EVALUATION Question one - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We would expect the title sequence to contain suspense and thrill. We would also expect the title sequence to show the genre of the film and set the tone of what the rest of the film is going to be like. Here the stills from my title sequence have been compared with the title sequence of the film Sherlock Holmes. In the title sequence, the convention is that title, credits and the institutional ident is at the start of the film. I believe that our group and the title sequence of Sherlock Holmes has stuck with this convention due to the fact that it is the norm at the start of films, with the exception of Michael Mann whose credits are always at the end of the film. At the beginning of the film you may see either lots of close up's or wide shots, depending on the message or what you are trying to achieve in the title sequence. The wide shot technique would be used to show the location more than anything else. In our title sequence, we didn't go with any wide shots however, our title sequence mainly consisted of close up shots of things such as the onions being chopped. This is different in the Sherlock Holmes as the title sequence consists of drawings at a mid shot range and medium close up range. Following this, another convention is that the audience can be drawn in by the sound in the film more than the initial visual that the audience would see. I would say that our title sequence is a bit of both as the visual makes it intreging and then the sound which comes in a little later adds to the effect of setting the suspensful tone of the rest of the film. In my opinion, Sherlock Holmes sticks with the convention of drawing the audience in with the sound as the visuals are not very eye catching as what other films may be (for example, Se7en). Mainly I think that our title sequence has the slow seduction structure rather than the quick thrill structure for many reasons. The main reason being that in our title sequence, everything is being built up instead having nothing but action. We done this because we didnt want to have so much action that the rest of the film may end up not meeting the audiences expectations. One example of this is the James Bond film called Quantum of Solace as it started with an action packed beginning with the car chase, however, I felt that when watching the rest of the film, it didnt meet the high expectations that had been built up from the beginning of the film. Sherlock Holmes fits in with the convention just like our title sequence as the whole title sequence is quite slow, allowing the film to make our expectations grow higher than what it first was. Finally, our title sequence introduces the characters and the location which is yet again fitting in with the film convention. The convention is that the title sequence would show either the location or the main character(s) that will be in the movie. Sherlock Holmes shows us the main characters within the film rather than the locations which shows that they are yet again sticking with convention. Overall, I'd say that Sherlock Holmes sticks with the codes and conventions of films more than what our title sequence actually does.

Our title sequence:

The title sequence of Sherlock Holmes: