Evaluation question 1

After watching many openings to many films I have learnt that the openings to movies vary entirely but often contain around 3 to 4 characters. Our film has stuck to this convention by having 3/4 characters, the fourth character being someone that the audience never see but are always aware of his presence.

Our opening starts and ends very differently, it starts off with two characters taking a purposeful walk through and urban environment after checking their mobile phones. There is a noticeble urgency to their movement and this is reflected in terms of sound through the dynamic soundtrack which caused mystery and added to the overall feeling of the opening. The film challenges the conventional idea of most crime thrillers by not following the typical good guys vs bad guys idea and instead adding a dark psychological twist on it. The audience don't know who are the good guys or bad guys, this adds an element of confusion and entices the viewer to watch on.








Ellipsis was loosely based on the BBC one crime drama 'Luther', an impressive modern drama in which a detective pits his wits against a seemingly non-stop flow of deadly criminals. Like 'Luther' our media product makes comparisons between the two through mise-en-scene and plot. Both have twins as the main characters and are both represented through costume and props. In 'Luther' the evils twins are dressed in trainers, jeans, and a green jacket with a baseball cap always evident; this adds to the mystery of the characters and through the use of props such as dice and mobile phones it only adds intensity to this idea. The characters in 'Ellipsis' are dressed in a similar way to reflect this.

Both media products were both filmed in a naturalistic grey setting typical of London. The film both followed and challenged forms and conventions of camera work. Throughout the opening we had a lot of different shots that ended up focusing on a church, this was done to hint at the fact that someone was going to die. This was further emphasized when an iris shot was used to show the victim looking up at the church moments before her death. High angle long shots were used quite often for the twins sequences. This was done to show that although they got very close to the victim they were always at a safe enough distance to get away comfortably.

Normally in the thriller genre there is a clear cut protagonist and antagonist and this was the case in our media product. We used a cross-cut between different characters to show the view of murderer and victim. Our setting is unconventional compared to normal thrillers, those like hollywood blockbusters in glorious sunshine and beautiful beaches. Our film was set under the grey sky's of London, this was deliberately done to create a real original and gritty effect and we wanted our target audience to be able to relate to the film as much as possible.