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

            

 TITLE- 'BERSERK'

          The title of our film 'BERSERK' is another term for 'psychotic' or 'psycho', however because psycho/tic is a general term for a crazed individual we decided to research different terms for psycho/tic and found that 'berserk' is not as commonly used to describe a crazed individual like psycho/tic. The 'berserk' title design that I created for our opening sequence is dim and I deliberately did not use bright colours as it would not associate with the theme of our sequence, 'Psychological Thriller'. The brown, stained-like and crumpled paper background sets the atmosphere as it is a sign of unhygienic and old condition-like states. I also used the 'Scratchy Film' effect under the 'Graphical' heading as it gave the title a more horrific effect along with the 'Chiller' red coloured font which represented the personality of the main antagonist serial killer in our sequence. Similarly the colour red is used in the title to signify blood which is shown further in the sequence, red in this case also represents the danger of the character and how he is a threat to the general public. Blood splatters on the top right hand corner and the bottom left hand corner towards the end of the title animation which adds to the effectiveness of the sequence and foreshadows events that occur further in the sequence.

         As we can see the title 'Seven' uses the handwriting font to represent the antagonist in the film. I adapted this idea for our title using the red tone, however I used a more sharp, edgy font-'Chiller', whereas the font showed in this 'Seven' title is more bold and rounded.

This is the opening credit font from the 'Seven' opening sequence (left hand side) similar to the font I used for our title and opening credits as it is 'scratchy' and is sharply defined around the edge. This could signify a blackboard with white chalk, when writing on a chalkboard a scratchy sound is heard and is considered unpleasant and screechy in peoples' opinion. The opening credit font used in our sequence (right hand side). is similar to the font used in 'Seven' however ours is not meant to represent a chalk on blackboard, it signifies the personality of the antagonistic serial killer. Our font colour for our title and opening credits is red-again stresses the danger created by the serial killer. Another difference between our font and that in 'Seven' is that I have decided to use capital letters on every individual letter in the opening credits to create more fear in the sequence.

 SETTING/LOCATION

          The setting of our sequence was in a confined room in an estate flat-Nightingale Estate in Hackney, London. This area is quite high in crime rates and statistics and the view from the flat established the location for our sequence which is very important in every film as it sets the background of the film.

Here, we can see that it is daylight from the shadows created by the props used and  natural daylight is entering here from the left hand side. We filmed our sequence during the day in order to get more natural light so that we were not filming at a time where the scene would be badly lit and hardly anything in the scene is seen. On the other hand, as we filmed our sequence during the late afternoon, we ran into the evening when the sun set, therefore we decided to film another establishing shot of London this time when the sun was setting in order to signify an end to the antagonist's day of 'berserk' possibly schizophrenic behaviour and desire to kill.

This shot from our sequence shows that it is set in daylight like 'Seven' as we see the light coming in through the window. We set our sequence during the day to fit his costume which was a formal blazer and briefcase just like any other ordinary business man looking prepared to work.

This shot shows the sunset signifying the end of the day for the antagonist, another day of his torturous planning day is over.

PROPS/COSTUME

          The props included a pack of colouring pencils, a briefcase, a radio, fake blood and a scrapbook which I created myself by stitching four pieces of A4 paper horizontally.

This is the fake blood we used on our serial killer's hands, face and on the scrapbook. It made his 'psychotic' side more clearer to the audience and showed that he was not 'normal' as they might have first thought, instead he is a deranged, psychopathic serial killer. In addition, it helped create the atmosphere making it more frightening and gory with the blood smeared everywhere when his 'psychotic' side is shown on screen. The shot on the right hand side of where and how we used the fake blood in our opening sequence. Here, the serial killer's hand is completely smothered in blood and so is his scrapbook as a result of him smearing his bloody hands onto it.

This is the radio that we used for our sequence where he switches on his genre of music that he prefers, in this case classical. We decided to have the start of the sequence calm with classical music so that the audience first believe he is a relatively 'normal' man until seconds later his 'psychotic' side shows and this is where the eerie, suspenseful music starts to play and the classical, calm music fades out.

