Our Main Task

This is myself and Maya's  main task of an opening sequence, called Missing Piece.

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

Question 2 - How does your media product present particular social groups?

Question 3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Media institutions are very important for real life media products as they are the only way that a media product can be published and therefore seen by the public.

After throughly thinking and asking our market audience, I have come to the conclusion that ITV would be one of the best media institutes for my groups product. Firstly, one of the inspirations for the plot was 'Broadchurch' as it has the same themes of losing someone you love as well as mystery running throughout. As they already air a show like this and have a huge following, our film would fit perfectly as they already have the audience who are interested in mystery films.

Additionally, BBC would also be good as they have a mature audience which is similar to our target market.

I believe our film is appropriate for both of these media institutes as they both have the following of our market and fit nicely with other media products they put on display.

Question 4- Who would be the audience for your media product?

Question 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Question 7-Looking back at your preliminary task, what have you learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation Questions

In our most recent lesson we have begun to talk about the seven evaluation questions that must be completed after the filming of our opening sequence. To help my knowledge of how to answer these questions, I have written my own understanding of them. This is shown below:
Question 1:
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- Give examples of clips researched to explain why you've used something or why something is the way it is.
- Answer this using director's (Maya and I) commentary. This includes explaining why things such as camera shots/location/props are used and what it was used to achieve.
- Talk about where the inspiration for the methods used has come from.

Question 2:
How does your media product represent particular social groups?- Explaining why you have picked the character(s) that star in the opening sequence.
- Addressing stereotypes, in our case a middle aged widower, and how your character fits and why we chose that character to fit the genre of our opening sequence.

Question 3:
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?          
- Which producers would take on your film depending on which is most appropriate and why it is or may not be.

Question 4:
Who would be the audience for your media product?
- Address importance of audience.
-Who our opening sequence is aimed at mostly.

Question 5:
How did you attract/address your audience?
- What's the best form of promotion to attract viewers?
-How did you make them want to carry on watching?
-How did you make them feel emotions you wanted them to feel?

Question 6:
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?  
- Identify different technologies you used and advantages and disadvantages to using them.

Question 7:
Looking back at your preliminary task, what have you learnt in the progression from it to the full product?- Area's you have improved and things that can still be improved.

Film Title...

After doing numerous mind maps and a lot of brain storming, my group has decided to call our film, 'Missing Piece'. This title reflects the genre and portrays the heart brake emotions we wanted to make the audience feel. The title is a very important in the pre production stages as it can be one of the main factors which entices the audience to watch the film or not.

The name 'Missing Piece' reflects he's literal missing piece of his heart, his wife, and how he doesn't feel his full self without her. It also portrays the heart break of losing someone you love. The less sensitive connotation of it is that he can't get revenge as he can't find out who the murderer is a he's got a 'missing piece' of evidence.

Overall, i personally believe this name sets up the main themes of our film and will hopefully attract more people to watch.

Market Research

Its crucial when creating a movie, in my case an open in sequence, that you have a specific market range. This way it ensures you will have people wanting to watch the movie as unfortunately not ever movie appeals to everyone. We asked 25 people to complete our simple questionnaire so we can make sure our target market is suitable for our open in sequence.

Question 1 
The balance between male and female was rather even, with 44% female and 56% men. These percentages are very close, therefore our opening sequence can be directed at both male and female.

Question 2
The majority of people were between the ages of 21 and 30. With over 1/3 being in this category, its allows us to focus mainly on them.

Question 3
Its evident that mystery is the audiences preferred genre. This is positive as we are basing our film around a mystery murder.

Question 4 
The results show us that mystery films are very popular and the public throughly enjoy watching them. This shows the large audience we should have with our film idea.

Question 5
 The results we got were to:
-Make sure its clear what the film is about.
-Tease the rest of your video in your opening- pique their interest so they're more likely to continue watching.
-Allowing them to connect with the actors feelings so it becomes more emotionally interactive.
These points allows us to use them so people will want to watch the rest of the film after seeing our opening sequence.

Sound

We have a sound track over the top of our opening sequence that is emotional. The soundtrack is produced by 'Kai Engle' and we managed to find a soundtrack that reflective the correct emotions which is still copyright free. This reflects the mood of our main character; sad and depressed. We have also decided to mute the first half of the background sounds when he is in the house. As soon as he opens the door to go outside, the audience will then be able to hear the background sounds. This is effective as it shows the silence in his personal life without his wife but the continuity of the people around him lives, which emphasises his isolation.

Adjustments to our story board

Our main story is the same however we have decided to not include the flashbacks. The main reason for this is that we want the main character to be the man, not the women who has died. Including the flashbacks could put the audiences attention onto the lady who has been killed which takes away the sympathetic feelings towards the man which is one of our main aims. To replace the flashbacks, they're will be more zoom ins to the evidence of the crime scene to create more mystery and tension.

Prop Pictures

 These pictures show the main props we will use in our opening sequence. The newspaper tells the audience that there has been a murder, therefore setting up the story and setting the mysterious scene. This is a crucial prop as otherwise the audience might not understand what he is investigating about. These ideas are backed up by a criminal report which is shown below. This suggests to the audience the seriousness and the reality of the murder. Finally the prop of a letter with a husband and wives name on is very significant as it shows the man has/had a wife. This is not too effective on its own but it is when the audience sees an empty space on the breakfast table. This immediately suggests she is the one who has been murdered.

Moods

One of our main aims is to create intense feelings in our opening sequence. We want to create a dark and saddened mood to represent the mans emotions. An effective way to do this is to use pathetic fallacy. Obviously we can't change the weather to fit the day we are filming but we want to make it seem like gloomy, rainy weather to strongly show his deep emotional thoughts.

We also want to create the mood for the audience, the main one is sympathy. By setting out the table for two but only showing on person there creates huge sympathy as we are aware he has lost someone close to him. We can also portray this by showing the wife's wedding ring as it shows extreme heart break. At the same time as presenting sympathy, the moods of mystery need to be portrayed. We can do this through the use of the crime evidence props. These props will show the audience that a murder has happened and he is trying to solve it. This creates tension and mystery.

Memento

Shown below is the opening scene from a movie called Memento. This has heavily been inspiration for our idea for our own opening sequence. The piece starts with the directors and some of the main actors in the film along with a quiet, eery sound track to create tension for the audience. It then shows the name of the film followed by a fade out and a close up of someone holding a photograph: we immediately assume this is the protagonist as this is the first person we see. The music the increases in pitch to grab the audiences attention. The picture shows someones death scene, this entices the audience to question who it is? and if they're innocent or some sort of revenge to someone. The man holding the photo then shakes it which makes the disappear. The camera then follows the hand holding the photo as it moves. There is then zoom in and close ups of some evidence laying on the floor, this indicates that they're has been a murder. The scene then edits to black and white suggesting depression, this creates sympathy for him as it hints the persons who murder scene it is, is someone close to him. The emotions that are presented here, are very much similar to what we want our audience to feel after watching this. After watching this opening scene it makes me want to watch on as there are so many unanswered questions. This is a strong aim for us to do with ours too.

Title Sequence

We made a practise title sequence to see what font and colours we want to use. We thought the timing, the fades and the font suits our genre of film:

Mood Board

The image below shows the mood board for our opening task. The mains themes we are dealing with is heart break and the want for justice and revenge. This creates a dark, mysterious atmosphere with the emotions of loss and heart break involved. Through soundtracks, body language and facial expression, the audience should be made to feel sympathy towards the husband who has lost his wife.