In what ways does
your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
In the development of ideas for our title sequence we had to
research into the codes and conventions of other title sequences of the same genre
as ours, which was sci-fi/romance. Because it is a combination of two genres,
we had to include aspects of it both. I believe with the way we integrated both
genres together in our title sequence kept it relatively tense to the viewer
but it was not an obvious giveaway to the remainder of the film – as title
sequences should be. However, I believe the theme of romance is more obviously
noticed, from the music choice to the first shot of the sequence. The choice of
music directly follows the typical codes and conventions of romance, with the
soft yet tense piano use, indicating the drama that the film will also include.
Within title sequences, it is also important to create an enigma throughout,
leaving the viewer wondering what is going to happen, and where the story line
will take them. I believe we did exactly this within our title sequence as the
letters being written/read is what drives the title sequence, but most
importantly leaves the viewer saying “what happened” or “why is she doing that”.
Collectively, we also had
to look at the codes and conventions of the camera shots, cuts and the choice
of lighting. For our choice of genre, the shots we mainly used were ‘close up
shots’ and ‘over the shoulder shots.’ We chose close up shots as within the
title sequence the main focus was the characters, their emotions and body
language, and I believe this shot captured that well. The purpose of using over
the shoulder shots was due to the writing we had in the sequence, and it was a
necessity for the viewer to be able to have an idea as to what was being wrote
because as I have previously said, that was what drove the whole sequence. The
choice of lighting was equally as important as the shots, as it I think it adds
to the sincerity of it all. The reflection of the light onto the faces enhances
the emotions, and the fact that it is quite dim around the main focus of the
characters creates more dramatic effect. The codes and conventions of cuts we
strayed away from to an extent as there are no direct cuts through each clip
throughout the whole sequence. We overlapped the images, changing the opacity
levels so the two overlapping clips would link in well together. However, I
think that the way the clips have been edited over fits well with the rest of
the sequence, even if it is not a typical way to link the clips together.
This still image from the title sequence
shows how the lighting reflected on the face, it also shows the two different
clips overlapping, which is the technique we used instead of doing sharp cuts.
