1) The document discusses the film opening created by the author for their creative portfolio. They aimed to develop and challenge conventions of the horror thriller genre while also using established conventions. 2) To do so, the author researched openings of other thrillers to understand typical elements like camerawork, editing, sound, and mise-en-scene. They shot in low-key lighting rather than complete darkness and added a night storm sound effect to create suspense. 3) The author also discusses distributing the film through Universal Studios due to their openness to different genres and ability to attract large audiences through major horror film franchises. They believe Universal would be the perfect company to distribute the low-budget film.

1. MOVIE EVALUATION- Foundation
Portfolio
Creative Critical Reflection
“KNOCKING DOOR AND THE
SWING..”
By Maniha Panjwani

2. Q. How does your product use or
challenge conventions and how does it
represent social groups or issues?
• To create my final movie opening, I have had to
develop, changed the conventions but also used many
in order to create my horror thriller. To achieve the
desired outcome I have had to research other thrillers
to fully understand the codes so I can use the key
concepts that are incorporated in a thriller which
therefore has greatly helped me and my group to
create my final piece and link in to the standards of
existing media products.
• I started of by researching what a thriller was and by
researching by analyzing openings with the help from
my group looking at Camera, editing, sound and mis-
en-scene to help our group understand the generic
conventions for a horror thriller.

3. • I have challenged the conventions as I have shooted
in light and mainly horror movies are shooted in
dark. I have shooted in low key light but not totally in
dark. In editing I have put a Night Storm sound effect
to create suspense. When the credits are going on, I
have written it in dark red color because of horror
genre. Some conventions I have developed thus
breaking them but it helped us fit in with our
narrative effectively.
• I also found out, from my research, that most
thrillers go straight into action or even start at the
end with the establishing shot usually being a slow
zoom. This is how I initially got my establishing shot,
by finding this research it helped me build structure
by sticking to the conventions of the genre and

4. • From my previous research, I had a good
understanding of what race, gender, age and
class I wanted. Both of my actors must be
young adults near to the age of 17 or 18.

5. Q. How does your product engage with
audiences and how would it be
distributed as a real media text?
• Choosing a distributor was a difficult task. I
researched on a lot of large and small distributors
and in the end came to the conclusion that I
wanted Universal Studios to be my film’s
distributor. Universal studios are interested in
films of all genre; comedy, romantic, action and
etc. Therefore my genre of film(horror) will be of
interest to Universal studios. Since Universal
accepts all genres, it is really helpful for the
producers. They distribute both high budget and
low budget films and my film is a low budget film.

6. • Furthermore, a big name will help me attract a
large number of audience. For example, some
horror films by Universal are; The Mummy,
Dracula, The Wolf Man, etc. my unique selling
point(USP) in the movie is the suspense and
that my witch in the movie is really white and
beautiful. She is beautiful but in a scary way.
This may attract audiences to watch it. I
personally believe that Universal Studios
would be the perfect company to distribute
my film.

7. Q. How did your production skills
develop through out this project?
• Throughout making this project, I have
successfully learnt how to understand and use a
variety of different camera shots and angles, for
e.g. the 180 degree rule.
• However I have also learnt about the difficulties
involved. Whilst shooting the film I encountered
problems with shadows in the shot and
continuity flaws as well unwanted background
noise. This meant I had to do a lot more filming
than I hoped and a lot more editing to get rid of
lots of mistakes.

8. • Because I had a lot of different shots that
made out final product it was difficult to sort
out which clips I needed. As well as finding
sound effects according to the genre and the
title sequences.

9. Q. How did you integrate technologies
in this project?
• Throughout this project, I have learnt to use
different technologies and devices to shoot
the film. I learnt the use of tripod, different
camera shots like rule of thirds, depth of field.
• I have learnt to use the blog and how to
upload assignments on my blog like Tumblr.
• I learnt how to edit my film by using Windows
Live Movie maker.

10. • I learned how to know about upcoming films
and their ratings by the use of ImDb.
• When we got assignments to research on
different production companies, I used
internet sites like Wikipedia. For example we
got assignment to research on UK Film
Council.