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

There are various conventions of film openings and these include establishing the genre and the use of music, setting, credits/ titles and various camera techniques. Our media product uses all of these conventions, but used differently to other genres.

There are four main categories that the conventions can be put into: camera, sound, editing and mise-en scene.

Camera

Our film opening uses various camera techniques which create different effects on the audience. The establishing shot at the beginning of the opening sets the scene and gives the audience an idea of what to expect in the film. The use of the close up is used at various points throughout the film opening. This is to emphasise the significance of each shot and it makes the audience focus on that particular thing. The match on action of the lifeless hand and the clicking pen creates a further sense of enigma as it questions whether the detective had a connection with the murder or whether the pen had a connection with the murder, making the audience want to find out more. This conforms to typical conventions of real crime/mystery films. 

The fact that each item around the room had a different camera technique suggests to the audience that each item is relevant for different reasons and so they will begin to infer possible connections with the murder. This makes the detective more relatable to the audience as the audience themselves become more detective like and are gratified in respect to the idea of the audience having a connection with the character. These techniques all conform to the conventions of real media products though also differs from some for example in the movie psycho the opening mainly consisted of titles rather than actual footage and so less camera techniques were used in that opening

Sound

The use of sound is an essential part of our film opening as without sound the audience will not know what is happening. If audio was to be taken out of a film and we could only see what happened, we could not figure out why things happen in the film whereas if we listen to what happens we can still figure out what happens. In addition, we used both diegetic and non-diegetic sound in the opening. The diegetic sound such as the pen clicking makes the opening feel more real and therefore makes the audience feel as though it is actually happening. This balances with the non-diegetic sounds such as the music to give emphasis to the events that occur. The use of the clicking pen is used to separate each item and shot to build up tension for the audience

These techniques are used in a variety of films and programmes though they are used differently in our film opening for example in shows like CSI and criminal minds they often use the sound of a camera with each shot to show that they are taking pictures of the crime scene and each shot co-ordinated with the sound of the camera often is different parts of the crime scene. 

Red Herring

Our film opening uses many techniques that are also used in quantum of solace, for example, the establishing shot at the beginning of the film opening. The establishing shot sets the scene and draws in the audience as to what is to transpire in the scene. 

Quantum of solace

Quantum of solace is a high budget movie, where as our film opening didn't have a budget as we only needed a limited amount of resources. Thus, we were not able to use certain techniques that quantum of solace did. An example of this is where the establishing zoom cuts to the expensive cars and also involves the use of special effects, both of which were not at our disposal.  

However, this establishing shot differs to quantum of solace as it does not use the same music and sounds that our film opening does. This is because the two films are two different genres and the audience expect certain editing techniques and so the audiences expectations differ according to genre.

In addition, action movies tend to have a higher budget than crime/mystery films as there are a lot more special effects and expensive equipment used as they tend to be more fictitious than crime/mystery films. The audience use this fiction as a way of escaping from the stresses of everyday life. 

In our film opening we co-ordinated the sound of a pen click with each shot as to capture the audience and use more senses to do so. By doing this, it makes our opening more interesting and enriches the sense of enigma as each shot is connected to the murder and captivates the audience by making them want to find out what happens next.