Question 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.
Our film 'The Witness' is and Action/Thriller that follows the story of a teenage boy named Jack. Feeling isolated by everyone else in the world Jack turns to drugs and soon finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. He witnesses two murdering gang members attempting to burry their victim, he attempts to flee, but not before being spotted by them. After a chase through the forest Jack is caught and taken capture by the bloodthirsty killers.

After escaping the gang use evidence of Jacks drug use as leverage to keep him quiet, threatening to turn him in to the police. In order to stay alive, he must take matters into his own hands and uncover the truth behind the gang's murders and protect both himself and their next victim from harm.

Genre:
'The Witness' is a British Action Thriller. The primary signifier of its genre comes from the gritty themes of Gang violence, kidnapp and murder. The film contains many moments that create both adrenaline and fear with multiple point of view shots to immerse the audience and allow them to empathise with Jack. Our project shares similar themes to Pierre Morel's Action Drama Taken, a film where an ex-spy must save his daughter from an estranged captor. 

These similarities are:

- Themes of Kidnapp.
- A protagonist having to take matters into his own hands to bring the antagonists to justice.
- Similar plot line (an alone protagonist having to track and fight his enemies to survive)

Within this trailer we can clearly see the similarities between story lines of the two films and how in both the primary victims are women with a male protagonist attempting to save them.

Narrative Structure:
When deciding the narrative structure for our film we took into account Todorov's theory of equilibrium:





As this theory works particularly well with Horror and Thriller films we decided to apply it to our storyline. Following this idea you can see use of the theory within our opening sequence.



Equilibrium

Disruption

As our project is only an opening sequence we do not yet have a 'Journey' or a 'Resolution' featured however these two would be Jacks mission to stay alive and the final resolution being Jack defeating or exposing the gang, winning the girl (their next victim) and walking off scott free. Very similar to the film 'The Sentinal' where the main character is on the run whilst trying to figure out the truth about the things happening around him, the character is also being blackmailed from doing the right thing and cannot turn to the police for help.




Our films form is similar to that of most others as the story is often set up within the first few minutes and the Heros Journey makes up the rest of the film with the resolution ofcourse coming in at the final minutes of the film.

Purposes of opening sequences:
Opening sequences aim to achieve three key things that will encourage someone to watch the rest of the film, these include the introduction of characters, the establishing of the films themes and genre and to engage the veiwer so much that they continue to watch the film.

I believe we achieved all three of these as we introduce the character of Jack and the two unknown villians, we set the tone with the image of a dead body and a chase sequence and we also engage the audience through fast paced shots and handheld POV shots.