- The document compares the opening of the author's film "Seize" to the film "Inception". - Some similarities include using a single word for the title to create intrigue, limiting the number of locations, and using simple editing techniques. - Differences include not using special effects due to budget constraints and choosing a more conventional costume for the antagonist for clarity. - Overall, the author aimed to break stereotypes but found certain conventional elements helped communicate the story more effectively.

1. B Y T O M B U R D E N
In what ways does your product use,
develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

2. Introduction:
As you will have seen from our pre-production, we were
very set on breaking stereotypes with the opening of our
movie. However, as filming progressed, we found that our
initial vision slowly began to blend into something a little
more stereotypical (due to us finding elements that didn’t
translate well from planning to the final shoot). The turning
point really came when analysing our target market and
finding that, with all the element we wanted to incorporate,
our market was extremely niche.
Due to Inception being one of the thriller films that
personally inspired me to try and create something slightly
different, it felt only natural to compare the elements in that
opening to mine to see what I have differentiated/replicated.

3. Title:
When it comes to the title; Inception (along with other
Thriller films) are often titled with a single word. With the
title of our movie (Seize) we stuck to that trend. This is
because we felt that it was snappy and “rolled off of the
tongue” very well. Furthermore, a single word provides a
negative connotation to the movie which, without seeing any
footage whatsoever, puts the idea of a dark, gripping story into
the heads of the audience.
In addition, much like Inception’s title, the single word
Seize provides a sense of mystery at the same time as these
stereotypical connotations. This allows some excitement to be
built around the movie due so much of the film’s details being
unknown (thus leaving all details to complete speculation).

4. Setting and Location:
Our setting do share a few similarities with the movie
Inception. Firstly, we have tried to keep the number of
locations down to a reasonable number (so not to
bombard the viewer with too much to think about). Our
movie features two major locations (the container and
the Heath land), which is the same number as Inception
(which features the beach and Chinese Palace).
Furthermore, our film opening is similar in the sense
that it too features a serene setting (our use of the Heath
land compared to their use of the beach) which is used
contrast the situation the character is in (in our case the
imminent kidnap and in Inception’s case the
hallucinations about his estranged children).

5. Camerawork and Editing:
We saw elements in the way that Inception was filmed that appealed to
us and, therefore, tried to incorporate them into our movie (while fitting
those aspects to our needs). An example of this would be the use of close
ups in the sequence (mainly of the character’s faces) which we saw as a
very effective way of drawing the audience’s attention to specific items (in
our case the gun and kidnapper’s mask). However, we knew that too many
close ups would rapidly become tedious. Therefore, we attempted to
differentiate our shots. To do this we decided to shoot using the opposite of
the close up. By using much more wide angle shots, we could effectively
contrast the general tropes of the genre while, at the same time, display the
victim’s isolation.
Like Inception, we did our best to kept editing simple. By this I mean
that we didn’t want to use anything more than simple jumps cuts (which
could be sped up to suit the tone of each scene). We did this because we
didn’t want to “overpower” the scene and give the viewer too much to focus
on. Furthermore, the use of transitions such as screen wipes would not
effectively work with the darker tone we want to set.

6. Special Effects:
Although Inception, has quite a few uses of special
effects (CGI etc.), none of this is featured in the
immediate opening. In this sense we have a
similarity to Inception. Our film features no special
effects whatsoever. This for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the small budget of which this movie was
produced didn’t facilitate the use of features such as
3D. Secondly, special effects are something that we
never would’ve even considered using because the
use of more ‘flashy’ effects would detract from the
darker tone of the film.

7. Costumes and Props:
In our film opening, we initially had the idea to try and
break multiple stereotypes with the appearance of the
kidnapper. This would have meant that our kidnapper
would appear much more differently than he does in the
film cut. We ultimately decided that, in a film where we
still needed a distinguishable antagonist, a costume that
doesn’t convey this may have viewers confused.
On the props front, the use of items such as the iPhone
help to distinguish our victim as middle class (much like
how the man in the oriental palace has very upper class
attire).

8. Title Font and Style:
The title was another aspect that we looked toward
Inception for. Both our title and theirs consist of a large
bold font. We saw this as a good choice because its
punchy aesthetic stands out well and, in turn,
emphasises the film’s name (and all of the connotations
that come with it.
Our only difference between our title and the title of
Inception is that, while our logo is one single block
colour, while the Inception logo has a few transparent
areas. We pick this single white colour because we saw it
a nice way to reference the white mask of the kidnapper.

9. Story and how the opening sets it up:
We really liked the way that Inception wasn’t
afraid to leave out details and, thus expect the viewer
to figure them out themselves. This was something
that we liked the idea of trying to emanate. However,
we did this to a slightly lesser degree because we
found doing it way too difficult with the subject
matter we have (as compared with Inception that
was fully designed around viewer confusion – all the
way up to its ending)

10. Genre and how the opening suggests it:
This was one aspect that we very much struggled to
capture when filming. As most of the traditional exciting
action sequences don’t appear in the beginning of our
movie, it was very difficult for us to find a way to
emphasise the film’s genre.
However, this can be seen as a strength because, as
other aspects of our film involve hiding details from the
viewer, this would further that objective (due to the
audience having to piece together each component to
figure out the genre). Attempting to process this
information helps to keep the viewer is engaged.