EVALUATION ACTIVITY 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

Title of film

The Title of this film is Vigilante. This one word title can be perceived as straight to the point. From the very start you could guess what direction this film would be taking, and what occupation the lead character will have. The smeared blood effect on the title would hint at a content of violent, yet nothing too gory, in other words, this is definitely not a horror gore-fest.

Genre and opening suggestions towards it
The genre of this film is that of a super hero action film. The opening suggests this by the instant murder of a citizen minding his own business. The kill not on scene, which would lead us to believe that it may not be a horror, as many horrors tend to have their kills on screen, in order to obtain a shock factor. The introduction of a masked man defeating the murderer would probably be the biggest hint towards the genre, as it is a stereotypical image of a non super powered hero.

Opening and how it sets up the story
The opening sets the story about crime fighting. It shows the introduction of how the hero works, and his opinions on crime and how people should deal with it. This would originally have shown an introduction to the main villain group, but this was not seen in the opening.

How are characters introduced?

The characters are introduced in two moves. The first being the murder of an unimportant character, the second move is the tracking down of the villain by the hero. The final few shots of the hero beating up the villain introduce the idea of a hero who does not care about the rights of the villains, and a total lack of humanity on the villains behalf.




Setting

The setting of this piece is in a back alley, which is secluded apart from a few houses seen over the tops of the bushes. This adds to the loneliness and fear of the victim of the murderer. An example of an alley used to similar effect would be that of "The Crow", where a crime also takes place in an alley central to the main character in that film.

Costume and props
The costumes for our piece are very simplistic and are just casual clothes used for an every day situation. Every character in the opening has a distinct look about them though. The villain covers pretty much all his face with the hood, hiding his features to remain undetectable. The hero does cover his face, but with another piece of material, which allows him to remain anonymous.

Editing and camera work
We used edited transitions a lot between action shots of the hero running towards the villain. The voice over overlapping the scene was used at intermittent moments. This was to go with the direction of the scene happening at the time. An example of this is when the hero uses the phone, and at the same time the voice over announces this in the form of a news announcement.

Special effects
There was a lack of special effects on this piece, purely because it wouldn't work with the piece and there was a significant lack of budget towards the film. Then we could have added some sprayed fake blood or something similar.