The document discusses an opening title sequence for a film project. It provides analysis of several shots from the sequence. The shots establish the setting as a college, introduce the main character as a student, and hint at the genre as a thriller through props like a weapon. Feedback was gathered through questionnaires to help engage the intended audience of male students interested in similar films. The filmmakers learned skills in using camera and editing equipment to construct the title sequence.

1. Media Evaluation Questions
By Louisa Collins-Marsh

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of existing film opening title sequence?
• This first frame has an eerie feel to
it which helps give a dramatic feel
to it. It also helps set the scene for
the opening sequence of the film.
The non-diegetic music is soothing
and doesn’t give away the genre of
the film, this in some way could be
challenging the stereotype of the
thrillers soundtrack.
• It continues with an
introduction to school life. The
title is displayed at the bottom
which doesn’t obscure the
action taking place. This setting
is one of a few which the film is
situated, this prepares the
audience for the type of film this
might be.
• This shot is entirely different to
the previous shot because we
have an individual person who
the camera is mostly on
throughout the opening scene
and we have a voice over by
the time this shot is in frame.
This helps to introduce the
main character and get in
insight to who and what the
character wants. The props
help to illustrate the type of
person the main character
is, so by adding slippers and a
carpet we wanted to
demonstrate that he was
waking up to go to school.

3. • This forth shot emphasise the
setting in which the film is
mostly set. This not only helps
us understand what the film
could involve but we also get
to know what type of film this
could be. We wanted to show
areas of the college by not
showing faces and we decided
to shot with a tinted window
to get a feel of college but
doing it discreetly.
• This shot is a typical shot of a
boy trying to study, as we see
this type in different kinds of
films that have students life in
it. This is a crane shot which we
thought might be ideal for this
type of action. We wanted to
support the stereotype of
teenagers going on their
phones while revising , so we
made sure this was clear to the
audience.
• In this fifth shot, we wanted
the audience to know that he
was a student still in college
so we shot this in the library.
We made sure that his face
wasn’t seen because we
didn’t want unveil the main
character yet and so made
sure we had a close up of the
hands and his shoulders. The
lighting wasn’t natural light
because we wanted to
highlight the fact that he is
determined to find this book.

4. • This shot is a low shot, still
making sure that the characters
face is not shown and it shows he
is going somewhere. The music is
still very slow , so we know that
there is no real action going
on, only a narrative that tells us he
is a student going through the
student motions. His clothes are
the type of the style we want our
character wearing and it somehow
shows the type of personality that
he has.
• We are back in his bedroom and
this could be seen as cross
cutting. We can easily see a
weapon which is a convention
used in the genre thriller films.
By including this object we
wanted to establish the genre
and the intention of the main
character, so we had him holding
a card with a girl on it,
illustrating that this must be the
girl he is supposed to kill.
• This is the ending shot that has
at the side the picture of the
lady. ‘The Plan’ is the title of our
film and we wanted to change
the way in which the titles are
usually y displayed. The fact that
its called the plan explains that
the main character is going to
come up with a plan that
involves murder.

5. How does your film opening represent particular social groups?
I couldn’t get any photo that had a profile of our character because we wanted to keep the profile and the
guise of our character hidden. We had done this for the film and we wanted to market it with him being
anonymous. This made sure that audience would be guess and wondering of what the actual killer could
look like and so this stirs up interest which we would want from our film. However, this is what I could find
that made sure there was a comparison between a character from another film which had the aspects as our
film.

6. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product
and why?

7. Who would be the audience for your media product?
A profile of our typical audience member
This is James
Donald, he is 18 years
old and lives in west
London. He dresses
with the known trend
among boys these days
and hangs out with his
friends after work. He
shops in JD and works
in retail. He enjoys
watching films such as
4.3.2.1, Pusher
three, and the
Sweeney. He is mostly
interested in the rap
and hip hop side of
music and wants to
produce his own music.
I think our film
would mostly
appeal to boys who
have the same
interest as James
because they can
more or less relate
to the main
character of our
film. This would be
seen by the actions
and words that our
character
says, especially
when the voiceover
is playing in the
opening sequence.
He is classified as the
stereotypical gangsta of
todays youth and this would
obviously help us with
knowing who we can direct
our film to especially when
this film would appeal to that
type of social group.
James dress style is a trend
that is seen everyday and
this is also the style that our
main character is wearing in
the opening scene. This is
another factor that can help
relate this type of social
group to the film and by
doing so we might also be
able to promote our film.

