Question 1

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

Our film title - Concealed 

We decided to call our film 'Concealed, at first we wasn't certain on the title of our film, but once we had made the clip it was clear to us that this title was relevant and suited our movie. The term 'Concealed' means that something is kept a 'secret', this relates well to our movie as it is very secretive and can actually be quite confusing to the watcher as they are trying to work out what is behind the flash backs in his dream. We kept the title of our film bold and capitalized which makes a statement. I felt as if we have challenged other conventions of films with our headings as ours is more innovative, after research i didn't find many films that actually used their headings in 'bold, underlined AND all in capitals' so i definitely feel as if my team and i have brought something different to the spy film table.

Titles - font and style

We used 'birch' font in regular style. We wanted to keep the writing basic and sharp, however we chose to have white writing placed on the black background as this contrasted between each other. The text is white/grey, this is to create a muskier effect. Black and white is pretty basic, however sometimes less is more and i think that this has a great effect on the video as it stands out as well as creating effect. We didn't want fancy writing as it may have been too much and it also would have made the eyes of the watcher focus more on the text rather than concentrating on the film itself which is essential for our movie as it can easily become confusing.
We placed our titles within the clips themselves.. this saved time and we also felt that the texts were simple enough to place within each clips because they were only small an simple. Another film i found which has a similar opening sequence was the from the movie 'se7en' which is an american thriller. They also used small white text for their opening sequence which also combined with the film shots.

The house - dialing phone

                                                                                                                                                                             

The office - view from outside

When planning and filming 'Concealed' we had lots of different ideas for location and the settings of the  opening sequence, at first we planned to do all filming in college; but after filming we gradually changed our ideas due to realizing that some shots just simply didn't fit! Finally we chose to have the main setting in a bedroom in the college studio, this would be a dark room and the spy in bed tossing and turning whilst having flash backs of the dream, this is our main setting. However, during the flash backs of the dream the location changes, we finally planned to use a real architectural office (we were lucky to find one!) and the area outside of it. We did some filming outside of the office and some on the inside. Another location we used was my home, the 'wife' wandered up and down whilst calling the spy. We challenged films such as the 'Hangover' whilst creating out opening sequence. 'Hangover' uses flash backs for the men to remember what had happened the night before, which we took note of as this is what happens in the spy's dream in our opening sequence.

Costume - spy

The costumes used in our opening sequence were very basic. First of all because we are low budget, but the main reasons are because there wasn't a need for a lot of costume change! The opening sequence focus' on the spy who wears a vest in bed throughout the role of his character.

• Daniel Fisher (who plays the husband) wears a shirt and black trousers, this is because he is at work during the time and black trousers are the most common type of smart business uniform. 
• The wife dresses in a dressing gown as it will be early hours in the morning and also she is at home so comfortable bed/lounge wear is necessary. 
• The spy/murderer wears a balaclava with his hood up. He is also wearing dark clothing. We chose this style of clothing because we have an ideal picture in our head of what a 'thief, murderer and/or kidnapper' looks like. For example, if i were to say "imagine a thief" the majority would think of a male wearing black clothing and a hidden face, wether its on a game, cartoon or film! 

Another crime film that uses the typical 'crime genre' costume is kidulthood, Their characters are mob youths who wear similar to what the murder does in the spy image above which is: hoodie, baggy jackets, hood up, trainers, jeans/tracksuits. We challenged this by bringing in something similar to the movie Kidulthood. 

We didn't tend to use many props within our film as it focused more on the flash backs, however we did try different props. We came up with ideas to use weapons, briefcases, the husband carrying files and lamps for the bedside table. After filming different shots we actually only ended up using a phone, a bed and a car boot for our props! I feel that the props used during filming were the only necessary ones as we didn't want to over do it, 'Concealed' is a opening sequence which focus' more on the acting of the killing/kidnap rather than gadgets. One of the main props that we used in our opening sequence was the phone, this is because it is the phone that causes us to realize that it may be the spy that is the murderer/kidnapper as he has flashbacks when the wife is telling him details about the 'missing person'.

