2) How does your Media Product represent particular social groups?

In our film opening sequence, only the main character, Owen Haynes, is introduced. He first appears putting tape on his hands and then shortly after, boxing. This has particular relevance to the film and the character, as it represents the violence and aggression involved. Owen Haynes is not representing a clear and defined social group, but he is representing young, sporty men from a working-class background. He is stereotypical as he is interested in sport and fighting, and he wears a hoody. The mise-on-scene too, is a typical place for the character to be. Owen Haynes is walking down an alley way. Alleys have a lot of connotations, mainly involving crime. In addition, Owen's character himself could be a connotation of the alley way. Throughout the opening sequence, we do not see Owen Haynes' face. This gives him a more mysterious look and adds danger to him. It again, contributes to the representation of his social group. There is not one specific film genre that our film would class as, so the representations in our film is not typical for it. Furthermore, I do not think that our character of Owen Haynes is typical for any film genre.

1) In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media Products?

Our opening sequence uses many conventions of film opening sequences; we looked at opening sequences such as Green Street, Dead Man's Shoes, Snatch and Legally Blonde.


Through watching these, we established some of the main conventions of film opening sequences. We believed that the main conventions of the beginning of a film were:



Introducing characters - We have introduced our main character, Owen Haynes, through the use of voiceover and his boxing image. The main focus of our sequence was to present Owen to the audience to incorporate his way of life and his childhood difficulties. We changed the accent and native of Owen from Cockney/English to Irish as we believed that the Irish accent put on by our actor, Toby Zahiri-Sellers, sounded more 'thuggish' and fitted with his character and appearance.

Introducing Story Line - This was also shown through the use of the voiceover. The voiceover explains the main plot of the entire production; it projects Owen's childhood, his path to boxing and implies his misdemeanors-

''My name is Owen Haynes. Last summer something happened in my life to make me realise I gotta make something of myself; my mate, Danny, from school, convinced me to join his gym. Little did I know it was specialised in boxing. Boxing really wasn't my thing, you only had to look at me to know that; when I started I was the same small, scrawny little bastard as I was when I was a kid. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, I didn't think that anything could be worse than my childhood. I always wanted to get something out of life, i think now is the time for that to happen..."

Our voiceover was inspired by the voiceover of Elijah Wood's character Matt Buckner in Green Street. We thought that it was a clever way of introducing the actions and thoughts of the character.

Introducing setting (through use of mise-en-scene) - We used two settings in our opening sequence to help portray elements of our character; the gym and the alley way. The gym helped give a sense of the character's background via his personality and hobby of boxing. Also, the gym helps foreshadow the violence that would happen later on in the film. In addition, the alley way is in association with crime, drugs, etc which helps define Owen Haynes' character and hometown.


Grab Audience's Attention - In order to grab the audience's attention, we covered up the face of our main character to present the character in a mysterious manner. In the voiceover, there were things about Owen that were revealed but not everything as this also adds to the mystery of his character and this makes the audience want to find out more about him.

Genre - Our film opening sequence consists of various genres.
These include:
Drama
Sport
Crime

Progress

So far, we have completed the filming of the alley scenes, which have been edited in Final Cut Pro. We have also filmed some extra footage consisting of boxing and gym scenes, which we may not use in our final piece. Today, we completed our animated logo which will be used at the beginning of our opening sequence. We are going to work on completing our soundtrack and finishing the filming of the boxing and childhood scenes, ready for the end of the week. Once we have finished this, we will then need to record the voiceover and finish off editing our sequence.

Production Logo

This is our production company logo. We made this using programmes including Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro.

Animated Production Logos

We have started making our production logos for the beginning of our opening sequence. To make them look more proffesional we have decided to animate them. To do this we are using Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.
For our Production company we downloaded an image from Google. In Photoshop we then erased the fire and created the name of the company. In Final Cut Pro we then created the animation to make the words appear out of the dragons mouth representing the fire.

Music ideas

Our first sample of music for opening sequence was to have a bass and a drum kit for the whole sequence, with strings in the middle to resemble his childhood. We chose to use a bass and drum kit as the sounds create tension and correspond with the images we are portraying.

