EVALUATION Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Film openings tend to start in a typical format, here is a list of all the film conventions:

• Introduce production company logo
• Introduce distribution company logo
• Often carry a title sequence
• Mood and tone established through sound
• Intends to draw the audience in 
• Introduces key characters

I have analysed the beginning of Final Destination 3 and have found that “Hard Eight Pictures Production” have been placed first, followed by “Practical Pictures” and “Matinee Pictures” which share the same screen. After the production logos, the movie title name is portrayed which is “Final Destination 3”. You can instantly tell from the editing that the movie is a horror thriller, as the effects on the production company names have been put in smoky glow and then fade out. The mood and sound instantly establish the spooky atmosphere and draws in the audience.  

After the production companies have appeared on the screen the credits start playing in the same way through the eerie atmosphere, below I took screen grabs of the credits:

The names and titles have all been put in order:

• ACTOR:                                                    Mary Elizabeth Winstead
• CASTING by:                                           John Papsidera
• MUSIC by:                                                Shirley Walker 
• COSTUME DESIGNER:                           Gregory B. Mah
• VISUAL EFFECTS:                                  Ariel Velasco Shaw
• EDITOR:                                                    Chris Willingham 
• PRODUCTION DESIGNER:                     Mary Freeborn
• DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY:          Robert McLachlan 
• CO-PRODUCER:                                      Art Schaefer
• EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS:                     Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener and Matt Moore
• PRODUCED by:                                          Craig Perry, Warren Zide, Glen Morgan and James Wong 
• WRITTEN by:                                           Glen Morgan and James Wong
• DIRECTED by:                                         James Wong

In our thriller "Vengeance" we basically looked back at one our earlier blogs which spoke about film conventions, in doing so we used that as our guideline and followed the same order. Our thriller also begins in the same way starting with production companies, the movie title, actors names etc and then finishes with the director. During the editing process, we had to make sure that our titles were in the correct order but once we showed our teacher we found they weren't and that our thriller resembled a trailer rather than a title sequence. Our group then had to change the titles around and make sure it looked as if it was a title sequence.