The document summarizes a student's media project where they created an opening sequence for a film with a partner. They chose to base it on the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith because it had both romance and action elements. Their opening sequence was set in the 1920s using sepia tone and portrayed the main characters as criminals out to kill each other. It discusses how their project developed and challenged conventions of real opening sequences. For example, they brought the color back at the end to indicate the rest of the film would be in normal color. They represented the social groups of men, women, and criminals. The student believes 20th Century Fox would be a good distributor because it has money to promote interesting, unique projects like

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!

3. Introduction.For this media project of creating an opening sequence for a film I worked with Daniella and I am very pleased with the choice I made as we both had similar ideas on what we wanted to do.

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.

7. It does have both its similarities and differences which we came up with to put into our piece. NARRATIVEOur media project is about two people which are set out to kill each other but end up falling for each other, just like what happens in any romantic film.

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.

9. Daniella and I had the exact same contributions to our piece to make it an equal success such as all the planning, filming and editing. Etc. We did everything together and both had a say on everything that was chosen. For e.g. if one person didn’t like one thing then we wouldn’t have it, we had to agree.One of our ideas which we chose together to make our film more appealing to our audience was at the end when our opening sequence was ending we changed the colour from sepia to normal, as you can see below

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.

11. Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?Our product used, developed and challenged the conventions of this real media product.

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.

16. Some elements in our opening sequence and the real media product were very similar, however some very different. In an opening sequence of a film we know that for the majority of the time it doesn’t last for much longer than 3 minutes max. Similarly Mr and Mrs Smith lasted for 2 minutes 2 seconds and ours lasted for 2 minutes and 10 seconds. Throughout a stereotypical opening sequence to a film, you expect to see certain things which are credits, labels, setting, music and ‘cliff hangers’.

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.

18. Both of the cliff hangers from each opening sequence are completely different to say they are from the same genre. We want to find out all of this so therefore would carry on watching. In our opening sequence it is a different case of many things happening.We wonder if they aren’t a normal couple.Footsteps.It is a very interrogative interview. A letter is posted.The audience want to carry on watching to see what comes from that. Mr and Mrs Smith they are just sat down being interviewed by a man as a couple.We wonder why this is going on.Both of these products are different as ours is more sinister and Mr and Mrs Smith is nothing too big but there both still very intriguing. Leading on from the cliff hangers in the opening sequences there tends to be music in the background to add an extra effect. For our product we had an old type of music we made to contrast with the idea of the first part of the sequence where it was set in the 1920’s and then changed it when the disruption began and we had a very sinister piece of music. However Mr and Mrs Smith used no music throughout their opening sequence which was strange but it did work for their type of opening although it was against the stereotypical opening sequence. The credits that say the producer of the film as the ones of the right, these are necessary as they are telling the audience who is part of this film and who has made it, therefore this is why you see them on any opening to a film.Mr and Mrs Smiths LabelsDifferently from Mr and Mrs Smiths labels, after looking at them we developed ours by contrasting them with other ones from other films.Our labels ‘Sweet Revenge’ Then finally to add the effect of this so the audience would see the 1920’s effect we made the font into an Old English type.We decided to place our credits on top of our film as we thought this best fit with the type of opening we were making.We also made up our labels with interesting names that we thought would fit into the 1920’s, these were completely random

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.