1. Project Evaluation. AS Media Studies. Natalie Goode.

2. For my media project My Partner and I chose to do a video product similar to one of our favourite films!

4. Our final piece is a hybrid as we used two genres which were romance and action and we came up with this idea from what were our favourite genres of films which we enjoy watching the most.

5. We jotted down a few films from this genre which we could base our project on and came up with Mr and Mrs Smith, Knight and Day. Etc.

6. Both Daniella and I decided to base our opening sequence on Mr and Mrs Smith because we thought this would be the easiest one to make most interesting and full of everything we wanted such as a good narrative.

8. Contrasting back from the romance to the action at the end of our opening sequence we created a good disruption to make the audience want to carry on watching, just like what you need to do with an opening sequence leading up to the actual film.

10. This was so then the film would carry on in the normal colour and people would be more interested in watching the film as from our audience feedback, we gathered that not many people would want to watch a film made nowadays in sepia tone which was used back in the 1920’s.

12. We decided to use sepia for a very old effect on our piece along with a fuzzy effect to add to the idea as television wasn’t as updated as it is now which worked very well.

13. Our genre of film is the same genre to the film Mr and Mrs Smith of an action/romance.

14. With our we came across a problem with some feedback that people would see this setting and not want to watch it as we are in the 21st century. To avoid this, we came up with the idea to bring the normal colour back when the disruption comes in towards the end of the sequence, which would then show what the rest of the film would be like.

15. One main element which we challenged was the setting of our opening sequence because we differently decided that we would like to try something which many people don’t do much anymore nowadays and this was to set it back in the 1920’s which meant using a different colour.

17. ‘Cliff hanger’ is a word people know because it has to be in every single opening sequence, whether it is little or huge. A cliff hanger is something that the audience need to see to keep them wanting to carry on watching the film, this is a thing in any film which can make it either successful or not.

19. We used this certain element as we thought it was vital to make the title stand out to show the audience the disruption in the narrative. The real media products credits and our product had a lot of differences between them however we made one part similar for the effect of the same genre and this was the name of the film. We picked a font which was thin but was bold and stood out, using the credits effect to make it jump out to the audience. This font would give the audience the idea that it’s a romance and action genre. Mr and Mrs Smith didn’t have many credits within their opening sequence, but the ones they had were the film labels but these credits just appeared on an over black screen. Ours always appeared over the film apart from the title of the film credit. All of these credits were in our piece as we felt it fulfilled the requirements of an opening sequence. Within our credits we had our film labels, who the film was directed by, who created the music and the actors. The real media product had none of this, therefore the audience didn’t know much about the film as in who it had been directed by or who was actually in it.

20. Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? As throughout our opening sequence there is no speech, we did this so it would make it more intense for the idea of the man and woman being criminals out to kill each other. To create our image of the woman criminal we dressed her in very ‘lady like’ clothing so her appearance would come through as very elegant and not harmful. But us as the audience would only see the criminal side when she has a gun down her garter. Our opening sequence represents the social groups of men and women and also criminals. This is because the opening sequences show a man and woman with guns and poison at different shots and then in contact with each other so the audience will therefore think they are criminals and what are they going to do to one another. With the connection to our particular social groups that we are representing within our product of men and women and criminals, we are definitely challenging the stereotype of the woman with this as people don’t expect women to be criminals. Especially with the 1920’s effect the audience will be unsure about this woman being a criminal because men seemed to have more priority back then. Also the sound that takes place when the function in the narrative of the disruption comes in, our sinister music begins to plays and this has an even more bigger effect on it all being intense. So this part towards the end with the sinister music is telling the audience about them being criminals, however, the beginning part has more of a happy music playing with a 1920’s sepia tone effect to tell the audience a lot about men and women. The image of the man criminal is not a shock to the audience as a man is stereotyped to be more of a criminal compared to the woman so we see the woman therefore as more secretive which reflects to the disruption at the end of the opening sequence with the revenge letter to the man.

21. Stereotypical women we looked at. Pinned up hair Short dresses Lots of make up – dark lips and dark eyes Thin and elegant Pearls for jewellery, throw or feather bower

22. Stereotypical men we looked at. Smoking cigars mostly Always in suits with tie or shirt and braces Very clean Tall and thin Short hair

24. If 20th century fox has put money behind the film Mr and Mrs Smith then I don’t see why it wouldn’t put money behind ours as they are quite similar.

25. They have also distributed ‘Knight and Day’ with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise which is another similar film we took influence on to do our product Sweet Revenge and both Knight and Day and Mr and Mrs Smith are massive films of our time.

