Evaluation - Question One

Evaluation- Yasmin Philgence

In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or CHALLENGE forms and conventions of real media products?

Our opening sequence uses typical forms and conventions of real media products, but also challenges and develops some of these conventions. Our film Silent Play is based around the Psychological Thriller genre as it shows conventions from other films that i have seen in this genre. The opening sequence follows as Toymaker, who is making a ragdoll, initially for which we do not know why. But as the sequence continues, the Toymakers sinister intentions for the doll become clear. We constructed our opening sequence like this so in the short period, that we had the audience would grasp that our film was a Psychological Thriller and hopefully the plot of the movie. We did this by using typical conventions of this genre which made it easily recognisable as a Psychological Thriller. Although, we didn't want it to be like every the other Psychological thrillers as we wanted our movie to be unique as we could make it.
In order, be able to use these conventions within our opening sequence, we as a group had to first analyse our treatment, to pull out the main themes that we had to weave throughout our opening sequence and film. After researching and treating our fairytales, we realised that in our opening sequence we want the audience to see our clear themes of:

• Neglect
• Obsession
• Redemption & resolution
• Revenge
• Mental instability
• Murder

Our original idea, was that ‘neglect’ would be a main theme that was driven throughout the film. The opening sequence of this (shown on storyboard draft one), showed a little girl, who we named Amy, waking up and having to fend for herself in the morning by making her own breakfast and leaving the house without her parents even noticing due to the busy working lifestyles. Amy would later be kidnapped and replaced with a doll. However, although we thought it to be a good idea, we were challenge with having to find a little girl aged 4-7 who would be able to play her whilst filming in a whole day. But after trying to work around the problems of schooling and scheduled shooting times, we had to go back to the drawing board and come up with a whole new concept. Whilst discussing we decided that we liked the previous idea of having Amy being replaced by the doll, but instead of focusing on Amy, we made The Toymaker the protagonist of our opening sequence. This time around we were able to focus on the Toymaker more and it enabled us to get to the mind of his character which transformed our whole opening sequence to what it is now. Our two main inspirations for our opening sequence was the opening sequences for Se7en (1995) and Dexter (TV Series 2006-present)From Se7en we developed some of the shots that were used in its opening sequence by adapting them to suit the story of our film.


Our film successfully used the conventions of an opening sequence in our media product by:

• Introducing the main character using a range of camera shots however, we didn’t want to give away our main characters identity as it would ruin the tension so we only shot him from behind or through extreme close ups of his hands. Tension is built up similarly in the opening sequence of Hannibal as Hannibal’s mask is hidden and only a box is shown making the audience curious and then the mask is revealed at the end before the titles start.
• Introducing the narrative by hinting to the audience what the film will be about. This similar to Jaws (1975) in which the opening sequence presents the plot of shark attacks to the audience.
• Indicating the themes
• Including titles throughout the opening sequence like Heroes which often has its titles appearing until way into their episodes.
• Incorporating music as we created our own soundtrack adaptation of Twinkle Little Star. We developed the lullaby by slowing down the temple and repeating section to create discomfort to the audience.
• Having a visual reference to the film title as Silent Play was display in red at the end of our opening sequence, which can be seen in many other films.

Even though, our opening sequence is unique according to our overall treatment and look of the film, there were other movies and opening sequences that presented the psychological thriller genre well, of which we developed there ideas and conventions onto our opening sequence. Our main character is not fully introduced throughout opening sequence, as whilst making the doll, we only used Close ups and Extreme Close ups to establish the Toymakers character (screen shot). These shots were similar to the film Se7en (1995) but we adapted them to suit our story. For example the shot below shows the killer in Se7en sewing a piece of paper, but we adapted this shot to present that the Toymaker was sewing the note left with the doll. Initially, we had decided to make our opening sequence fast and choppy much like the style of Se7en. However, it didn’t look right and didn’t present the Toymaker in the smooth and cautious way in which we had intended. So we challenged the style and made it softer and added smoother transitions such as cross fades to ease the audience through the story. The opening sequence to Dexter suited the pace of our opening sequence much more, so we also took a few pointers from its style. The shots, transitions and overall style of the opening sequence suited our Toymakers character as much like Dexter, he is a psychotic killer. But we soon became aware that the shots were still to gruesome and rough for the look we were going for as we almost wanted the Toymaker to appear sophisticated. Therefore we developed on the eating shot from Dexter and represented it in a way that suited the Toymakers character. So instead of the having the Toymaker ripping viciously through a piece meat, we had him sipping a glass of wine.