Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film plot:

My film opening uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products through the genre, narrative, character roles and editing techniques. I have compared our film opening to a range of real film references including 'Seven', 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Inception'.

Our film is a neo-noir film about our main character, Stacey, seducing a rich business man into marrying her. She then kills him and takes his money but as she is a detective she is able to sabotage the case of his murder to protect herself. Our film ends on a cliff-hanger as a new detective joins the force and begins to suspect her.

Our form:

I think our opening followed the typical format and I think its function was carried out well as it portrayed our character well and left the viewer wanting to see more.

Our credits were very similar to those used in 'Se7en' as they fit between our shots and flickered to create a mysterious tone. I think we could have tried to make our titles more effective by adding graphics to the background as they were on the screen.                                                                                         

We also included dialogue but this did not come in till the second half of our opening sequence as opposed to 'Pulp Fiction' where the first scene begins with dialogue in a cafe. By only including one character in our opening it meant that we could not use any shot-reverse-shot I think this still worked efficiently as it hinted at their being an element of danger.
           

Genre conventions for neo-noir/film noir:

'Blade Runner', 'The Last Seduction', and 'Fatal attraction' inspired our style of lighting as it was very low key and cast dark shadows across the character's faces which created an element of mystery and danger.

'The Last Seduction'

'Fatal Attraction'

Our setting was inspired by 'L.A Confidential' as a bedroom that is clearly feminine creates iconography of a femme fatale. 

Exenia Onotopp and the femme fatale in 'Blue Velvet' inspired the representations we used to portray Stacey. As seen in the gif below, our character follows the conventions of a mysterious, yet seductive, character who are able to use their beauty and feminine charm to attract male attention for their own personal gain- below the male character turns to observe the femme fatale and seems engrossed with her. 

The Killers, 1946

'Inception' helped us to establish our iconography and, as seen in the image in the table, the character is holding a gun to convey the genre conventions of crime, therefore we also followed this convention.

Narrative Structure: 

Style:

The style helps to connote the genre and the way we want our film to look and feel.

1) Grading

Our grading was very similar to 'Dexter' as he exits the room. The saturation is high and it creates a very normal, happy feel to juxtapose the criminal aspects.

2) We edited the music to fit with the dialogue and chose it specially as we thought it matched our style and we particularly enjoyed when the drum beat came in. We cut our shots to match the beat to create a fast, snappy pace which creates tension. Below is our initial music piece which I am glad we changed as I do not think it works very well.

In 'Skyfall' we felt that the music was a very important aspect and this made us very aware of the style of music we wanted. Although 'Skyfall' consisted of lyrics which we did not want to include in our opening, the instruments used were very effective as they helped set the mood which inspired us to find a track that created an exciting and tense atmosphere.

           

3) Titles

Titles in 'Seven'

Titles in 'Unlawful'

To conclude, I think our opening sequence follows many genre conventions and conventions of an opening sequence. This means that our opening is easily identifiable to our target audience as they will recognize that it is a crime-thriller, neo-noir film. This also meant that our opening will be very similar to real media film products.