In an opening sequence of a psychological thriller we can understand that they either have a linear narrative or a non linear narrative, our thriller took qualities of a narrative style, as we decided as a group to go forward with a group members idea, which was very effective and we believed that if we could convey certain messages within the opening sequence time frame (2 MINUTES) about the storyline this would engage the audience even more, as a non linear narrative would engage certain audiences yet it might discourage certain segments of the audience who seek more in a thriller (like a plot of some sort) .
Also when looking at thrillers we can understand the sole purpose of the opening sequence is to engage the audience into the film. It is also to establish and set the mood and visual characteristics of the film. It introduces the audience into many elements such as characters, the narrative or plot of the film, different locations, themes, symbolisms, genre etc. When analyzing thrillers we can understand that the opening sequence is vital to keep your target audience engaged at all times for example when looking at the camera side, if the pace increases and it is always moving it will stimulate the audience so keeping them engage, this is the case in Memento. Movement is also key aspect to look at whether it is going backwards (Memento), fast paced, slow etc. This can be seen in Hitchcock films especially Vertigo.
As the opening sequence of Vertigo, we can understand that vertigo is a feeling th
at you are dizzily turning around or that things are dizzily turning about you. Particularly this opening sequence focuses on graphics first which builds up tension within the audience then breaks into live action, the use of graphics was used to show the female characters state of mind. When looking at her lips we can see a sense of nervousness and anxiety within. T
he close up shot of both her eyes introduces some key thriller conventions of being watched or being seen watching someone else. It then focuses on one eye so starts exploring a theme of identity. This particular sequence introduces themes of suspense and identity, also introduces typical thriller conventions such as a vulnerable blond. Looking at Vertigo and the way in which Alfred Hitchcock uses graphics in the opening to build up tension and suspense then breaks into live action is a very clever way in keeping the audience engaged. I believe our sequence had similar characteristics.
Yet our opening challenges typical conventions of a thriller as most are set at night especially the opening as seen in Vertigo yet our sequence is set in the day.
Also taking in mind we wanted to appeal to the mainstream market yet we still wanted to engage within our independent market who could be seen as teenagers between 15-21 who could relate to do everyday struggle of relationships, betrayal, etc. 
2)How does your media product represent particular social groups ?
As our narrative is based within a school due to the fact we were restricted at a point to take certain equipments out of school bound
, however we were able to get vital shots outside which fitted within the narrative. As our opening sequence was within the school, this sort of encourages us to go forward with Iqra's idea, which consisted of teenage actors with a "teenage plot". Due to this I believe our product represents teenage social groups as typical teenagers, due to other sorts of media we can see that teens have qualities of betrayal, lies, etc. I believe our short sequence represents these qualities, so unfortunately our sequence portrays teens in a negative manor.
Also our opening sequence represent particular social groups as unsure/unknowing due to the fact that when watching our sequence it is seemed that the young boy (me) who is wearing a hooded top is perceived as a villain however he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and in fact is completely innocent. so our sequence shows that certain members of the audiences are easily confused as due to the news, (which suggests most stabbing are occurring due to gang culture, with the problem being caused by young male youth in hooded tops), looking at this information that most of society is exposed to this allows our product to work as we wanted the young hooded youth to be represented as a villain who is out to cause trouble between teens within relationships. So our product does show a brighter side to youths who do wear hooded tops and are not out to cause significant trouble.
At the moment looking at our final product i believe it would be best suited within an institution which specializes on distributing independent title as i believe our product is not suited for the mainstream market, and would be more successful in an independent field, e.g within Anchor bay Entertainment, many more as shown. Our story could appeal to wider consu
mer but due to lack of resources which most mainstream audience demand. Also due to our storyline i believe it will reach a specific audience of the age 15-21 however within that segment it might only appeal to certain individuals who can relate to this specific dilemma being shown in our sequence. Throughout the task we have est to target a specific segment of the audience as we have shown this through the beginning of the project were we had to produce questions to ask selected people, we choose to ask teenagers as we were later going to be targeting our thriller towards them.e.g introduction to characters and plot
I think this was a very important question which i believe one of my fellow team mates came up with as it allowed us to realise that our audience wanted some sort of narrative plot epically characters as teen feel at ease if they see similar age groups with any form of media so to keep focus and on track we thought it was vital to have young actors within the opening.
