Question 1
Our opening sequence follows the normal kind of codes and conventions. This is because it introduces you with the main character, however at the same time it also leaves the audience very confused as you cannot see the main character. "Eternal Beauty" is a Family Drama genre as it is a movie that will appeal to the family audience, and that a family could relate too. However, as it is just an opening sequence we didn't want to give too much away, as we still wanted to leave a a bit of a mystery.
Our opening sequence follows the same codes as most movies such as:
- Introducing the main character
- Showing you the theme
- Narrative of the main character
Even though we had similar aspects of most films, we still managed to allow our sequence to be unique. This is because the narrative that was said, was something that you would not usually hear in opening sequences, we did this purposely to draw the audience in, also while the narrator was speaking you could not see her, another factor that made it different from other movies.
Moving on, our film also has a few themes in it to keep the audience entertained, however at the same time it has those themes to also make the audience think. These are the themes of:
Love
Loss
Family and Friends
Hope
Death
Dreams
These themes are regular themes that you would see in most family drama's. But our main one is the theme of hope, as it revolves around the main character which also inter-links with the theme of dreams, as they are very similar but carry very huge and different roles. The theme of hope comes from the main character as she believes in something and has to make it happen which is also linked to "My Sisters Keeper" 2009 as her dream was to make something happen regarding her current problem.
How opening sequence of our film is centred on hope. However, in the beginning half of the film you would not catch that as we are trying to make it as vague as possible so we can make the audience confused, which will lead them to carry on watching. However, the narration within the opening does give the theme away a little as it talks about her life.
Another theme in our film is the theme of dreams. This is because through-out the whole movie, Claire has one dream, one hope, and one ambition... one goal! So dream is a theme in our film as the film is also centred on it just like the theme of hope.
In the opening of the film, you can see that it is about dreams. This is because the narration talks about her life and how she wishes and dreams that she never picked up the phone call. Then we see a little scene about her looking over her past life, and how she wishes and dreams she was back there, and we also use a few camera effects to add it and make it a little bit more believable and make it seem as if it really is dream.
I would say that our opening sequence does not really challenge any codes and conventions of opening sequences. This is because it is normal but it is original, even though we introduce the opening with our main character we do not revel the identity of our character therefore the audience is left in wonder, for the only thing the audience knows about the character is that the person is a girl and is in a very serious dilemma. Making out opening original and interesting, at the same time simple!
We used codes and conventions so we could be able to attract our audience. We did this by introducing the main character Claire, whom is the girl that is suffering from cancer. However, we had to be discreet in the amount of information we gave away as it had to be as little as possible. This was because it was just the opening, and we still wanted to keep the target audience engaged but not entirely informed.
An example of this will be in the similar movie Seven Pounds. Seven Pounds was effective, yet discreet, as it gave as little information as possible but kept the audience engaged, which is the exact effect we are going for, for our opening.
They were able to this by the little dialogue the main character had with a 911 person mentioning something about death. They also input the main character’s name and showed his face so we could know who the main character is.
However that differs from our as we didn’t show the character’s face as we wanted to keep that anonymous.
The reason why we used codes and conventions like this was because we didn't want to give too much away just yet. However, this was a bit tricky as we wanted to make sure that it was long enough, however not too long, therefore we had to keep on cutting some scenes in order to make this effective. But at the end we got there.
We developed codes and conventions of real media products by our editing techniques. Even though we had used them well, we had to make sure that we developed it to make it even more effective.
In order for us to do so, we started cutting off some selected scenes. This was because as a group we had decided that these particular scenes were unnecessary, therefore we just cut them out. This made the opening in general much more effective, because in the beginning the opening had been too long, and my critics were complaining that it was too long and they were getting bored. This is not engaging the audience, therefore to make sure we had out audience engaged we made it shorter, simpler and quicker so it was convenient for everyone.
This developed our codes and conventions on real media products as we were able to edit our opening to improve the quality, codes and conventions on our opening.
Finally, our opening challenges other media products as we never reveal our character. Normally, in most openings the main character is revealed to the audience so they are informed. However we were not going with this theme, we wanted the identification of our character to remain anonymous to add to the suspense.
Majority of all family movies normally introduce the main character therefore, I am unable to give an example of a movie. This is why we chose to be unique and challenge media products by this.
By us not introducing the main character, it adds suspense, mystery and most importantly it draws, connects and engages the audience. This was the exact theme we were going for.
This challenges codes and conventions of media products, as the audience will be expecting the narrator to be introduced, but she never is. You can hear the dialogue but the protagonist is never revealed. This is challenging media products as the audience will be expecting to see the main character I the beginning but she is never revealed.
