How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main gender that we have represented within our opening sequence is that of the female as one is shown to walk to the house and her friend is shown to walk to the abandoned house. Within the opening the most represented ethnicity was that of the Caucasian. The age that has been represented within the piece is that of late teenagers as the girls are in their teens and their friendship group is shown on the phone, all of whom are teenagers. The class that we chose to represent was that of the middle class.
The people that we chose to represent was that of teenagers as we thought that it would follow along the lines of a party because some teenagers will have no where to go to drink until they are of age and they are also stereotypically represented as taking a lot of illegal things such as drugs (cocaine) so to enforce this stereotype we used teenagers and also set our location as somewhere which is out of the way so that it seemed a lot more suspicious.

These are Gifs which show teenagers at a party and they show how certain elements can get out of hand. This shows that the location used within our piece would appeal to our target audience because it is out of the way, nobody lives there and they can do what they like as there is nobody there to stop them from doing what they enjoy.

When framing the girl when she was dead we chose to only show small parts of the body so that the audience had a lack of knowledge to what had happened. We gave away the fact that it was a dead body because of a high angle shot upon a body which wasn't moving, this tells the audience that something is wrong. Using the stereotype we showed little by little to make it look as if she was sleeping but then as more and more became visible it was clearer to see that something was wrong. We also used the soundtrack to hint to the audience that something was slightly peculiar about the situation but we didn't want to show what it was until near the end of the opening sequence as shown by the high angle shot of the bleeding arm. We also used a close up of the girls eye to show that she was dying as her iris flickers but she doesn't move.

This is the shot of the picture on the phone. as we can clearly see they are all teenagers. Since all of the characters are teenagers it would be more relatable to their age group and it would attract them as an audience s they would like to see how a situation would be resolved after several teenagers have been killed.

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

The conventions of an opening sequence are a sound track, equlibrium or disequilibrium, titles, production logos, distributor logos, establishment of the theme of the film, provokes questions and they give clues to the audience as to what is going on.

                                            ^this is the main title from Inception^

                                         ^this is our distributor Lionsgate^
A soundtrack is used to help create/build tension. Here is an example of a soundtrack from Django Unchained
 
The equilibrium is used in the opening sequence to show the norm of the setting, the production logo is used to show what film company made the film, the distributor logo is used to show what company distributed the film. The theme needs to be established so that the viewer gains a feel for what the film is going to be like, the titles are used to show who acted in the film and who helped to put it together. An example of a distributor logo would be that of paramount pictures as it is well know and it helps to get films out to cinemas. Within our opening sequence we used the distributor logo of Lionsgate as they are known for distributing horror films.

The convention of the genre i have chosen are that of low key lighting as this is used to elongate the shadows and to create an eerie atmosphere aswell as being used to hide information from the viewer such as a person or object.

                                               ^This is an example of Low Key Lighting^

 Blood is also a conventional tool within a horror as it is used to show murder and it is able to create quite an eerie effect when used with low key lighting as it can reflect light making the blood stand out even more.

 Close ups are used heavily within a horror as they can reveal less about the identity of the killer and it also can reveal only a small amount of what has happened. hiding key information is also important within a horror as if too much is given away early on then people lose interest early on and they will immediately know what is going on within the film. Suspense is featured quite heavily in horrors as it keeps the audience anticipating what is going to come next and it also helps to keep them on the edge of their seats as they are lost within the film. String music is often featured within a horror as string notes can be very sharp without any echo on, creating a very tense atmosphere and also the pace of the strings can help to create a climax within the film.

For our opening sequence we used natural and low key lighting, the low key lighting was used within the basement so that shadows were elongated and the body of the dead girl (Rae) was shown so that her body was facing into the darkness, hinting that her life was fading away. Natural lighting was used to show the difference between the basement when the character is dead to when she is alive as it is a lot lighter and shows that she is a normal person who  alive a while earlier. We used quick flashbacks to give hints to the audience about what was happening and to answer questions like 'how did she get there' but also to create one significant question which was 'what happened to her' as it goes from her walking to the location to her suddenly being dead.

Opening Sequence draft