Question 1 'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenege forms and conventions of real media products?'

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


There are various conventions in an opening sequence. For example in an Action/ Adventure genre, the soundtrack is a key aspect which helps to specify the genre and also build up the storyline. The fast paced music is used to intensify the storyline of the opening sequence and also engage the audience into watching the film further. As they are witnessing a dramatic storyline building up in the beginning of the opening sequence. An example of this being used is the soundtrack in Indiana Jones: Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The music begins slowly, and as the traps are shown the music builds up and becomes more fast paced when Jones is running and trying to escape from the ruin. It reaches its climax especially when he is running away from the huge rock, and once he escapes the music then slows down again. This convention has been vital in our opening sequence, as it helps to add more action into the shots in our opening sequence. The music we used also builds up from a slow drum beat to a fast paced drum beat with strings to intensify the action. However the soundtrack begins when we first see the character who is hiding. This is important for our opening sequence as it establishes the main character's situation and makes him become aware with the challenges he faces whilst trying to escape.
Another convention which appears in an opening sequence are the titles. These titles are extremely important to creating an opening sequence to a film. Within the Action/Adventure genre titles have bold and colourful font. For instance in Django Unchained, the font is in a western style and is very bold and used the colour red to show the titles. This is extremely similar to our opening sequence. As we used bold titles with a gritty like font to relate to the genre and also the location- in a local suburb. We also used the colour red as it connotes determination, violence and anger, which are all seen in our opening sequence, from the shots and angles we used to visualize this.
Furthermore another convention used in an opening sequence is the use of faced pace editing. This is clearly seen in many Action/Adventure films. Taken is an example which uses fast paced, mainly jump cuts in the fight scenes. This is extremely beneficial as this engages the audience and makes them interested into watching the rest of the film. We included this in our opening sequence as since it is a chase scene we wanted to use fast paced editing to fit the current situation, as the protagonist is running away from the villains, and so by including fast paced editing we wanted to make the situation more intense.
Another convention which is used in an Action/Adventure opening sequence is the use of the characters. These characters are a key aspect to help develop the storyline and by using two different sets of characters we are able to distinguish the protagonist and antagonist. This is common in many Action/Adventure films as typically a storyline revolves around a protagonist searching for someone, whilst the antagonist is trying to prevent that from happening. A good example which use these conventions is Batman: The Dark Knight. Here we can immediately tell the difference of both characters through their personalities. We see that Batman is a hero who is seen as a courageous and brave, contrast to the Joker who is seen crazy and insane. We tried to include something similar in our opening sequence, as the protagonist is seen innocent, whereas the antagonist is mysterious and you do not see his face, which makes the audience question who the antagonist, intriguing them into watching the opening sequence further.
Another  convention which is used throughout many opening sequences- especially in Action/Adventure genres is the use of the storyline, not only through the characters but the overall storyline. A typical storyline in a Action/Adventure genre is that the protagonist is on quest to search a reward, however he encounters obstacles that will try to prevent him from achieving his goal, a good example which includes this typical aspect of the storyline is Indiana Jones. Through this we see that storyline is about a physical reward which Jones must search for, however whilst trying to search for this he encounters villains who try to stop from getting this. We tried to incorporate this into our opening sequence as we had the protagonist already have the reward, but however
he had to escape from the antagonists after receiving the reward.