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

Having had several meetings to come up with an idea for our film, we came up with a variety of different ideas of a variety of different genres. We then did research into our ideas and finally chose to do the Zombie/Action genre, as we thought this was unique and it was something that would be very fun to do.

We researched this genre and films of this particular genre, from this we learnt about the typical conventions and how films followed them or even challenged them. We focused on characters, themes, events and iconography. 
.
Below are different aspects of the research and how the research was applied.

Click on the image to enlarge

Click on the image to enlarge





How we applied our research to our opening sequence:

• The film focuses on the survival of protagonists, they work together as a team to survive in the apocalyptic world. One of the survivors then sacrifices his life to kill some Zombies- this was inspired  by 'I Am Legend'.
• Our USP is the fact there is a rival group, and the narrative is based on the conflict which develops among these survivors. 
• We end the sequence with a cliff hanger as an unknown person knocks the survivor out- this keeps the audience engaged as they'll be willing to find out what happens.

Narrative Structure:

When it comes to the narrative structure of films they all tend to follow a similar format, and this is what Todorov's Theory highlights. Despite what genre the film may be, it still follows the conventional structure and it is as follows.

Our opening scenes consists of two of the 5 parts. The films starts off with the the equilibrium where everything seems fine as Daniel says 'we've seen nothing for hours, let's get back to camp', this makes everything seem fine. But when Maran sees the Zombies is the begiging of the distruption and this goes on to develop when a few Zombies are killed and they start chasing them. The later stages of the film is based on what happens to Maran after and how both rival gorups overcome each other and the Zombies.

Narrative Technique:	Example:	Why it was used?
Ellipsis	When Daniel and Maran are running away from the Zombies .	As it was chase scene it was important we maintained a fast pace, so we can’t show the entire journey as it’d be too slow and tedious and therefore bore the audience. So we have to ensure we maintain a well paced sequence to keep the audience thrilled and engaged.
Enigma code	When Maran was knocked out by an unknown person.	It will raise narrative enigma, and make the audience question many things such as who is the unknown person, where is Maran, will he survive, what’s going to happen now? These questions will make the audience want to watch on and find out.
Cliff hanger	When Maran was knocked out by an unknown person.	The audience will want to know what happens next after such a breathtaking chase.
Sound bridge	When Daniel loads, a sound is used rather than repeatedly showing the shot of him reloading.	This makes the sequence slightly faster paced as you don’t have to cut back to the reloading shot all the time. It prevents the sequence from being slowed down.
Parallel	When the Zombies are moving towards Daniel and Jeremy.	The use of parallel editing allowed us to build up tension as the Zombies were getting closer, as the audience will feel more engaged and involved in the action, which is vital for them to have a good viewing experience.

We followed Vladamir Propp's theory when it came to the characters.

The Villains- The Zombies play the villains in our film and are the ones who are behind the disruption.

The Hero(es)/Protagonist(s)- Daniel and Maran are the heroes introduced in the opening sequence of the film. Although Daniel's screen time may be small, he sacrificed himself for others which portrays him as a hero.



Form:

Click on the image and then zoom in if necessary to view content. 

We did our research on titles for the Zombie/Action genre and they are often in dark colours, hence why we used a dark red to represent our bloody theme. We used Live Type to execute the best possible text.

The music we used works in synergy with the action on screen, this helped us raise the tension and excitement. Having done our research we found out that films like Resident Evil have similar music. It took us a long time to find the music, but it was the best one we found. The music was found on 'www.freeplaymusic.com'


Style:

The video below highlights all the factors we took into account when editing to get the perfect style for our genre.