Dealer's Atonement AS Media Studies Opening Film

AS Opening Sequence- Evaluation 4

4 Evaluation 2

AS Opening Sequence- Evaluation 3

AS Opening Sequence- Evaluation 2

AS Opening Sequence- Evaluation 1

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

-Does it compared to a conventional opening sequence?

The opening sequence in our clip is in my opinion very conventional to any opening sequence to a film, however there are some unconventional aspects to the media clip. In general the opening sequence is far more conventional to unconventional.

-What are the conventional opening sequences elements that we have used in our opening sequence? 

The conventional aspects of the opening sequences are there is opening credits signifying who is involved in the film. When the opening credits are rolling the opening shot is all one long take; many films do this such as Back To The Future as they give clues on the surrounding of the openings scene to answer binary opposites such as whether the location is big or small, crowded or empty, busy or isolated, dark or light and night or day. Our opening sequence identifies the location being a lighting shop,with only two people, a dark day, busy location with the cars but quite remote in the shop with only two people.

-What are the unconventional opening sequences elements that we have used in our opening sequence?

The unconventional aspect of the opening sequence dose not however show the title of the film till the end of the opening sequence, few films for example the James Bond franchise do not show the title of the film till after the opening sequence. The reason we did this is because one of the aims of our clip is to have as many narrative enigmas (Who is the teenager with the gun?, Will the killer find who he is looking for?, What does he want to do the one he's looking for?).

-What are the conventional elements of our genre (Thriller.)?

The opening sequence has very conventional elements to the genre of thriller. Many thrillers such as Se7en have the lighting that is very dark locations which is done throughout the shot in our opening sequence. Many thrillers are also quite violent for example The Counsellor has many violent scenes resulting in death. Our opening sequence similarly is violent with the end having a shot fired from a gun.

-Have any conventions elements in our genre been challenged in our opening sequence?

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) PosterRoboCop (2014) Poster  Finding conventional elements of our genre being challenged is more difficult to find, as the genre thriller can be under many films which might be seen as far different for example The Hunger Games and RoboCop. However our title of the film "Dealers Atonement" is shown in black with yellow font, a very unconventional element for a thriller. The

     reason for the colour is yellow is very clear and yellow can be associated with police tape or police file.

Editing Update "Okay, we'll leave it now."

With the 'journey' starting back in November with the first ever script drafts (mine), (Joe's), we have gone through several stages of development, throwing ideas in and out and all over the place and with the merging with another group - Beth Overton and Phoebe Davies - we eventually came to an end product.

The editing process was long, exhaustive and sometimes tedious. The fiddly process of moving audio clips across to match video clips and having to work with transitional effects in very small spaces were just a couple of problems that we came across the solved through nothing but hours of methodical placement. From slowing down clips to match a slower flowing pace of the clip to then cutting and overlapping audio in order to speed up a piece of dialogue in a way that still sounds right. The cheeky yet somewhat creepy addition of the 'breaking the fourth wall' technique to raising and lowering the audio levels to a non-ear-ringingly-loud-volume.

And much more.

But on Monday 10th March, with one last drag of a clip to another ('AND DON'T FORGET THE SNAPPING TOOL!') our film was finally finished. While we waited for the film to load into a QuickTime format, we recalled earlier on in our course, when we had analysed other sixth form students' opening sequences. We decided that the tiringly long editing process was not only worth it, but that we had learnt a great deal from working with editing programs such as Final Cut. We may not be Hollywood editors but we had constructed a film in which the editing is about as seamless and unnoticeable (which is a pretty good sign) as it probably could be with the clips we had at our disposal to use. No doubt our film might be pulled apart by others, but to us we have done our best and learnt essential editing skills and techniques for our media course.

The opening sequence for Dealer's Atonement is finished, and will be available to watch on this blog very soon. Now, I will be starting my evaluation of our work.

Editing

After a long hiatus in the production of our film due to computer issues (that we were not at fault for), we have finally been able to begin the editing of our opening sequence.

With probably a dozen hours of editing under our belts, we have certainly realized how difficult the art really is. With all that said, we are mostly confident with the way that our opening is looking so far. We have completed the majority of our editing, with the structure of our clips edited together in a way that flows as seamlessly and logically as we feel is possible.

We have, barring any last improvements, completed our audio editing as far as diegetic sound goes. With the sound of dialogue, traffic and everything else in the scene having been adjusted to match the seamless editing of our clips. We did this by simply lowering and raising audio clips at different times, sometimes overlapping in such a way that you are unable to distinguish when one ends and another begins.What we have not yet done in terms of our sound, is add in the non-diegetic sounds which we plan to use. Luckily, this shouldn't be an especially long process and could possibly be done within an hour.

The other very last piece of editing we will need to complete before we should be done, is the credits - something which, once again, shouldn't take too long to complete - we've even already got the majority of this done.

With not long to go, our film is under the last stages of completion.