1. The document discusses the filmmakers' process in developing the opening scene of their thriller film to engage audiences. They aimed to include exciting, memorable conventions like unexpected events early on that were inspired by successful films. 2. Through research and audience feedback, the filmmakers incorporated some conventions like a female in distress but avoided cliches. They used camera techniques like close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots to build mystery, suspense and engage emotions as seen in films like Psycho and Halloween. 3. The opening scene and titles underwent several revisions based on test audiences and comparisons to similar films to create intrigue, fit the genre better and appeal more to their target demographic. Music choices also evolved

1. 1) IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR
MEDIA PRODUCT USE,
DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE
FORMS AND CONVENTIONS
OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS

2. We found out through our research
process and through the creation of our
opening that for this film to fit the genre
and engage an audience something has to
happen to make it exciting within the first
couple of minutes.
Films that started with an exciting interesting
opening scene were more successful and kept
the audience watching and wanting to see
what happened next. Films such as Pulp
Fiction, The Purge, Escape Plan etc. inspired us
to want to make our opening scene something
to remember.

3. Our opening isn’t one of the most obvious
thriller openings as we failed to include
many conventions into the sequence.
However this was what we planned to do to
make our film stand out from the rest.
If we were to make it a cliché thriller film
we would include more conventions and
forms that the audience would relate to a
thriller film, such as, include a big male
hero-like character, a suspicious death

4. However, eventually we did decide to include a
few thriller conventions into our opening such
as; we conformed to the convention that girls
are vulnerable and the ones to always be
attacked, they are helpless and weak and can’t
protect themselves which is why there is a
female not a male tied up in the back of the car.
This stereotype can be seen in films such as in
the film ‘Taken’ where the girl gets abducted
and is seen as a weak sexual object.To help support this stereotype and
cliché in these types of films we had
the character continue to look behind
her in a panic as if someone was
following her. This idea is quite
overused in thriller films but we felt
that it fit in perfectly with our plot and
our plan for our opening.

5. We mostly included close ups and over the shoulder
shots to amplify the emotions of the characters and
also focus on certain parts of the opening that may be
more relevant later on in the film. The film psycho
uses many close ups throughout the film as they want
the audience to not only focus on certain objects but
also not know what's going on in the rest of the scene
so this emphasises the fear of the unknown.The over the shoulder shots create mystery as you never
see the face of the attacker or most of their body which
makes you relate to the character and sympathise for
them, where as the close ups show the emotions we
want the audience to see through the facial expressions.
We took inspiration from the film ‘Halloween’ as for the
opening you never know who the killer is which creates
suspense. This was effective amongst audiences as it
was a shock at the end of the scene when the killer was
eventually revealed. We decided to use an over the
shoulder shot instead of a point of view shot like in
‘Halloween’ as we wanted the audience to be unaware of

6. We took a lot of inspiration from the film P2 for our opening
sequence, to start with we liked the idea that there was a
person tied up in a car and that the audience doesn’t find out
what happens to them until further on in the film. We used
the same type of location, however we made some changes
so that it wasn’t exactly the same and also gave the audience
a backstory so the had an idea of what is going on.
For P2 they started off the opening in a car park showing the
setting and theme of the film. We found that when we tried
this approach the opening didn’t look complete and so we
decided that we would use parallel editing to give a back
story as to how the person appeared in the car.

7. After the second filming session we realised that
the opening was quite short and to recreate it
would mean that it wouldn’t be long enough. We
also found that our footage was too dark and we
would have to re-shoot to get the right lighting,
which might mean changing the location, this
would be fine as we wanted to include our parallel
editing idea anyway. Due to the fact we knew we
wouldn’t be using this footage we didn’t add
sounds or titles as we were going to re-shoot
using a slightly different storyline. After the main titles appear in P2, the
setting suddenly changes and it’s now
before the car park scene. There’s a
woman in an office like environment,
we decided that we would film the
character getting ready for the day so
that you could tell that it was the same
day as the clothing was the same as the
previous scene.

8. We looked at the ratings of films on the
website IMDb to see which thriller films
were popular among our target audience.
This helped our decision process in
making our film as we had a better idea
of what people liked to watch.

9. We created a survey that people answered
anonymously online, this helped us
understand what would be most effective
in our opening. We took great inspiration
from this as this is what our audience was
telling us they wanted to see within a
thriller film. We found the most popular
thriller films amongst our target audience
which helped us prepare to make our own
based on what has previously been
successful.

10. For our titles we changed them quite a
few times throughout our editing
process. We first started off with quite a
basic font for the first draft that we
thought looked quite mysterious but took
over the screen. We found from our
audience feedback that our target
audience thought they were too big and
didn’t fit with the genre well enough.
When we next looked at titles we chose
titles that we thought would stand out and
would appeal to our audience. They no
longer covered important parts of the story
we were trying to create and fitted more
with our genre. The main title however
didn’t fit the genre and we realised this was
something we would have to change for our
next draft as it reminded us too much of a

11. As we shot more footage we looked over
our titles again and decided we wanted to
find titles that appealed more to people
and didn’t look as boring. We finally
decided on a font that we agreed fitted
our genre and theme of the film.
We chose to use a font called ‘Waste of
time’ for our main titles as we thought
that the slash on the letters implies
distortion and that not everything will
be ok. It is inspired by the gift which is
another stalker themed film that fitted
our genre.

12. We spent a lot of time thinking about our
music and continuously changed it
throughout our editing process. We wanted a
soundtrack that created mystery but also
suspense and this was hard to find within
just one piece of music. We then decided to
include two pieces of music and switch
between them at one point of the clip, this
created the change of atmosphere we
wanted as this was now a different time
frame.
Including the extra piece of music did improve
the opening as a whole but we felt there was
still something missing. We then added a
different piece of music for the scene where
the girl starts to realise she is being followed
as this changed the mood completely from the
calm atmosphere from before and built
tension. We based some of our music choice on
‘The purge’ as this film starts of with calm