BY TOM BURDEN

In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Introduction:

As you will have seen from our pre-production, we were very set on breaking stereotypes with the opening of our movie. However, as filming progressed, we found that our initial vision slowly began to blend into something a little more stereotypical (due to us finding elements that didn’t translate well from planning to the final shoot). The turning point really came when analysing our target market and finding that, with all the element we wanted to incorporate, our market was extremely niche.

Due to Inception being one of the thriller films that personally inspired me to try and create something slightly different, it felt only natural to compare the elements in that opening to mine to see what I have differentiated/replicated.

Title:

When it comes to the title; Inception (along with other Thriller films) are often titled with a single word. With the title of our movie (Seize) we stuck to that trend. This is because we felt that it was snappy and “rolled off of the tongue” very well. Furthermore, a single word provides a negative connotation to the movie which, without seeing any footage whatsoever, puts the idea of a dark, gripping story into the heads of the audience.

In addition, much like Inception’s title, the single word Seize provides a sense of mystery at the same time as these stereotypical connotations. This allows some excitement to be built around the movie due so much of the film’s details being unknown (thus leaving all details to complete speculation).

Setting and Location:

Our setting do share a few similarities with the movie Inception. Firstly, we have tried to keep the number of locations down to a reasonable number (so not to bombard the viewer with too much to think about). Our movie features two major locations (the container and the Heath land), which is the same number as Inception (which features the beach and Chinese Palace). Furthermore, our film opening is similar in the sense that it too features a serene setting (our use of the Heath land compared to their use of the beach) which is used contrast the situation the character is in (in our case the imminent kidnap and in Inception’s case the hallucinations about his estranged children).

Camerawork and Editing:

We saw elements in the way that Inception was filmed that appealed to us and, therefore, tried to incorporate them into our movie (while fitting those aspects to our needs). An example of this would be the use of close ups in the sequence (mainly of the character’s faces) which we saw as a very effective way of drawing the audience’s attention to specific items (in our case the gun and kidnapper’s mask). However, we knew that too many close ups would rapidly become tedious. Therefore, we attempted to differentiate our shots. To do this we decided to shoot using the opposite of the close up. By using much more wide angle shots, we could effectively contrast the general tropes of the genre while, at the same time, display the victim’s isolation.

Like Inception, we did our best to kept editing simple. By this I mean that we didn’t want to use anything more than simple jumps cuts (which could be sped up to suit the tone of each scene). We did this because we didn’t want to “overpower” the scene and give the viewer too much to focus on. Furthermore, the use of transitions such as screen wipes would not effectively work with the darker tone we want to set.

Special Effects:

Although Inception, has quite a few uses of special effects (CGI etc.), none of this is featured in the immediate opening. In this sense we have a similarity to Inception. Our film features no special effects whatsoever. This for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the small budget of which this movie was produced didn’t facilitate the use of features such as 3D. Secondly, special effects are something that we never would’ve even considered using because the use of more ‘flashy’ effects would detract from the darker tone of the film.

Costumes and Props:

In our film opening, we initially had the idea to try and break multiple stereotypes with the appearance of the kidnapper. This would have meant that our kidnapper would appear much more differently than he does in the film cut. We ultimately decided that, in a film where we still needed a distinguishable antagonist, a costume that doesn’t convey this may have viewers confused.

On the props front, the use of items such as the iPhone help to distinguish our victim as middle class (much like how the man in the oriental palace has very upper class attire).

Title Font and Style:

The title was another aspect that we looked toward Inception for. Both our title and theirs consist of a large bold font. We saw this as a good choice because its punchy aesthetic stands out well and, in turn, emphasises the film’s name (and all of the connotations that come with it.

Our only difference between our title and the title of Inception is that, while our logo is one single block colour, while the Inception logo has a few transparent areas. We pick this single white colour because we saw it a nice way to reference the white mask of the kidnapper.

Story and how the opening sets it up:

We really liked the way that Inception wasn’t afraid to leave out details and, thus expect the viewer to figure them out themselves. This was something that we liked the idea of trying to emanate. However, we did this to a slightly lesser degree because we found doing it way too difficult with the subject matter we have (as compared with Inception that was fully designed around viewer confusion – all the way up to its ending)

Genre and how the opening suggests it:

This was one aspect that we very much struggled to capture when filming. As most of the traditional exciting action sequences don’t appear in the beginning of our movie, it was very difficult for us to find a way to emphasise the film’s genre.

However, this can be seen as a strength because, as other aspects of our film involve hiding details from the viewer, this would further that objective (due to the audience having to piece together each component to figure out the genre). Attempting to process this information helps to keep the viewer is engaged.