In this evaluation, I will be comparing aspects the opening sequence to our thriller, to that of real world industry media texts, by linking the similarities in camera work and angles, titles and conventions, and comparing the storyline a characters of both plots. I will be looking at the zombie horror film, 28 Days Later (2002) for examples to compare. |
| The first establishing of our thriller, in 28 days later, they use an establishing shot of London at sunset, which then pans down/crossfades in to the room where everyone is sleeping, both simply setting the scene and location. |
A scene from 28 Days Later, commonly known as ‘Jim’s House’ closely resembles our thriller opening sequence, in terms of establishing shots in order to set the scene and the build up of tension towards the climax, where jim gets attacked when zombies smash through the windows of his kitchen, and then the secondary climax, where one of the survivors he is with get brutally murdered by the other for being bitten. The climax in our thriller, would be when we are introduced to the victim in the bike, and the secondary climax, being when he gets gunned down by the supposedly harmless woman who ‘comes to his rescue’.
Both scenes start calm, content and relaxing for the audience, as this marks the beginning of our media text, the first thing the viewers will see after expectations of an action packed crime thriller, will be the wind gently blowing through the trees and diegetic sounds of Birdsong. In the scene from 28 Days, Jim is walking around his kitchen and remembering his parents pre-apocalypse, after discovering their dead remains in their bedroom and seeing vicious zombies attacking him, after coming fresh out of a Coma into the apocalypse. The audience has been on watching closely and intensely, and are now witnessing a scene, which contrasts the film that they have been watching so far.
Then however, both scenes suddenly move into confusing and disorientation action, without giving the audience much warning, the shots in both our Opening Sequence and the scene form the film, using a controlled shaky cam shots to cause confusion, but being controlled, so that the audience have some idea of what is happening, focusing on actors with close up shots when there is important dialogue, or their is a need to show facial expressions of either the survivors or the zombies onto of him, to add to the sense of fear and confusion.
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Both sequences feature multiple
shaky close up shots to enhance the
confusion fear and disorientation that
the victim would be feeling, and the
shots are of either his expression
or of what he would be seeing
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At the end of the main sequence of action, both scenes end on a form of violence, which has been shot in a way which the audience can see clearly. Both scenes are from the perspective of the victim of the attacks, so when they aren't involved in the action, then the camera movement adjusts, at the end of both scenes the characters focus on actions that they are not involved with directly, in the case of our thriller it is the cyclist thanking the woman for coming to help him, then she shoots him, the camera at a low angle, and the framing being still, showing control and clam before the ending, and giving the impression that the woman is in controll. Like in the scene from 28 days later, the fight between the survivors and the infected ends, but there is one who has become infected and in the moment of time where they all realise this, and the main character Jim witnesses Selena, another survivor, kill him with a machete, the scene being dramatic however the shots are still and revelling of the violence, as it is still from the perspective of the main character.
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| Like when the character above realises he's infected, before being killed by Selena... |
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| ...And when Jim wakes up from his Coma. |
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Close ups of the actors faces in both our thriller
and 28days, were used to clearly show the emotions
of the characters in moments
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The characters that are introduced to the audience are very similar in both films, first of all, they both get into their accidents by riding a bike and being involved in a collision, and both are introduced post accident, however Jim is introduced 28 days after his accident, waking up from a comma and into the apocalypse, hence the title of the film. Our Victim is introduced very soon after his accident, and their is no reason to suggest he was unconscious for any length of time. They are both are introduced to the audience being disoriented and confused, even scared to some extent, more so with our character, however the emotions being felt by both characters is the same, just on different levels.
Both our thriller and the film 28 days later, use simplistic White Font for all of its title sequences, however they are never layered onto footage, just a black background, all the credits are saved until the end of the film, ours start at the beginning and are layered onto the establishing shots of Surrey Hills at the begin of the thriller, with the faint sound of our victim in the background. However both our thriller ad 28 days later, still use the simplistic text for the same reason, to not draw the audiences attention away from the film, but at the same time, we were attempting to show the audience the big names in our film, getting them exited to see their favourite big names in
the film, though we used fake names to represent this.
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| Simplistic tile to the films, on a black background, the reasons for choosing this as i explained were the same from both our group and the director of 28 days later. |
Using fancy titles would ruin the action going on in the Thriller, and draw the audiences attention away from the content, so we decided to stick with a simplistic font. Danny Boyle, who directed 28 days later, and had a say in the editing, also conceived the same concept for his film, as he wanted the audience to be totally occupied with the plot of the film.
The plots of both films, with considering that our thriller wasn’t a complete feature length film, are very different, unlike this one instance from 28 days that I've used as an example. they are different genre, and so both films will have a totally different set of conventions to the each other. The plot of our thriller, after this opening sequence, will follow either the killer herself, or follow a plot-line similar to the TV series Broadchurch, or other crime thrillers, an investigation of the killer if you will, because our victim is killed within the first 2 minutes of the film. However the plot of 28 days later is based around The Victim, and his journey through the post apocalyptic world of Britain.
Mise-en-scene is however very different in both scenes, ours in outdoors during the day, theirs is indoors during the night. The props costume are totally different, Jim from 28 days later wearing Doctors scrubs he picked up in the hospital, and our victim is wearing bike lycra. Our victim is trapped under his bike trying to break free, and Jim is trapped under 2 zombies, and two others come to his rescue. The scenes are totally different in their mise-en-scene, the similarities in the two are drawn when it comes to audience reaction to the scenes and the conventions and effect its trying to have, the timing of both sequences are also very similar, thought the intensity of the action in both, differs somewhat.
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