If we had more resources i believe we would be able to reach a more Mass market as we were developing idea which were impossible for us to do, due to lack of software. We thought it would be good to have clever mirror shots such as
Looking at our sequence I believe it will definitely fit the bracket of a film which would draw in young teenagers due to the fact in the opening two minutes we can see there are three different teenagers, due to them having different qualities this will allow us to broaden our range and appeal to more teens. Also feedback from our young audience shows us that they are very attentive whilst watching due to the fact they can relate towards the actors on show, as our audience becomes familiar with codes of clothing, location etc, which we believed would be vital as it will definitely keep them engage, along with our unique shots, our flow, music etc. I believe it was a wise choice for us to focus on a 15-21 year old audience as our group fits in within that bracket so we knew which ingredients would be needed to produce a thriller that attracts our audience( yet we believe our thriller will reach audience outside this bracket too e.g 21+), when watching an opening of any film especially a thriller I believe you should try not to give too much away. Within our opening I can see it is a lot for our audience to take in yet we wanted to create a sense of tension and at the same time keep our audience focused, as when appealing to a young demographic we had to understand we didn’t want to bore them. As we asked do u think the opening sequence is vital for the success of a thriller?
These results indicated we had to engage our audience from the start. We could not discard this piece of AUDIENCE research, firstly it was answered by people within a 15-21 year old bracket which is our TA (Target Audience), and secondly the response was significantly high compared to all our other results.
5)How did you attract/address your audience?
In our clip we used number of methods in which to attract our audience through suspense music at the beginning which capture the mood we were trying to set, also introducing familiar characters, familiar meaning young typical teenagers within our shot as we new from our questionnaire that it is vital for the introduction of characters to keep our opening a success as it was vital for our TA to be engaged at all time, so if they can relate with the actors we are achieving our goal of utilising that audience base. the use of cuts between the supposed killer (me) and the actual killer allows the audience to become fully engaged at all times also i believe the rewind shot of the events gives the audience a sense of mystery within the thriller for them to unravel what is going on yet we know our audience will have mixed opinions as in any opening of a thriller opinions/predictions will differ, this was shown when we showed our sequence to people outside the group who thought i was still the killer yet some of our audience could notice that in the last shot it was not me who defaced a picture of the female actress who was stabbed unless i was male wearing ugg boots.
Also through
- continuous editing
- thriller conventions
- narrative in which our TA (target audience) can relate to
- familiar setting (school which our TA is familiar of )
- codes of clothing (allows our TA to relate as they have a similar style, or recognize such clothes.
- familiar teenage actors among our actors
- good introduction of actors
- editing ( rewind back, fades, etc)
6)What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Personally i have learnt that using certain technologies has been very difficult, time consuming, and annoying at times for example when starting of looking for music, we found that you-tube provides some copyright free music as some distributors were allowing their own personal songs to be used, so we just needed to find the means of converting the you-tube clip to a mp3 sound file as this would allow us to use it within our opening but it took us quite a while to find the exact converter software to do this, eventually i found a website http://www.convertmytube.com/ which will allow us to do, it was not a free website and charge $9.90 a month yet it would allow you to convert videos into a sound file for free however it would take longer and there was gap in-between each converting session of 45Min's as it would make you wait from each download, it took quite a while as we had about 2-5 clips in which we had to convert which was very time consuming.
During this process we had to make sure that we wouldn't get penalised for using such sound clips on YouTube when consulting with a few of teachers it became apparent that the music may not be copyright free as we could not trust a user on YouTube which we had never seen before, so we had to consider other methods of getting our music, from free websites such as http://www.soundsnap.com/.
Using such technologies has proven to be difficult such as the apple macs yet when using the cameras i believed it was easier then it looked i was proven wrong as it was difficult, yet practise makes perfect, so the more that we stuck at it, it then shortly became easier. 
using the equipment,
using the cameras, tri pods,blog, apple macs etc was difficult at the start but it became easier during the course of our project we had taken shots which i believe were very unique and different which we hadn't used in our opening, i believe this was very clever due to fact that we were able to achieve the shot without the camera being revealed within the mirror.
we had a situation where we wanted to achieve particular shots yet it just wasn't working so we had to the same shot from different angles as we learned through out the course that it could be very affective, e.g positioning the camera on the floor for the footsteps to achieved better affect, the lift scene etc.
at first we did a dead on shot to show that the lift was going down hence going with the flow of sequence as we wanted to make it apparent to our audience that he was making a move.
It was not a good shot as whilst taking it we could see the reflection of the camera.
so we decided to take the shot from an alternative angle to achieve a much more effective shot.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
- Using shot from our preliminary and developing them to a higher quality,e.g idea of the footsteps.
- using a tri pod effectively to get a steady shotbeing able to use the cameras and developing our skills and understanding of that particular equipment
- being able to make shots flow as continuous and create meaning e.g. within our preliminary the character makes a short journey from the stair area toward a door within two shots.
- importance of storyboarding
- planning time better
- don't get distracted or over your head
- sometimes simple is better
- working in a group
- using certain software is harder then it seems
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