Evaluation 1

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

1- The title of our film:
The title of our film is 'On the Run' and we chose this for many reasons. Firstly, it is a short simple title that people will find easy to remember compared to if it was a longer title or had more complicated words in it. Also, it goes with the story line for our film which is about a teenage boy who has got himself into trouble, which the audience would discover later into the film, and is on the run from it when he gets murder in the opening of the film. The title also sparks a lot of questions, such as; 'who is on the run?', 'who are they running from?', 'what is this about?' etc., which is what we want all aspects of our film to do as it is a murder mystery so the audience should be questioning everything and thinking about the story.

2- Setting/ location:
The setting for our film opening uses forms of murder mystery conventions as it is showing a scene where parts of the rest of the film will take place, as it is where the murderer happens, so it sets the scene a bit from the start. Also, the area that our opening is set in suggests some things about the character shown, as it is in quite a doggy looking, vandalised area, suggesting crime and maybe rebellion of the younger generation with the graffiti on the walls of the underground walkway.

3- Costumes and props:
The costume of the character in our opening scene is simple and casual, with quite dark colours as we want him to appear as an ordinary teenage boy at first glance so the younger audience watching will feel like they can relate to him more. Also, we decided on the darker colours to add to the mystery and show he's got a darker side. We decided to not use any props for our opening as we felt like none we needed for what we decided to have happening in our opening and we didn't want anything to over complicate what is happening in the scene.

4- Camera work and editing:
For our camera work we wanted it to look as professional as we could, so used the steady cam to try to avoid any shaky camera work. We used a mix of different camera shots and angles such as; close up to show the characters expression and of his feet when running away, long shot to establish the setting and make it seem as if the audience are watching the character more from the distance to begin with, and low angles of the character at the start to portray his weakness and vulnerability.


5- Title font and style:
The font of the title of the film has a very clear, bold text with pointed sharp edges on parts of it to make it look more edgy and suggest the crime/ violence from the murder that takes place in the film. The title of our film is 'On The Run' and we chose this name because it goes with the story line of our film, suggesting the genre, and is short but effective, sounding quite mysterious.

6- Story and how the opening sets it up:
The story of our film opening is about a teenage boy who has got into some kind of trouble, which would be revealed later in the film, and ends up getting murdered because of it. Our opening sets it up as it shows the character running away from someone, who is not shown, and then cuts to him on the floor dying which sets up the story of the murder mystery where the rest of the film would be following a detective solving the murder.

7-Genre and how the opening suggests it:
The genre of our opening is murder mystery/ thriller. Our genre is shown in the opening by the mysterious soundtrack chosen which adds tension to the action in the scene. We also made use of shadows to, like shown in the shot on the mood board, to represent the murderer showing the character is being chased but not who it is to add to the story.

8- How characters are introduced:
The only character that is introduced in our film opening is a teenage boy, who is the murder victim for the film, and he is introduced in the first shot running towards to camera over a bridge and he has no dialogue throughout the opening, to add even more mystery as it means the audience don't get to know much about him and can discover things throughout the rest of the film as the detective is solving the murder.