Our final music piece was very basic and just drums and bass throughout. We kept it basic so that the voiceover would be the main focus of the sequence.

Fonts

Font 1: We thought that this font could be good as the small lines surrounding the letters look like lines you would see in a picture to show something was moving. We thought this would relate to the theme of boxing, as there is a lot of movement, like his gloves and the punchbag.

Font 2: We liked this font because we liked the way in which the letters were all slanted in different ways. It makes it not look quite stable, like our character. The letters slanting different ways could show that our character does not know which way to go- revenge, boxing, forgiveness, etc? Also, we liked the way in which the letters seem to fade out at the top/bottoms. We thought that this could represent the way in which the aspects in his life are fading- like values, family, and even his ambitions.

Font 3: We really liked this font because we thought it was different.There are a lot of slashes through the words, looking like a knife has been through or suggesting violence which relates to our film. Also, on the 'R' there is a cross going straight through it. This stands out and links to the title of our film which is religious; ''Eye for an Eye''

Font 4: We liked this font because it gives a sense of danger and suspicion. It could look like graffiti on a wall, which matches one of our locations; the alley. The letters are not placed in line, corresponding with the character who is also out of line in many respects.

Font 5: We thought that this font was good because it hides some parts of the letters, which could represent the character of Owen hiding behind his boxing and anger. The font, like the film, asks a lot of questions.

Font 6: We thought this font looks like it could have been written by a young child. This corresponds with Owen's personality as he is still living in the past, and is obsessed with his childhood.

Font 7: This font reminds us of prison, which links to our film as Owen ends up in prison by the end of the film. The way in which the letters are not linked up could represent how he is not complete as he feels he still needs to get revenge.

We narrowed down these seven choices to two possible fonts; Font 3 and Font 4. We decided that one of these fonts would be the most appropriate for our film opening sequence. After debating over which font to use, Font 4 was our final decision. We chose Font 4 as it looks like graffiti which relates to our character growing up in a run down area and the film itself.

Analysis of Legally Blonde

The first frame fades into an extreme close up of the main characters' (Elle Woods) blonde hair, waving from side to side. The score immediately starts of ''Perfect Day'' by Hoku. The score automatically represents the genre and feel of the film, and appeals straight away to the target audience. The close up of Elle's hair means that the audience can only focus on one thing- exactly that. The audience can only see her blonde hair, which straight away brings up the first and maybe main issue of the film- blondes. It also gives us a clue to how her character i going to be. Titles fade in and out, with pink swirly writing. This writing again appeals to the target audience, as it is pink and girly, with things like hearts incorperated in it. The camera then starts to slowly zoom out to a close up of the back of Elle's head, still focused on her hair. It shows Elle brushing her hair. Her nails are manicured, giving the audience more clues about her character- that she is ''girly'' and cares a lot about appearance.

It then cuts to a long shot of a girl riding a bike. The camera tracks along side her giving the audience a clear view of the mise-en-scene. There is a water fountain, showing that it is not a poor area. There are a lot of people around, with diegetic sound of laughter and talking. This adds to the happy atmosphere in which everyone seems to be in and introduces us to where we are. But still, because the camera is following the girl on the bike, we are focused on the story, too.The score is still playing.

Next, it cuts again to a mid-shot of Elle shaving her leg. We still cannot see her face, which forces the audience to concentrate on what we can see and put these things together to work out her character. Her leg is leaning on a pink chair of some sort, and in the background we can see a pink curtain. Again, these things contribute to what the audience think of her character- we can see that she is definitely a ''girly'' girl, maybe even more so than we first thought. The camera is still, showing no intention of showing us her face yet. This causes more suspense. The score is still playing.

It then cuts back to the previous scene, in which there is a water fountain, greenery and lots of people. The camera is moving around the setting, showing the girl on the bike and the other people in the mise-en-scene e.g people playing frisbee. This camera movement adds to the lively and fun atmosphere of the place and emphasises the happiness. The girl on the bike is wearing shorts and a small T-shirt, with her hair down and she has a basket on the front of her bicycle. She looks like another ''girly'' girl. The camera carries on moving around the setting until it is a long shot of a group of topless young guys messing around, playing sport. They all stop and turn around, and the girl rides into the shot. There is diegetic sound of the boys cheering and shouting at the girl riding past. This shows what life is like where they live, and suggests one of the main focuses of the film- love.