Lighting -blue  light reflects onto arm, which makes it look like there is a window on the right
with the moon shining through to create this effect.

The lighting used in our film was mainly natural lighting. When filming outside we didn't have to use any lighting equipment as we were lucky enough to have good weather on the day of filming before it got dark! We also used natural lighting from the window during the house filming of the wife. However, in the bedroom scene in the studio, we just used a basic bulb light which was blue colored. This is so that the lighting reflecting onto the spy actually looked like light coming in from the moon, this looks more realistic. I feel that my group and i have challenged the conventions of media products by doing this, as most movies shot are actually at night time, however we just used a dark room and a blue bulb!

characterization  

The image above shows the spy tossing and turning whilst having a bad dream, From this we know that something is up. When it flashes of something creepy whilst he tosses and turns we assume that this has something to do with what he has done or witnessed. This instantly builds characterization as we gather information and assume that he will be a large part of the story line. This creates a mysterious atmosphere from his actions.
Another time we develop characterization is when the spy/murderer is about to kill/kidnap the husband. From the way that he is dressed we can instantly assume that there is going to be trouble because he comes across as a yob, he wears his face covered up and hidden like no one wants to see him and we can assume just from that that something troublesome is going to happen.
A good example of characterization is in the movie 'Mean Girls', they have the 'new girl' who is desperate to fit in, the 'popular girls' 'nerdy girls' 'losers' 'hot boys' and so forth. I felt that this was a good example of characterization because every single character and/or social group within the film is like the typical thing you would expect in these kinds of movies, it doesn't even need to be explained to understand which social group belongs to who within the clip.

Editing Transitions - text only appears on black back round 

We didn't use any special effect slide transitions during our opening sequence as titles were just flashes on the black back round and the video clips were just flashbacks from the spys dream. However i did try the text sliding across the screen (scroll) during editing and didn't think it suited the video so removed it and stuck to basic text flashes. We added some visual effects to the clips of the flash backs to make them look more 'dreamy', we made each of the clips black and white and then altered the color of the whole video by giving it a hint of blue. However i found that a lot of people do use titles swiping in different effects on the screen. One of my favorite films which have a great variety use of different credits in their opening sequence is the classic 101 Dalmatians. I feel like their video is very creative and if we had more time i would definitely consider looking into something as challenging and creative.

Genre - leather gloves, breaking an entry. 

Our opening sequence suggests our chosen Genre quite well. Within the first couple of seconds the clips flash back to the spy/murderer who is dressed as a yob, this suggests to the viewer straight away that trouble is going to happen and implies that it is going to be a crime film, wether its murder, theft or anything else that breaks the law it still implies to be a crime film! I feel like the opening sequence could be mistaken to be a horror film at the beginning as the spy/murderer attack the husband as we are not sure if he has killed him or not, i also think that the music builds up a lot of tension just like in horror films. We wanted to make sure we got a clear point across that it was a crime film and so we took many shots of the spy/murderer during action and even included violence. Another example of a good crime genre is: 'Scarface'. Scarface is a movie which is associated with most of us as it is a famous crime film! Their trailer shows that it is going to be a crime film as it suggests criminality in the way that there is a lot of business with troublesome music which adds to the effect.

Camera angle - above shot of the car ( boot slam)

We used many different camera angles within our opening sequence. During the filming of the spy in bed tossing and turning we just kept the camera in one place where you could see him tossing and turning in the bed, however we did zoom in steadily on some shots. However, during the filming of the murder/kidnap we used shots where the camera was watching the spy/murder walking from behind and from the front. We also then used shots of him outside the door and walking in and then filmed close up clips of him locking the door gently. Other angles we tried which i thought was great personally was when the murderer/spy put the husband into the boot of the car, which was shot at a low angle, however when he slammed the boot down the angle changed to an over the shoulder angle as show on the image above. We used a wide angle shot when filming the wife pacing up and down the room as it gave the viewers chance to see the whole thing as a whole.