AS Coursework Analysis

Synopsis


The main purpose of our opening sequence was to mainly portray social divides and stereotypes. The two stereotypes we mainly wanted to highlight is people's perception of upper class people vs lower class people; we mainly emphasized this through exaggerating these stereotypes and using them to make it obvious to the viewer. We chose not to use dialogue so that we could try to emphasize these stereotypes based on purely looks and the characters actions alone; because of this, we had to make sure that the characters 'looked the part' so that it would be clear what we were trying to achieve. The characters costumes were inspired by what most people would assume that upper class and lower class citizens would wear . For our typical 'lower class' character, we had him wear very basic and plain (non-designer) clothes; a plain jacket, simple jeans and inexpensive shoes as to not draw too much attention which suits both the story and the character himself. For the typical 'upper class' character, we had him wear a formal jacket along with a shirt and tie and formal boots in order to give off a rich businessman vibe to the viewer; we also had the rich businessman carry a formal bag/briefcase, which we drew a lot of attention to (by using tracking shots on only the bag to make sure that the viewer knew it would be an important aspect of the story) to highlight the businessman vibe we were going for.


Areas of Success


I believe that we succeeded in highlighting every main point we wanted to. The main points we wanted to highlight were the stereotypical look of upper class vs lower class people and the viewers opinion on them, we also wanted to create a sense of mystery surrounding the briefcase by highlighting how important it was from the very beginning of the opening sequence. We also wanted to create a cliffhanger to draw the viewer in and make them want a continuation of the story.

I believe we succeeded in highlighting the stereotypes by the costumes and the actions that the characters made. For example, the lower class character is in very plain and cheap clothes whereas the upper class character is in a formal jacket, shirt, tie, trousers and formal boots; I believe that we succeeded in this area because we made it very clear to the viewer what we were going for.

I believe we also succeeded in making the viewer know that the briefcase was important before the twist was shown. We drew attention to the briefcase by focusing on it during the build up, especially when we used a long tracking shot of the briefcase to highlight its importance.

I also believe we succeeded in creating a sense of mystery at the end of the opening sequence making the viewer want to see more; we did this by leaving the opening sequence on a cliffhanger.


Areas for Improvement


We could have improved the sound of the opening sequence. I feel that the soundtrack ruined the tone of the opening sequence because t felt cheap and didn't really give off the right vibe. I believe that the opening sequence would have been greatly improved if we had used natural sounds or a much more subtle song to give off a much more subtle and eerie vibe.

The opening sequence could have also been a bit longer as the original was only 1:30, whereas it would have been much better if the opening sequence was around the 2:00 mark.

I believe that one of the worst aspects of the opening sequence is definitely the lighting; it is too bright for the type of atmosphere we were going for. I think we should have waited until it was slightly darker as that would have created a much scarier and mysterious feel to the opening sequence.


Audience Feedback


The feedback we received after we had some people watch the opening sequence was rather mixed. Many agreed on aspects that I had established we thought we did well i.e. the costumes and the intriguing story, but they also had complaints about the short length and the lack of any dialogue or proper characters as there is no talking in the opening sequence or proper character development; the only moment that has any character development is where one of the main characters finds a file about them in a strangers bag. Although we wanted to give off a mystery vibe, I do not think we translated or executed the idea very well, which is something that I am looking to improve on in A2