Question 1 - Anam Nasir

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings).


Conventionally a male character is most likely to be presented as the assassin.



Here we have ‘The Joker’ from ‘The Dark Knight’ alongside a picture of Victoria Jones in similar makeup.
The title of the film is ‘Once Upon a Time’ suggesting the film will have a happy ending like in fairy tales, and that the story of the movie will be positive.



The setting of our film is located in school, most shots are taken in the library, this is to show the murderers influenced by books, particularly fairy tales as she holds a fairy tale book.


Here we can see a wide shot of the books as the setting and we see a book in the murderer’s arms.
Using face paint on the murderer was used to create and edgy feeling for the viewers
Our first shot consists of a tracking shot across the book shelf in the library; this was to create mystery as the shot gets to the end of the bookshelf, the audience are unaware of what is expected. To show the separation from the flashback and real time we edited the colour of the screen to black and white. We also edited the music and made it more deep using the tool on iMovie. This made the film have a more deep feel and to create a sense of enigma.
The styles of the titles were alongside hand drawn images of fairytale characters suffering; this was to go with our fairy tale theme.


The opening of the thriller sets up the story of the film by giving the viewers a brief introductory of the characters past.
The genre of our film opening is a thriller. Our media product shows this with the use of dark mysterious music and doesn’t show any gory material, which separates thrillers from horror films. With a thriller genre in mind it was easier to think of a narrative.
Victoria Jones is introduced in the first shot of the film, staring in the camera, which can be intimidating towards the audience. The shot then cuts to a closer shot moving in gradually from a wide shot to a long shot to a middle shot, with the titles in between to give the viewer’s time to take in what they are long at. The use of this technique was to introduce the location of where the character is, then who the character is and lastly the emotion of the character.