Evaluation Question 1

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

Genre
Our film is of the Thriller and Revenge Drama genres and this affected many of our choices throughout.We wanted to cover topics that are considered particularly disturbing and controversial and therefore chose to make the film about a young woman who is looking for her sister who was sent to a brothel.

Narrative Structure

Todorov's Narrative Theory

Unlike Todorov's narrative theory, we decided that it would be more effective for the audience if we were to start with a disruption as opposed to a state of equilibrium. We would then introduce the prior state of equilibrium later on in the film if we were to continue by showing the audience how life was before the protagonist's sister was kidnapped in order to give the audience more contextual knowledge about the protagonist and her situation.

We wanted our opening sequence to create enigma, causing the audience to raise questions such as:

• Who is this woman?
• Why is she so sad/angry?
• What is the relationship between the man and the woman?
• Why is she so sinister when talking about the man's father?

The fact that we left the opening with a sense of sinister ambiguity was because we wanted to interest the audience and lure them into watching the rest of the film. We thought that this was a good way of capturing their attention without giving too much of the information from the film away.

We chose not to follow the character theory of Propp for most of our characters throughout our film as we believed that it would make our film more realistic and representative of the world at large:

• The protagonist of our film is neither hero nor villain. She is a good person who uses means which some would consider to be immoral in order to gain what she wants and needs: her sister.
• The protagonist's sister is the equivalent of the damsel in distress, and therefore could be considered to be the princess/the prize. However, the role of the prize could also be played by the protagonist's boyfriend, who runs off with her at the end.
• The protagonist's boyfriend does aid her, yet he is completely outraged by this when he finds out and it takes him some time to come around to the fact.
• We do have a distinct villain, which follows Propp's theory, yet he is not completely evil. He has redeemable characteristics, which can be seen through his son's loyalty. Despite this, though, he is an awful person.

We wanted to challenge the stereotypes found in many revenge drama films as well as sticking to some of the other stereotypes in order to create a believable, realistic film opening which is more representative of the world at large: both men and women can be manipulative, strong and independent and no one is completely good or evil.

We chose to use the common depiction of a Femme Fatale in the film opening but stated that this connotation of the protagonist, Rose, would be challenged later on in the film. A common example of a femme fatate is in the Film Noir era of Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s.

Exaples of femme fatales from the 1950s Film Noir era include Brigid O'Shaughnessy from The Maltese Falcon and Ava Gardner from The Killers.

We wanted to have a female character who would defy the normal stereotypes surrounding women in many films and television dramas of the thriller genre. We believed that usually women were depicted in a few ways:

• The sensitive damsel in distress 
• Completely cold, heartless and resourceful
• Using her sexuality to get what she wants

However, we did not feel that these depictions were realistic and as an entirely female group, we wanted to take this opportunity to show women in a different light. We achieved this by merging the main ideals of women presented in media together, showing that despite the fact that she is resourceful and does use her sexuality to obtain what she wants to some degree, she is also sensitive and falls in love with her clueless boyfriend during the film.

Our narrative references were:

• Revenge
• Kill Bill
• Haywire
• Hanna

We also used "The Hangover" as a reference for the fact that the film starts with a disruption, but made sure that we were aware of the fact that it was not of either the thriller or revenge drama genres and so we would not be able to use it for references to do with iconography or mise en scene.

As well as this, we used Kill Bill for the confusion of the opening sequence, which also starts with a disruption



However, our opening was not as action-packed as this one. We wanted to achieve a still, serene eeriness

Form and Style
Titles

We chose to have our titles similar to "Kill Bill",
But have them in between shots instead of after
the main action of the scene in order to create
enigma and suspense.

"Kill Bill" titles occur after the main action of the
opening sequence.

The Main Shot - The Hug

Although we used a similar technique to the hug in Vampire Diaries, the main difference was the expression the hug revealed. Both show the hug from a character's point of view in order to reveal the thoughts and feelings, but our hug revealed a more sinister character, as opposed to Vampire Diaries, which is more thoughtful, reflective and upset.

Colour
We chose the colour red for our film opening as it has sinister connotations and is also associated with love and blood.

Music
We chose a song we already knew as we felt that it would give us the sultry mood we required and was mysterious enough to provide the tense atmosphere needed for our film opening.We took our inspiration from Bank's Waiting Game which had a sultry mood and mysterious characters in the music video and the song had a slow tempo without being sad. Since Enya knew the songwriter/singer forthe song, we were able to get permission to use the song in our opening and therefore avoud copyright Infringement.