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

Our film is a cyber-security action thriller called ‘Algorithm 404’. It is about a young adult who tries to take down a conspiracy organisation. He does this by hacking files the organisation doesn't want to be leaked and saving it onto a USB to deliver to someone who has the power to publicise what the organisation has been doing. The organisation is aware of what David (the hacker) tries to do and thus follows him, holds him at gunpoint and then knocks him to the ground. The story then goes back to 24 hours earlier of how David starts his journey in bringing the organisation down.

The most useful real films and TV series that inspired us were:

1. Alex Rider
2. The James Bond film series
3. Mr Robot
4. The Matrix
5. Hackers
6. Live Free or Die Hard

Form

Opening credits are a typical feature of an opening sequence. These include the title of the film, Distribution Company, production company, directors’ and actors’ names and names of others and extras involved in creating the film.  This is conventionally done after the setting and characters have all been given a slight introduction.

Typical features of an opening sequence are:

Institution and companies

Introducing the main characters

Sense of genre

Builds enigma

Our opening credits were overlaid onto a ‘fade to black’. We thought this was affective as it created suspense and broke up action to change the pace when necessary. The film ‘se7en’s opening sequence inspired this fade to black and we thought it worked well in our opening sequence 

Se7en inspired our titles.

Genre

The prezi below shows some of the conventions of Cyber-Security action thriller and how we have connoted the genre. 

Cyber-security is a recent genre as technologically has only recently become this advanced. This made it slightly more challenging as there wasn't much we could get inspiration from and so our ideas were original.

We did conform the the Conventions of Action films by having male protagonists however challenged the conventions of Cyber-Security as David wasn't a 'nerdy' character; instead he seemed fit, trained and able to compete physically as well as on his computer.

To connote the cyber-security genre, we used titles similar from “the matrix” and Mr Robot. Seen below are examples of Titles. They have a black background and a very high tech font to connote the genre of Cyber-security. We decided not to have the titles over the shots as it makes it harder to see them, but also as it breaks up the action and helps to change pace similarly to our inspiration ‘Se7en’. 

Algorithm 404 titles

Mr Robot Title

Mr Robot Title.

To further connote the action-thriller genre the pace of our opening sequence built up, there was a feeling of suspense, there was a 'chase' seen followed by a 'capture' scene involving guns.

Narrative Structure 

Style

“A film must connote it’s genre, through the way it looks and feels.”

Grading:

We wanted to grade our shots to make them all look even, the same colour and give a more ‘realistic feel’ 

The hardest scene to Grade- Under the bridge.

                                                          Some of the shots in our opening- We colour graded the shots under the bridge as the lighting would always change and make the shots look non-continuous. When we colour graded we evened them out and gave a more 'action' feel to the scene.               

Conclusion

To conclude, we followed most code and conventions from the cyber-security action thriller genre and of an opening sequence. Allowing us to produce a film opening looking professional and similar of that to real media.