Evaluation: "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

We start out opening sequence with a montage of pictures to emphasise the closeness of the two main characters, Dhylan and Tyler. We got this idea of a monatge from the movie 'Proposition'(John Hillcoat, 2005), the movie starts with black and white montage of 

presumably aboriginal and the British colony, with a sort of meloncholoy music of a little girl singing in the backgrouynd . We have 4-5 pictures of Dhylan, Tyler and a few more friends and 2 newspaper articles of the death of Tyler.  With the use of a pathetic fallacy (the rain pouring down), it sets the tone and the greyness of the sky emphasises the atmosphere.

We use the conventions such as ‘ordinary people and extra-ordinary situations’. The main character, Dhylan, is just an ordinary guy with an ordinary job living an ordinary life. The extra-ordinary situation is the haunting of Tyler. We got this idea from the film 'Collateral', where Jaime Foxx is an ordinary cad criver but when his world is turned upside down when he bumps into Tom Cruise. This is not something everyone faces in day-to-day life, the same way that Dhylan doesn’t know how to face and fight the problem, he panics and gets scared (this is later on the film, not in our opening sequence). A code and conventions of psychological thriller is that of deceptive mind games. In our opening sequence, there is no playing of mind. We do actually make the audience wonder who the character is when is chows Dhylan in front of a tombstone, it then cuts to a hand held shot of someone emerging from behind a tree and then cuts back to Dhylan still at the tombstone but now the audience can see a black figure in the background, but the audience still don’t know who he is. There are also other deceptive mind games in the course of the film.

We also challenge the conventions of the main character. Most, if not all, thrillers do not have an Asian character as the protagonist. Just recently, Asian actors are becoming more and more common. Take Riz Ahmed for example, he has starred in Four Lions, Shifty and the new movie Trishna. Another example would Freida Pinto, who shot to fame in Slumdog Millionaire.Another character in the opening sequence is Tyler who is of African-British decent. There are many black actors in British films and Hollywood (such as Samuel L Jackson, Morgan Freeman and Noel Clarke) so we are not really challenging any forms of conventions, more the fact we are using them.


One of our key members in our film, Kiyan made his directors chair video.

Se7en Opening Sequence

This is the opening sequence to the American thriller movie Se7en ( directed by David Fincher 1995) with horror and neo-noir elements. The opening sequence starts with a sort of montage of pictures and close ups of razors and photographs. the music is very 'abstract', there are faint screams in the background.
The font as well looks like it has been done by children. The mise-en-scene of the film is very dark lighting, almost creates a very Gothic or dangerous feel to it.

A New Movie Being Filmed.

I was in Greenwich a few days ago and was walking to the new 'Franky's & Benny's', were I walked past a film set, there was a prop of a almost 3 story high elephant. The big patch of grass was covered with a big black mat with sand and gravel placed over it, there were a few bushes and some places with smoke coming out of them.
I asked one of the production crew and they informed me that it was a film to do with the French revolution starring Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway.
I was not allowed to take picture or videos as it was forbidden I would get fined if I did.
So, keep a look out for a film about the French revolution, soon to be near a cinema near you in 1-2 years time.

The Devil Inside...

The Devil Inside is a 2012 American supernatural horror film directed by William Brent Bell, and written by Bell and Matthew Peterman. It is a documentary-style found footage film about a woman who becomes involved in a series of exorcisms during her quest to determine what happened to her mother, a woman who murdered three people as a result of being possessed by a demon

The movies starts of with a call to the police where this woman (character name Maria Rossi) say 3 people, the police officer asks what happened and then she say's that she had killed 3 people and then hangs up abruptly. The next scene is of a police investigation video where it shows 3 people violently and brutally killed. the camera zooms into a little space underneath the wall and something attacks the camera and then the movie fades to black.

Warrior...

Warrior is a 2011 American sports drama film directed by Gavin O'Connor and starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte. Warrior tells the story of two estranged brothers entering a mixed martial arts tournament, and deals with the brothers' struggling relationship with each other and with their father. The film was released on September 9, 2011 to overall positive reviews, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Nolte. Warrior is dedicated to the memory of Charles Lewis Jr., as seen just before the ending credits.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy...

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 2011 Anglo-French espionage film directed by Tomas Alfredson, from a screenplay written by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan based on the 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré. The film stars Gary Oldman as George Smiley, and co-stars Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ciarán Hinds. Set in London in the early 1970s, the story follows the hunt for a Soviet double agent at the top of the British secret service.

Johnny English Reborn...

This is the sequel to the widely popular film Johnny English (Peter Howit, 2003) starring Rowan Atkinson. The opening sequence is a sort of montage from a MI7 Classified folder. On the side of the folder is written 'Johnny English" with the words SIR crossed out in a red pen. the camera moves about alot- all most as if it is being shot with an eye-line match. The audience can only see the hands and lips of the two characters, they seem of high importance as they are both wearing a suite and they remain anonymous with the use of shallow depth of field, through out the opening sequence. There are pictures of Rowan Atkinson's character Johnny English, there are also newspaper clippings, some saying "MI7 Securtiy Balls Up" and "Doh-Zambique! MI7 Disaster in Africa". The scene changes to a bunch of Tibetan monks training. This is where we first see Johnny English, this is very comical as the audience immediatey know that he is not somewhere he belongs. There are many comical moments during the scene but it ends when he is sent back to London for a mission.