26. I was going to look for a British production company, however, I believe that our film would go further with this distributor as they have also put money behind plenty of other popular films and programs which reach our exact same target audience too.

28. Q5. How did you attract/address your audience? As the disruption is at the end of the opening sequence it is full of lots of enigmas to set up things that will make the audience want to carry on watching so they will know what comes out of these things in the rest of the film. Our disruption part at the end of the film consists of the man getting an envelope posted under his door with revenge written on it and we also have a close up shot of the bottom of the door where you see someone's footsteps outside and this creates even more tension as the audience don’t know who it is. In a way it makes the audience suspicious of the woman because she isn’t in these clips anymore. Then when the man opens the letter he pulls out lots of feathers from the woman's feather bower that she wears earlier in the opening sequence. This immediately makes the audience in question of what has happened to the woman. The non-diegetic sound makes it even more tense and interrogative of sinister music, no speech from the character of the man and very low key lighting. Attracting our audience, consisted of many things within our product to make sure this was done well. Firstly, we set the equilibrium up well so the audience got a clear view on what the characters were like and understood them before involving the disruption which could ruin this. Therefore our equilibrium lasts longer in our opening sequence than the disruption, we thought it would be best to have a shorter disruption because then this would make it more powerful like how disruptions need to be. Man holding letter Extra effects we added to the disruption of our product while editing was the pace. For example, while the man was opening the envelope to see what was inside and getting it out, we made into slow motion. This effect was to once again reflect back to the tension in the disruption and to make the audience think many things which would make them want to keep watching the rest of the film such as has the man got a guilty conscience? Has he done something wrong? Or done something to the woman? Our aim for this point in the sequence was to make the audience have plenty of questions going on around in their heads.

29. To create conflict or contrasts in either character or situation within our product we created ‘binary opposition’ and we filmed the two shots to the left. We decided to do two shots where the audience can see both the woman looking at the man and the man looking at the woman. For the binary opposition they are based to show love and hate between them both but the idea is that the audience don’t know which one, it could even be both. We wanted this to cause conflict in this situation of what is happening between the man and woman and reflect back to what close up shots we see of them with poison and a gun. Our opening sequence seems to give off many messages/ideologies about crime and how you have to be unsure around people because you don’t know who is capable of what. For example, our woman does not look like a woman who would carry a gun around. She is not a stereotypical criminal. Even though men are more stereotyped to be criminals than women the man in our sequence doesn’t look like a criminal either, he just looks like a normal man. So it is telling the audience that people aren’t always who they seem to be. This is effective in our piece as we have plenty of clips of the characters and the poison and gun. Etc. Therefore the audience are seeing what these characters are doing with their life and have to understand this is actually what people are like.

31. Looking all the way down, you can see all our research and planning that we wanted to do which is really good and seeing the changes we made which made our piece even better.

33. A big advantage to i movie is that there is plenty of editing elements you can choose from so there isn’t really a problem, you can have your sequence however you want.

34. After learning how to use the cameras and tripods they were very useful especially the tripods because with the tripods it was so much easier to get different types of shots, and the handles which you attached the camera to allowed us to tilt it up and down and side to side along with holding it very still so the shots would be of good quality and smooth.

35. An element of the camera I liked most was the zooming in and out button as you could make it go very slow and once again that would make the shot look at its best quality.

37. Conclusion. Overall, I am extremely happy with how our final product turned out and it turned out a lot better than I thought it would. Me and Daniella kept on coming across many problems that were making us struggle with sorting out the opening sequence but we came over them and it turned out the best I think it could have been. I think one thing that was putting us off was the idea that it was our first time using i movie. Etc. Therefore personally I thought I would struggle with doing all this but it clicked eventually and I filmed and edited things I didn’t think I would ever be able to do! Our opening sequence to a film has something that every single one needs and that’s a good disruption with enigmas somewhere in it to make the audience want to keep watching and we’ve got that so therefore I believe if our product was put out to the public to watch then they would want to watch the actual film not just the opening. This is because it is a very grabbing opening! We also received some good audience feedback which lead to us defining the target audience we wanted our product to go out to which was very satisfying. I am pleased with our 1920’s effect at the beginning which I love, along with the change in colour to nowadays when the disruption comes in. I love the font choice along with the credits to contrast with that, the transitions, music choice and so on. It has just as many similar elements to Mr and Mrs Smith that we wanted and our opening sequence represents the film very well which is what we were going for in the first place. And finally, I am very proud to say it is a fantastic finished product.