Evaluation Activity: Challenging Conventions

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge conventions?

My piece portrays a challenge of real media products, as it contains no dialogue. The film is not a silent film, and dialogue would be essential tool throughout, as it is about the adventures in the life of one man.

Opening sequences often contain lots of dialogue, which can give away clues about the characters, whereas I wanted to keep the mysterious, unknown side of my main character. Or even in some cases voiceovers to explain the context and to introduce the film. I believed that through leaving out dialogue, it should serve to attract greater attention from an audience, who would have to learn through seeing and interpreting, instead of simply being told what is going on.

Furthermore, the omission of dialogue helps hook the viewer into the sequence, as they are not bombarded with narrative, which may function only to confuse the audience. I also decided to experiment with this type of film by using a different linguistic, French, for all of the title sequences. This was to add a specific European flavour to the film and affect the way in which the film was perceived, to move it away from the classic American action sports film.

 

The inspiration that I used for my opening sequence came from two James Bond opening sequences: The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only. Despite these two pieces having a high budget and using expansive, budget tearing shots during the respective chases, I still managed to obtain the style of soundtrack and the areas in which title sequence were placed in the opening sequence.

I added a modern slant on action sports films by utilising majority hand-held camera shots instead of attached onto a crane or tripod. I used these shots to immerse the audience into the film and make them feel as though they were actually on the set.