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

Overall, our piece of film very much conforms to the conventions of a film opening. At the end of the opening, we state the time and location of the current moment in the film, with the writing on the screen saying ‘Sterling, March 6 2007’. We also use a close up of a clock in our opening, stating to the audience the time of the scene, and from the lighting they can presume that it is midnight as opposed to midday. The fact that this is written on the screen makes the audience very much aware that the film is set in America, and has taken place in the past of when the film is released. We chose to write the date as ‘March 6 2007’ as it is the way in which Americans would write it, instead of writing it in a way that British people would, as we thought this may start to confuse audiences. In order to further emphasize the fact that the film is set in America, we placed a ‘Butterfinger’ wrapper, and a ‘Hershey’s’ wrapper on the desk, which is clearly visible in one of the shots, as it is a typical American form of candy.

In our film opening, we also wanted to introduce one of the main characters to the audience, however we wanted to do this in a way that built enigma – another convention on film openings – by not revealing him too quickly, yet hinted about his personality and character throughout. Through our choice of shots, we never revealed the entirety of the protagonist – Peter’s – body and face, as we wanted the audience to interpret the character in their own ways, before they completely found out about him. We chose to include items around the bedroom in our opening by using close up shots of them, to hint at Peter’s personality. We used a close up of some DVD’s, including ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’, as we wanted to create this idea that Peter is quite ‘nerdy’, something that people typically tend to get bullied for, foreboding to the rest of the film. We also used a close up of a pile of books on a cabinet, which included titles such as ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, reinforcing the idea of Peter being quite ‘geeky’. We chose to include a book titled ’11.22.63’, which to those in the know would be related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. We chose to include this as we felt it was a very subtle way of initially portraying the concept of shootings, because most people wouldn’t pay particular attention to the titles of the books used in the shot, but to those who do notice, they will feel like they know something that no one else does.