The camera then cuts to a close up of Elle Woods putting on a silver heart necklace. It also reveals the top of a pink dress, and again shows her manicured nails. It again, forces the audience to think about her character and creates tension of what she will look like. The score is still playing underneath.

Sound/music

We have been deciding whether to have music in our opening sequence, what music and where in our opening sequence to have it. Our opening sequence starts off with our main character taping his hands. This would not have any diegetic sound, so we think that there should be some sort of non-diegetic sound. However, in the next part of our sequence, there would be diegetic sound of the natural sound of the character boxing- e.g the sound of the punchbag being hit, panting.These sounds would be effective as the main focus of sound in our opening sequence, but we still feel we would need a soundtrack for the silent parts of the opening sequence. The next part of our sequence is when our main character hits another character, and cutting to see that the victim is dead. We definitely would need music which has a change in pace, pitch, etc to signify some change. After this, it cuts to the main character walking down an alley, which seems to be more into the beginning of the film rather than the opening sequence. Because of this, I thought that there should be another change of music. We thought we could have the music only just starting here, but then decided that there needed to be some sort of music in the beginning too. Also, the voiceover begins at this part so it would be too much sound starting at the same time.

Script

Ideas for Script

My name is Owen Haynes. I'm 23 years old. Ever since I can remember I've not had a father to look up to. It's just been me and my mother living in our little council house in London's East End. I have not had a good childhood. I got pushed over and beat up a lot. My mother suggested telling teachers but I'd get battered from head to toe. She told me how my father was an amateur boxer which inspired me to start lessons. As I became older, the anger grew on me, and I wanted revenge.

My name is Owen Haynes. I'm 23 years old and training to be a boxer. My father was an amateur boxer and his career inspired me. Ever since I left school I didn't see why I should put up with bullies any more. I wanted to be on the other side of things; I wanted to be a boxer.

We put these ideas together, with other ideas we had thought about to create a final draft:

Final Script

Owen Haynes: My name is Owen Haynes. Last summer something happened in my life to make me realise I gotta make something of myself; my mate, Danny, from school, convinced me to join his gym. Little did I know it was specialised in boxing. Boxing really wasn't my thing, you only had to look at me to know that; when I started I was the same small, scrawny little bastard as I was when I was a kid. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, I didn't think that anything could be worse than my childhood. I always wanted to get something out of life, i think now is the time for that to happen...

Draft Storyboard

This is our draft of our storyboard. We have not put the title credits on as we have not decided whether to have them on seperate frames to the actual sequence, or on top of the images in the sequence.

Location

We are basing the location of the film on our main character, Owen Haynes. We thought about the type of character he is and decided that part of portraying this would be his environment. We thought that it should be set in a small rundown part of a town which has always had a bad reputation, and is struggling to change it due to things like vandalism, gangs, theft, drugs, etc. This is so that you can see where some of his violence, and of the childrens' violence in his childhood, have partly come from. It also adds to getting across his overall character.

We thought about places in which we could go and film in which match our specification. We have found a place to film, which has a long, vandalised alley leading to an area with some buildings and a park. The park could remind the audience of the references to his childhood, and also add to the effect of the area as it is stereotypical of gangs of teenagers to hang around in parks. The alley has connotations of crime, too.

We also would need a gym to film in, for the boxing parts of our sequence. Boxing is one of the main themes of our film so it needs to be strongly conveyed and would show the passion our main character has for it. Additionally, it needs to be in a gym to make it realistic and believeable, so we have thought about using quite a small gym to make sure it fits in with the environment and the lack of money that the area would have to spend on it.

General Ideas

-We want to incorporate black and white transposing images in our opening somehow, to represent the difference between past, present and future. We also thought that the whole film could be in black and white, but darker for a change in time period. This would give the whole film a dark and edgy feel to it.

-We thought that it would look good to use a translucent effect in part of our opening sequence, to show that two ideas link in our film, but that they are not physically together.

-We thought that it would look better and more realistic to use real home videos if we can of our main characters' childhood, rather than filming a child specifically for our sequence.

Preliminary Exercise