8. How did you attract/address your audience?
How did we attempt to
engage our audience?
In this shot we have one of our production
companies displayed in white text which is
very simple and recognisable. The music
starts to play in the background which
consists of a guitar being strummed and it
helps set the atmosphere of the film we are
about to see. There are trees in the
background and as the camera pans down
we see the sign saying ‘Harrow College.’ We
immediately start to understand that this
film could be in a college. We wanted to
establish this because we know this might
relate to some of our audiences experience
by being in a college.
This shot gives an insight to the college
life and the atmosphere that is felt. By
introducing this shot, it seemed to help
engage our audience further by beginning
to understand what this film could be
about. We wanted to make sure it related
to the student of today so the natural
approach of filming unexpectedly when a
group of teenagers went through the
door helped emphasise the motion of
student life.
This shot continues with the
main character waking up and
we get a low angle of the
characters body, directing the
attention to his feet. We wanted
it to natural so we decided to
have him with night clothes to
emphasise him rising from bed.

9. In this shot we decided to introduce
the college where there were more
people and more of an atmosphere
to add to the intended college life
where are main character goes.
This shot shows light humour which
might appeal to the audience in a
humorous way. We wanted to use some
comedy essence that might uplift the
actual film opening and it might
challenge the conventions of a horror
thriller with comedy placed into it.
In this shot, our main character is
studying and pulls out his book. The
mise en scene helps signify that he is
a boy who is still studying and is
seen as dangerous because we see a
pen knife beside his book. It is
something that stands out in a
students life so we wanted an object
that might deter the audience from
realising that he is a killer.

10. We also decided to spread our film by word of
mouth, which benefited us a lot especially
when there is a large amount of people who
like the genre. We also gave out
questionnaires to make sure we got feedback
about our film and the result of who liked it
the most.
I think we got the preferred
reading of our media product
because the feedback we had
gotten back was
acknowledgement how the film
could relate into student life and
this not only made the piece
more interesting but it also had
a lot of awareness on the subject
of psychology which this film
was based on.

11. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing
this product?
Everyone in the team had
experimented on the
equipment that we needed
and the software that would
edit our piece of work and it
had benefitted us very much.
I soon understood how to
manage the camera and use
the tripod and develop my
skills in the editing suite
which I know might benefit
me in other activities that I
do that might include the
equipment in media. By using
these strategies, it has helped
me be a useful person on set
while we done the title
sequence.
Tripod
In the preliminarily
task I had started
to develop my
skills in using the
tripod and how it
worked. This had
helped me further
when I had used it
to film some of the
shots in our
opening sequence.
Camera
This is the sort of camera we
used in both tasks and I had the
chance to use in a lot when we
were filming. I now know that I
can use this if there are any
other tasks that need to be set
which involves a camera.
Final Cut pro
This is the
software we used
to edit our
opening film
which I had
trouble
understanding
but I practised
using it and made
sure I could my
skill when editing
our final product.
Blogger
We had analysed our
work in blogger which
helped organize the work
which we contributed
altogether. I didn’t
understand how to plan
out my work when I first
tried it out but I began to
make progress when I
contributed work for our
coursework.

12. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in
the progression from it to full product?
I have learnt to be patient and productive with my
work because the task had a lot of potential in it
which meant we could improve our opening
sequence. However we had to put a lot of effort into
it to make it as good as it should have been. We
were given more creative freedom for the final
product of our film which included more
understanding of our shots and of the mise en scene
we shot in. In the preliminary task, it seemed like we
had more rules to oblige to as there were certain
things that needed to be included, however we
always understood the 180 degree rule which we
made sure was valued in every shot.
There are certain shots we included in our opening
sequence which we were taught in class, and they
are placed opposite and on the next slide to show
how much we understood the techniques.
This is a continuity
shot which we thought
would be ideal for this
particular action of a
boy running down a
corridor and turning
the corner. By placing
this in our piece it
made it simpler to tell
the story in order and
still grab the audience’s
attention.
This can be compared
to the shot we had
thought up below, it
shows we had copied
the same technique
that we had done in
the task to the
opening of our film.

13. We used the 180 degree rule here,
making sure that the action that the
camera didn’t go over the line and
matching the action of both character
positions. This helped us understand
what to do when we were filming the
opening, keeping in mind that the rule
is always used to keep the direction of
the characters the same.
This is a extreme close up that was
used in both tasks and it helps to
highlight the a certain issue which
arises. In the case of our task, the
boy is late so we decided to use the
clock showing the time to
emphasise his lateness and the
phone to highlight who the women
in the photo is.
A cutaway was used to add more
detail to the task and opening
sequence. We wanted to include
more of an atmosphere in both tasks
so we include cutaways that not only
added to mood of the piece but
expressed more information through
various cutaways of the time and the
college.