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

Our media product is a film called Captive (we have filmed the opening sequence). It begins with a disruption: one of the main characters, a girl called Dannie, is kidnapped by an unseen person. When her boyfriend (Josh) gets to her house, he sees that there has been a struggle and that Dannie is missing. He enlists the help of Dannie’s best friend Charlotte to help find her. Josh had recently inherited a lot of money from his father, who it turns out, won the money from a corrupt business deal. The rival company are out to reclaim the fortune, using Dannie as a bribe.

Our film is a teen thriller, which incorporates elements of crime and action.

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GENRE

Our film opening incorporates many film conventions. Our opening features many genre-specific themes. The kidnap is especially conventional to the thriller genre, creating tension and mystery alongside the sudden blackout. These events tie in crime and mystery elements. Thriller films that also include kidnapping include: The Silence of the Lambs (Demme 1991) and Taken (Raimi 2004).

However, in order to break conventions and create confusion and tension, we chose to not show the action of the kidnap, by having a black screen of a blackout. Although a typical action film would show the action taking place, a thriller director would try to add suspense where ever possible - as in Taken. In our sequence, the audience only hears the kidnap, which is disorientating and adds suspense.

In this kidnap scene from Taken, we hear the girl panicking and screaming while seeing her father’s face. The sense of the unknown happening is very effective in creating emotion and drawing in the audience.

NARRACTIVE STRUCTURE

The element of mystery present in our opening sequence fulfils Todorov’s narrative theory: the film begins with an equilibrium which is disrupted, then restored towards the end of the film. This is a classical narrative pattern which creates a clear storyline.

Applying Todorov's theory to our plot

Other elements of film theory that we took into account:

-   Barthe's theory of enigma and action codes plays an important part in advancing the narrative in the opening sequence as well as hinting at what is to come.

-   The news report introduce enigma and villainous characters

-   The kidnap is a vital moment of action (the disruption) which causes the story to move on

-    We planned our character list according to Propp’s character theory

THE VILLAINS - The corrupt businessmen

THE HERO - Josh

THE DONOR - The escaped prisoner who leaves clues to Dani's whereabouts

THE HELPER - Charlotte

THE PRINCESS / VICTIM - Dani

HER FATHER - Dani's dad

THE DISPATCHER - Josh's father, who causes the dispute between the businessmen and Josh

THE FALSE HERO -  We do not have a false hero in our story


This narrative pattern is used in all conventional films, from children films like Finding Nemo (2003) to films aimed at an adult audience like The King's Speech (2010).

FORM


As an opening sequence there are elements that are typically included:

-          Introduce main characters

-          Introduce setting (location and time)

-          Include some mystery/tension which draws the reader in

-          Suggest what is coming

Like the opening sequences I have looked at previously in this blog (Harry Potter, Narnia, The Sixth Sense, The Incredibles) our opening sequence includes these points which create a successful opening sequence. Like the opening from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, our opening contains a lot of engima and a kidnap, which is gripping and surprising.


Using feedback from our audience screening, we can tell that our opening sequence is successful in these aspects. Almost all the people who watched our screening managed to identify the main characters (a girl and boy in a relationship), and most people wrote that they found our opening scene successful (average rating 7/10). When asked what the audience members predicted for the rest of the film common themes suggested were revenge, crime and finding the kidnapped girl, which are correct to what we planned in our film synopsis.

 Here is the information we gathered from the screening:

Group 6 Audience Feedback

STYLE

As our production company is a based on a small British institution, we verged towards a more indie, relaxed film style rather than typically Hollywood style. To do this we did used a homely, colourful setting recognisable as a classical English home (accents also served to establish the setting), in contrast to the modern settings used with harsh, bright lighting in many Hollywood productions such as the Cullen’s house in the Twilight Saga, for example. The pace of our film begins slowly, then suddenly becomes fast paced (shown through the quick kidnap and blurred, fast, point of view panning shot). For sound, we used a news report and low bass music to add tension and mystery, which is commonly used in thriller scenes.

We also paid a lot of attention to continuity, in order to make our opening as believable as possible. As this was a problem in our first sequence we wanted to ensure that we did not need to reshoot anything this time. Below is an example of the details we checked before filming.