Opening Sequence

Below is our finished opening sequence for "Silent Night". Hope you enjoy.

Evaluation Question 1 - How does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products

To answer evaluation question 1, i chose to create a directors  commentary:

Question 2- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

overall, i don't feel our media product represents any social groups in particular. as our piece has no characters, aside from the  subtle introduction of the family through the picture, the only character to speak of is the creature. So, We represent the creature by using a lot of free hand camera and jagged camera movements in order to create a more beastial feel to this character.

i suppose our media product more focuses on the idea that this event could happen to anyone. This is expressed through our use of exterior shots to emphasize that it is taking place in the middle of a normal neighborhood and is further emphasized by the family picture used inside when the creature is looking round the shelves of the house.

Question 3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Below is a script for a small scene where Alyx and i attend and interview with Sky movies to discuss our film.

Question 3 by Alyx Wood

Evaluation Question 4- "who would be the audience for your media product?"

 Looking at the films in the same genre as our own and the films we got our inspiration from; we can see that the audience we are going to attract are teenagers and young adults. Due to the nature of our production, it will appeal to the thrill seekers looking for a scare. This is confirmed by looking at age ratings of more seasonal horror/ thrillers such as Gremlins and krampus.

 Looking at these two titles, we can see that even though they feature cute elements and are based around christmas time and family; they are still rated 15. This would suggest that films like this tend to all be focused towards this age bracket even though a lot of the features are similar to childrens films. 

Evaluation Question 5- How do you attract/Address your audience?

Here is a link to my Prezi file created to answer this question: Answer

Evaluation Question 6- what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

To answer the question; Alyx and I chose to make a website to best describe the Technologies used to create our production. We split the information into two colours. I wrote out the Green; and Alyx, the red.

Evaluation Question 6 website  

Question 7- looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progession from it to full product

For this question, i decided to answer it through the use of a review site. The link is below

Silent Night Review Site

Serif Movie Plus

The editing software we used to construct our opening sequence is called Serif Movie plus. This soft ware was incredibly helpful and easy to use, which is important for us as many students in our class were first time film makers.

The software is very simply laid out, as demonstrated by my annotated picture below:

Now, we only scratched the surface of the capabilities of this software with our main tasks. But even with little utilization of its arsenal. I hope to explore this software in later productions however.

Evaluation Questions

Below is a list of the seven evaluation questions that will need to be completed for our production "silent night". Unlike many other subjects where evaluations are carried out in essay format or a written response; for media, you have to use various techniques to answer each question. Whether it be a blog post, podcast, directors commentary etc. Below is the list of questions

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


2.how does your media product represent particular social groups?

3.what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

4.who would be the audience for your media product?

5.how did you attract/address your audience?

6.what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product

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

Art of the title

"Art of the Title" is a website which holds a huge amount of opening sequences from cinema; from old cinema classics to the latest blockbusters. This Website is incredibly useful for us as our task for AS media is to create an opening sequence. This website has been instrumental in our understanding of forms and conventions of opening sequences in cinema. It has also proved useful as it introduced us to new films to draw inspiration from that we hadn't even considered.

Art of the Title also gives a synopsis and break down of the title sequence. including; what techniques they've used, interviews with the creators and further credits. This is really useful as it gave us a wealth of knowledge on further techniques we could use or research. This is where we found and applied elements of the opening of crimson peak to our production (this is discussed in my "crimson Peak" post)

Here is a link to the website art of the title

Crimson Peak

The opening sequence of the 2015 fantasy/ horror film "Crimson Peak" was a large inspiration for us. When we looked at this scene, we loved the idea of how the different items in the house seem to come alive, and how the camera flows through the rooms; giving an idea of the setting and props. We also liked how it introduces one of the prominent themes of the plot, being moths, by almost following their perspective for the title scene.

For our media product "Silent Night", we adapted the idea of how the camera moves through the house to our own in order to maintain continuity and to install the idea that the creature is on the move, almost sneaking around.

Below is a link to the Clip on Art of the Title


Crimson Peak Title Sequence

Opening Sequence: development

After we'd made some headway with the titles to our sequence, we were given the task to add a storyboard to it in order for us to gain an understanding of sequencing. While our shots were fairly rudimentary, it still carried the desired effect of and displayed the movement from outside to inside. Below is the storyboard we compiled:

Practice Titles

So, after our time sensitive filming was out of the way, we could finally get around to starting to get a grip with the wonders of post production. This journey started with the titles. Below is our first attempt at the opening titles of our sequence:

Tiny Snags

With our production being so time sensitive, we needed to act quickly before people had packed their Christmas decorations away. This meant focusing most of our initial planning working out what exterior shots we needed before working them into the final product. It was an interesting time to film inside too as many of the establishing shots had to be completed as well.

However, this gave us a good insight into how certain factors are out of our control and how it is best to manage your time effectively in order to cope with these inevitable events. Below are some photos taken for our location scouting: 

Production Meetings

Before we came round to filming our opening scene, Alyx and I sat down to discuss the basics involved that need to be sorted out before we started anything. In other words, the pre production. In our first few production meetings during media lessons we sat down and started looking at some opening sequences to movies. As we knew that we wanted something in the realms of horror/ thriller/ Christmas we had quite a good niche to look for.

We looked at opening sequences ranging everywhere from "The Grinch" to "The Conjuring". In the end, we found a good base to set some ideas around. One opening we found that kind of cemented our ideas together was that of "Crimson Peak". In this one, we liked the fact that it was focusing on objects and those objects almost telling the story, rather than action in a scene. And we liked that idea. Below i have linked below the opening sequence for "crimson peak"

Crimson Peak 

Main Task Pitch

When we were presented with our main task for our media AS level, my partner Alyx and I set about thinking about our opening. We were spurred on by the fact that we knew we had to present our ideas in the next lesson. So, for the presentation we had to provide a mood board, ideal cast, and an "elevator pitch" giving our class and teacher a quick grasp of the plot. here was a list of our ideas at the time of the presentation:

Film Opening Plan Pitch

Main Task Brief

So, we were given the brief for our AS media main task, allowing us to start developing ideas around it. Never thought i'd be saying this, but thankfully, the brief was rather vague, allowing us to unleash our full creativity in our task. Down below is the main task and the activities that followed:

289964588 Media Studies Main Task