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

For our film opening, we looked at the thriller genre – especially the psychological and technological sub-genres. Our film opening was then based around conventions from these genres, as well as building on the genre. For example, we used very digital-looking titles on our film opening, as this is a common convention of technological thrillers such as "The Matrix". Because of this techno-thriller theme, we also have a focus on modern technology and the theme of hackers. To fit with this theme, the film has been given a slightly greenish tint.

Before and after editing a scene. Note the green tint.

The opening scene also gives us our first view of the two main characters, Scott and Scherbius, who fill the role of the protagonists, which is typical in Thriller films. Another key aspect of a Thriller film is a character filling a mentor role, such as Morpheus from "The Matrix" or William Somerset from "Se7en". In our film, the mentor role is filled by the character of Scherbius.

We also aimed to build on conventions of Thriller films, in order to develop the genre and make our own opening more unique. For example, we combined elements of both psychological and technological themes - while the underlying theme is based on hackers and the idea of “hacking reality”, the actual events of the film are more psychological, such as characters changing location suddenly. We also went for a less commonly used suburban setting of a town centre, while most thriller films take place in large-scale cities, such as Gotham in "The Dark Knight Rises" and the unnamed city in "Se7en".

As well as this, we aimed to challenge the conventions of a Thriller film, in order to make our film more unique. One way in which we did this was by making the film on a much smaller scale to normal thrillers, with only two characters present in the opening scene and less action. The opening also relies less on special effects and CGI (see video), and more on simple editing such as cuts to give the effect of teleportation.