The antagonist in our opening sequence is wearing a blazer to represent his two sides (normal and psychotic), it tells the audience that he is schizophrenic as he presents himself as completely normal at first on the outside, however on the inside he is a serial killer. We adapted this from The Stepfather 2009 film opening sequence where he appeared 'normal' at first as he was wearing normal clothes like any other ordinary man then later we learn he is a killer.  We adapted our ideas from The Stepfather and Seven in order to show more his serial killer side rather than more his normal side.     

 CAMERAWORK

           I used various camera angles and shots as the cinematographer in our group. These included variations of close-ups, medium close-ups, over-the-shoulder shots, pan movements both using vertical and horizontal directions.

This is an establishing shot of London, in our opening sequence this pans from left to right slightly before moving on to the next clip.  I decided to use an establishing shot in the beginning of our sequence to set the location of the film as many films do in their opening sequences aswell. It sets the background for the film so that the audience are able to think of the different types of characters that maybe included, what landmarks in that specific location will be used and other concepts to stereotypical views of any particular location. This shot tells the audience a complete opposite view to what the film actually includes, i.e. this shot is a bright establishing shot of London telling the audience this may be a 'happy' film, however little do they know it has a dark side until further on into the sequence.

This is one of the big close-up shots of the serial killer smearing blood onto the side of his face signifying the importance of his action in this shot. It shows how psychotic he really is to the audience.

This is a shot from our opening sequence on the right hand side, of a ripped piece of paper from the serial killer's scrapbook with a photo of a blindfolded girl, stuck to the wall with a bloody handprint on it. This is meant to represent one of the serial killer's victims and is similar to the shot on the left hand side from the Seven opening sequence on one of the serial killer's victims. We have adapted this shot from the Seven opening sequence into our own media sequence.

This is a medium close-up shot of the serial killer with his hand in a claw shape against the window showing he wants something or someone and he is ready to kill.

SOUNDTRACK

          In our media opening sequence we chose a similar soundtrack to that used in the opening sequence of Seven, however this particular soundtrack is not heard in our sequence until 00.49.21 and fades out at 02.11.20, where the final soundtrack 'Noise Attack' is used when the title of our opening sequence 'BERSERK' appears on screen. We were able to download it off a copyright free website: 

http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?feels[]=Aggressive&page=3 

The soundtrack that we chose is called  'Mechanolith' and has a n aggressive beat to it, it starts off slow but then quickly builds the pace up as the sequence carries on and his 'psychotic' side is showed more. It has this action atmosphere to it as if he is coming after you making the audience feel uncomfortable. At the very beginning of the sequence before the 'Mechanolith' soundtrack enters, we have two other soundtracks, one when the panning shot of London enters on the screen- this soundtrack is again from royalty free music and is called 'Private Reflection' this enters at 00.09.13 and lasts until 00.41.00, when the second soundtrack called 'Blue Feather' enters when the serial killer switches on the radio at 00.41.13 and lasts until 00.49.20.

CHARACTER INTRODUCTION

          In the beginning of our opening sequence, the antagonist serial killer is introduced with a worm's eye camera angle in order to make him seem threatening to the audience.

 

This is also blurred so that his identity is not clear to the audience, throughout the sequence his full identity is not shown as his eyes are never seen in any shot. This was to create enigma and mystery for the audience.

 

GRAPHICS/SPECIAL EFFECTS

The shot on the right hand side was colour corrected to look slightly more brighter than the shot on the left hand side as here he is in his 'normal' state. The natural daylight in this shot coming through the window is clearer and makes the shot slightly more brighter than usual. In the shot on the right hand side the daylight is still coming through the window but is not as bright as the shot above. Here the window looks more frosty and dim and the shot itself does not look as clear as the one above. This was done to make the 'bloody' shots more effective as the darker surrounding makes the shot look more psychotic like the serial killer.