Evaluation - Q1

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

An example of this is in 'Super 8' at the begining, where we are introduced to long distanced establishing shot where we see the protagonist from far away. This distance represents the distance from the protagonist and his family + it can also show how powerless he is by being very small in terms of composition.

The sequence begins with a man in a suit falling into water, as we hear non-diegetic sound fade into a soft piano. This creates a dignified tone to suggest this character is dead, even more so when the scene fades to black, immediately creating some enigma as we recognise this man as the character 'James Bond'.

The text 'Skyfall' appears on the screen as the man (Bond) falls through a gap that has appeared in the sea bed as Adele sings "feel the Earth move". We get the impression from these first few lines of song that the soundtrack matches the film and the lyrics could suggest what will happen in the film.

Mise-en-scene is used to great effect in this opening scene for instance, a cut-out of bond wiht bullet holes in him and a single bleeding wound under his right shoulder drifts across the scene and makes the audeince ask questions - Why has this been placed here?, What is its significance to the plot? A convention used in various thriller movies.

The style of the title is a serif font which is closely spaced and moves fluidly with the water, this makes it look more natural and may foreshadow what might happen in the story

'SKYFALL' TITLE ANALYSIS

The editing of Gone Girl’s opening sequence has used a lot of fade transitions and animations to portray the vanishing of the protagonist. To begin with all the shots fade but once the main title has been shown all the shots have a much faster pace and just cut without any animated transition between them. This is when shots of the barren town are shown to suggest an unfortunate event has happened, which is most likely the death or disappearance of the girl. Constant shots of the town keep suggesting the idea of isolation, a key theme in the thriller genre. The husband is portrayed as isolated in the final scene of the opening sequence when he stands outside his house alone, confused and as if he’s looking for something or someone. This suggests to the audience that he may be more caring than previously portrayed, as he is worried about where his wife is. The fade animations on all the text in the opening sequence have a different meaning to the fading shots. All the text fades in and out except for the main title, which does fade in but disappears differently. When the title “Gone Girl” vanishes it doesn’t just fade it appears to be covered by a mist, then reappear before being covered by the mist again? This doesn’t just suggest the girl is gone or dead, it shows she has vanished but is still alive, just like the title. When the fog covered it that didn’t mean it no longer existed, it just meant it wasn’t visible. This idea could be the husband’s state of mind and hope that drives him to find his wife. This portrays the husband as a detective (another typical thriller character) trying to solve a mystery, another typical thriller narrative but more so puts the suggestion of a red herring in the film. Earlier on the idea that the husband could be psychotic killer was brought up, so him trying to find her could all be one big diversion to the audience as it makes them believe he’s innocent and portraying the husband as even more unlawful.

'GONE' TITLING

Our title was inspired from various extracts in different movies. The actual title itself at the end is very similar to thriller movie 'Gone Girl' in terms of style and how the title is introduced and how it exits.

Other inspirations include using a sound bridge with an intense, suspensful soundtrack like thriller 'Se7en' to add an extra layer of meaning to the title. The transitions also help foreshadow the rest of the film if we were to make it

'GONE GIRL' TITLE ANALYSIS

'VERTIGO' TITLE ANALYSIS

GONE vs ZODIAC

We do not know who the woman is in the opening sequence yet but that's a good thing from a producer's point of view as this draws the audience in more.

The female character is clearly on edge and not comfortable with the viewer's scrutiny. This scene introduces some more key conventions of the thriller genre: anxiety, paranoia and the notion of looking, Being wathced and being seen watching someone else are also conventions of thrillers.

It then zooms in one of her eyes followed with the screen going red. The colour red represents danger which can connote a shift in the mood of the audience.

After this, a rotating, spinning, spiral appears from the centre of the eye, enlarging after every rotation keeping the same circular shape of the eye. This is clever becuase the animations support the title of the movie becuase the word 'vertigo' refers to dizziness.

The titles in vertigo are in a serif font that is bold and white, easily contrasting with the background. The background changes colour which emphasises the movie title.

THE END OF QUESTION 1

Our use of restricted narration was inspired by the fact it is one of the most effective technqiues in terms of creating enigma, very common in thriller films. Proof of this in other thriller includes the opening scene in Zodiac, where they use restricted narration to also create enigma

Our main aim when making the thriller, was to create suspense and add a layer of mystery, or enigma (one of the main conventions in thriller films). We did this using restricted narration; examples of restricted narration including the tight camera angles hiding most of the antagonist's face and not knowing his location for most of the opening.

ZODIAC

In Zodiac, restricted narration is used to put the audience on edge, or create tension. More specifically, at the car scene, you can hear rustling sounds and dialogue of people talking in a aggressive manor but the audience have no idea where they are. This effectively creates enigma and the restricted narration makes the viewing uneasy for the audience and thickens the plot. This and many other movies, inspired us to make a simple plot more difficult to follow by restricting narration and adding twist and turns in our plot to keep the audience guessing.

In this shot, it's dark and abandonded but off-screen sounds can be heard such as rustling and distored dialoge. This makes the character and audience feel uneasy about the situation.

Enigma is also created through other technical codes such as sound. We used a non-diegetic soundtrack to fit the suspenseful atmosphere of the film torwards the end. The music gets more intense as the drone flies away from them murder scene before the audio and video fades out. This leaves the audience questioning what happened and will also make them feel shocked.

The non-diegetic soundtrack compliments the opening's slow build-up and fast intense pace towards the end of the opening; unlike other thrillers I researched such as Seven. In the thriller 'Seven', the non-diegetic use of music is very creepy and intense.

We also use a sound-bridge at the begining of our thriller between the institutional information and opening shot. This is also used in 'Zodiac' where you can hear ambient noises such as conversations and you can hear a car parking.

Evaluation - Q1

Our thriller sequence 'Gone' uses various elements to develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products through the technical codes; mise en scene, sound, editing, and camera work. We also thought about iconography such as the gun, binary opposites etc.

The camerawork in our main task, was chosen carefully in terms of shot angles and distances. We used various close-ups and long-shots for different effects. Close ups can emphasise a characters expression and long shots can be used to show the surroundings or in our case, make the protagonist feel small which represents the power the antagonist has over the protagonist.