Evaluation Activity 1

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

A key feature of opening scenes is grasping the audience’s attention, and an easy way to do this is by setting up the rest of the story, intriguing them, causing them to want to carry on watching. Our overall and ultimate aim was to produce an opening scene which was clearly identifiable to particular genres whilst still looking professional and had the ability to capture and hold the audience’s attention. This was quite a task we set ourselves, so we needed to focus on the most important aspect which in our eyes was creating a film which would be interesting or at least enjoyable to watch.

From our research, we found that a widely used tactic to involve the audience in the plot was through the establishment of enigmas. Enigmas create mysteries or cliff hangers, causing the audience to ask themselves questions or want to know more. This worked to our advantage as it meant that no matter how low the quality of the content in our film was, the use of enigmas would still lift its prospects as the audience would want to carry on watching, maybe not for enjoyment but just to find out what was going to happen. We also found that audiences hate unanswered questions as it makes them feel uneasy or if something is missing, so using that information, we figured that an audience would sit through a whole film just to get the answer to their question. Despite this reassuring discovery, we were hoping our film would not be so difficult to watch that the only reason they stayed through the whole two minutes was to find the answer to the enigmas we set up!

The main enigma we opted for was leaving the intentions of our antagonist hidden. In the process of filming our opening scenes, we had planned to include a scene with our antagonist preparing for his activities, giving a display of his weapons. This was a scene that we did actually film, however we were unable to include it because the footage was too dark and did not fit with the rest of the film. Despite this, when considering whether to re-film, we decided against it as we felt that for a stereotypical opening scene, it gave too much information away and so would take away from the establishment of our enigmas because it would provide too much detail about what the antagonist’s intentions were. We also decided to keep the relationship, if any, between the two main characters hidden to allow us to display the full extent of our abilities through our camera work. Saying this, our camera work and editing was not as strong as we would have liked it to be, and some of the shots which we had initially imaged were not as easy as we had thought to materialise. Despite this, we still wanted the camera work to do most of the talking, so allowed the different shots and angles to provide implications in which were open to interpretation to the audience. An example of this was the shot of Christie running through the branches. We hoped that this shot would give the impression Christie was being watched or followed, in turn building tension and causing the audience to want to know more about who was watching and what they wanted. We also thought that it would be best to keep the amount of enigmas used to a minimum in order to ensure we weren’t overcomplicating the film or causing the audience to become confused which may have led to boredom. I think we were quite successful in establishing and maintaining enigmas and hopefully they will have the desired effect on the audience.

Fast paced action is typically something that would pull the audience’s attention, however due to a combination of our chosen genres, and our filming abilities we thought it would be best to avoid an action scene as it would have made our film look less professional. I am unsure what our target audience would expect from a film with the title ‘Intrusion’ - I don’t know whether they would have expected a stereotypical fight/action scene and been let down, or have preferred the slow, tension building entrance we aimed to provide. Stereotypical action films also begin with fast paced scenes in order to help introduce the plot as well as hold the viewer’s interest, however thrillers can be much slower, creating enigmas. For our film, we decided to lean more towards the thriller genre’s conventions as it was something much easier for us to execute. I think our final shot helps to set up the story and conform to the genre very well due to the perspective it was shown through.  The camera angle suggests that someone is watching Christie, and due to the previous scene it is implied that this is the antagonist, however due to the timing the audience are left on a cliff hanger wanting to know more. I think this tactic worked successfully and helped us to establish our enigmas to their full extent, hopefully our target audience will agree. We debated whether to have Christie take her socks off, or just cut the scene short leaving her with her socks on as we were running out of time. We decided to show the full length of the clip and at first I was unsure as I thought the scene may have dragged slightly, however I am pleased that we decided to display it all. I think that the removal of her socks makes her seem more innocent and in turn more vulnerable as she appears to be more exposed, helping to add to the suspense which accentuates the enigma.