Evaluation- Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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

The detective in our opening sequence was quite conventional as he had a detectives hat and smoked and wore a smart suit and tie. We also insinuated that we had a femme fatale, again, showing that we followed the conventions of film noir. Lighting was also used in our opening sequence to create shadows, a classic film noir aspect.These conventions are seen in many film noir's such as maltese falcon. The music we used was also classic to the genre as it was jazz, using it added to the feel of the sequence as a whole. However, we also challenged some film noir norms by not making our film black and white as we thought the film being in colour would make it better quality and more modernized.  Our femme fatale also challenged certain conventions as you didn't see her and she didn't talk. We did this because we thought it gave the detective more power from the beginning. 

The main difference between normal film noirs (such as maltese falcon)and our sequence  is the fact that we hardly showed the femme fatale, as said above we did it to give the detective more power and to make our storyline a bit more mysterious. A typical femme fatale would seem very innocent but actually be very devious. In some ways we kept the innocent part in as her not being shown could be seen as a form of 'protection' however instead of deviousness we added in mystery as we thought that one of the flaws in typical film noir was its lack of mystery as every film in that genre is the same. Another challenge (again as said before) was the fact that it wasn't in black and white. The inspiration for this was from the film noir 'Chinatown' this is one of the few film noirs that was actually in colour. Historically film noir was in black and white because t is a very old genre so when it first started there was no colour film, as time went on and film developed more, this category of film stayed with the black and white theme because it had always been a hit and was cheaper to do. On the other hand we did keep shadows in the film which is a typical aspect, alongside keeping the smart dress, trilby hat and a detective that smokes we thought that it would add to the overall effect of our film because to make it completely different to a film noir would take away a lot of the audience appeal.   

This is the start of 'Chinatown' as you can see like the start of ours there are hits of black and white (similar to our first shot) but overall it is in colour.

We also used jazz as a non-diegetic sound not only because it's typical to the genre but also because it was the best sounding music for our opening sequence it went well with the voiceover and also added to the overall mystery of it all, just like in horrors nursery rhymes add to the fear, in noir jazz adds to the mystery. A voiceover is also occasionally used in film noir to set the scene.  We used on because we thought it would tell the plot better that dialogue would but it also gave us a chance to keep the typical noir language expressions and accent.

In this shot we are establishing the scene and we added the title over it, the light so the viewer could see the mystery theme coming though from the beginning. 

We used another establishing shot of the detectives house to set the scene, it again adds to the mystery of the whole opening sequence

The close up of the alarm added with the audio of the alarm going off allows the viewer to know that its early on in the day. We did it at this particular time so that you could see the character transform into the detective by getting dressed.

The close up of his feet is the first thing the viewer see of the detective. This is when the voice over starts and we get to know the plot a bit more.

In this close up of the face we finally see the detectives full face the top of what he is wearing, we did this to show the viewer the conventions of film noir as most detectives would dress smartly, like our detective. 

The close up of the cigarette and ashtray was also done to show the conventions of film noir as many conventional film noir's have this aspect in it.

We then faded into an establishing shot of the school, this challenges what would normally be in a film noir as normally it is seen as a genre for older people but by setting part of our sequence in a school we thought it would be a good change.