the scenes more mysterious. The camera angles like the high angle will allow the audience to know in certain situations who is superior as the antagonist for example will be looking down on the victim, the angle works in the same way by letting the audience know that victim is clearly inferior. The idea of enigma is quite important in a thriller film as creates the mood of mystery in the film for example like with the antagonist which always has a concealed identity.
.In terms of picking the conventions i was relatively free as we were able to pick almost any convention to include as we had easy access to produce the film.

 As a result i decided to set a large proportion in a forest which was mostly used in thriller films due to it being considered man an eerie environment. Overall i would say my opening sequence sticks to a large majority of the conventions which are seen in thriller films which was my main ambition from the beginning of the planning stages as challenging the typical conventions of a thriller film would make it extremely hard and may in fact cause the film to be further from the thriller genre as after all it is the conventions and typical features that make the film more suited to a particular genre.

In comparison to other films such as halloween my opening sequence had definitely contained a wide variety of conventions just as halloween did which which became a large inspiration in certain aspects.There were various similarities such as the concealed identities of the killer as well as the female victim which i have just mentioned, the choice of weapon for our antagonist was also the same which was a knife as i found it to have a greater impact on the audience as well as making the production a lot easier as many other weapons would be hard to obtain.Although we made sure to include differences like the setting and the plot twist which my opening sequence did not contain.