Evaluation Question 1

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

Genre
We wanted to make our film opening look like an Action/Drama movie by using similar colour grading and lighting, taking inspiration from big action films like The Dark Knight and I Am Number Four.

The mise-en-scene and style of the sequence was really important in getting across genre conventions, as the opening of our film does not have a lot of action in it, emitting the typical features of an action film like guns and fighting, challenging the conventions of other films like the James Bond franchise which often have fast-paced action scenes right at the beginning of the movie.

This clip from The Dark Knight has shadowy lighting and slightly blue tint, which is the effect we wanted for Mute.

We also looked at Action/Sci-Fi films like I, Robot as our film does have some science fiction elements to it because of the focus on technology and a dystopian world. This clip is also quite dark and is graded with a hint of blue.



Here is a selection of stills from Action films we took inspiration from. As you can see, there is a definite running theme for colour and lighting effects.

We didn’t want our film opening to be quite this blue, as it is also a Drama, and we thought the blue tints on a lot of films were a bit over the top.

The way our opening sequence begins straight away with loud, up-tempo music is also typical of the action genre as the audience is captivated and excited as soon as the titles appear.


Narrative structure
Mute has a traditional narrative structure in that is fits quite well with Todorov’s Theory of Equilibrium:

However, we decided to break the conventions and create another disruption at the end of the film, leaving it open to a sequel. Whilst Ava is celebrating with the rest of the nation, we hear the government plotting to kill off Ava and her new boyfriend, planning to cover it up by announcing to the world that these fake voiceboxes are infected and therefore everyone must have them removed again immediately.

Our film is also untraditional as it does not really fit with Propp’s Character Theory:

• Our protagonist Ava is of course the hero.
• Being a girl she does not have a princess to save and instead has two supporting characters, all three of them helping each other out equally.
• One of the boys, Benjamin’s friend, ends up being the victim who is tragically killed by the government, rather than the typical damsel in distress. 
• There is no straightforward villain either, but instead a faceless government represented in the film by the trained-to-kill team of guards who are sent out to track the trio and try and stop them from reaching their destination.

The first half of our opening sequence does not use real time editing and instead uses a montage style to first show the  people at the bus stop, then to show different parts of Ava’s journey home.
The cross cutting at the beginning of the sequence is deliberately jumpy to create pace and enigma, as the audience does not know who these people are and why they are all engrossed in their phones.

The establishing shot of the bus stop creates a binary opposite between Ava and the other teenagers around her, as they are all looking down at their phones whereas she is staring thoughtfully out across the road, signalling her non-conformity. The second half of the sequence is edited to real time and the pace is much slower, reflecting the monotony of this silent, detached world.

Once inside the house we made sure to stick to the continuity rules.





We filmed the same shots from different angles (all within 180 degrees of each other of course) and  instructed our actress to be extra careful between shots by not moving and by completing the actions in the exact same way every time. There are several cuts between shots in our sequence that involve match-on-action, a valuable continuity rule I learnt during the preliminary task.



Form
The typical form of a film opening sequence is to either

1. Introduce the characters and plotline in the conventional way, or 
2. To start at a key point later in the narrative, then jump back to an earlier date to show the events leading up to this point. 

Here is an example of a film that starts at the end: The Butterfly Effect, conforming to form (2). The opening sequence is flashforward to an event near the end of the film, confusing the audience and leading them to wonder what happened to cause the protagonist to be in this situation.


As we were not making the entire film, we thought it would be much simpler to use the conventional form, way (1) of starting at the beginning, otherwise our sequence would not work as a standalone media product.

To make things more interesting, we used the enigmatic zoom on the webpage at the end of our opening to make the audience aware of what the rest of the film might be about; sure enough, these ‘scientists’ will be very relevant to the plotline.

It is also a convention of an opening sequence to introduce your protagonist, and as Ava is the only character not engrossed in her phone, she immediately stands out and it is obvious that she is the protagonist even before we begin to follow her home.

We didn’t want to waste screen time by putting all our titles on black screens, so instead we placed most of them over the footage, positioning them discreetly at the bottom of the screen so they are both easy to read yet not distracting. The titles end before the vital parts of the sequence where viewers have to concentrate on something important, for example the news article at the very end, so they don’t miss anything.

Style
As well as wanting the typical stylistic features of high-budget action movies, as our product is meant to be part of a gritty British film, we wanted it to look a little different from these Hollywood blockbusters. We liked the low-saturation, high-contrast, washed out look of British superhero drama Misfits. Here is a clip to demonstrate:



In regards to the editing and pacing of our opening sequence, we wanted it to start off very choppy and fast-paced, cut perfectly to the upbeat high-impact soundtrack. Halfway through the sequence, there is a dramatic switch to the eerie silence inside the house as Ava removes her headphones, incorporating Levi-Strauss’s theory of Binary Opposites: the loud drum and bass music juxtaposes the creepy silence.

We deliberately used no music or ambient sound effects at this point to make the natural noises, like the video game and footsteps, sound too piercing and loud to make the viewer feel uneasy and wonder what it is about this world that is wrong. Of course it was integral to our film’s plot that there was no dialogue, putting the emphasis on Ava’s actions and the messages she is receiving.

We thought it was important to show CUs of the characters’ faces throughout the sequence to show the concentration they have when engrossed in their various activities, whether it be texting or playing video games.

Close-Ups

Their blank expressions show the lack of emotion and connection with other people in this dystopian world, and the multiple close-ups are deliberately choppy and jump between different people for enigma and to bring the audience right in on the action.

We chose our titles to be simple and minimalistic, keeping to a colour scheme of white on either black or on top of film footage. The digital-style font relates to a key theme of our film: technology.