Media Studies Evaluation Question 1

Media studies Evaluation: Question 1

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

Typical types of conventions for film openings:

- Music

- Micro-elements

- Enigma

- Setting of a film

- Film Genre (i.e. our film opening is a Film Noir)

- film titles

- Key characters

Conventions for a Film Noir:

- Key Characters following set generics (I.e. Hero, Villain, anti-hero etc)

- Mise-en-scene (which is explained with CLAMPS)

- Iconography

- Narrative

- Themes

- Sound

            So what are the film conventions that we followed in our film opening? (referring to both general and film noir film opening conventions)

- Establishment of film genre:

We made sure that the genre was being portrayed in our film so that it was clear what genre our film opening was. For this, we made sure that when we were editing the film, that it was put into black and white, like most film noir's use for their openings so that it was clear that film noir was the genre for our film, this would be the Iconography for the film convention used, another to add on to this would be music, as we used a jazz-style music which was extremely popular to be used in a lot of film noir films.

- Establishment of Key Characters

After the main character is introduced in the beginning of the film opening (Dawson Dunn) the narration then goes on to give out an explanation about the character (i.e. retired police officer, started his own detective business because he couldn't stay away from the job). It then moves on to introduce the victims who are a main focus in the story,  but not main characters. The only character left that is shown is the murderer although only his silhouette is shown, this gives the audience some enigma which will encourage them to carry on watching the film.

- Music

For the music, we took 3 songs and merged them into  one to use for a soundtrack that didn't repeat itself and gave the opening a theme, mood, and atmosphere to each scene of the opening and as most typically used in Film Noir, the style of music we used for this was Jazz music.

- Titles

For the titles, we drifted slightly off the usual style of presenting the titles and incorporated the titles into the actual scene and setting by putting them on a suspect board and showing it in the film opening as if Dawson was looking at the suspect board which then lead onto a close up of each title and actor etc. which gives it a more exciting look rather than just editing the titles over the top of the video as it plays.

- Setting

Although the location of where the film is set is not mentioned during the opening (which generically is set in a large city in America (e.g. New York, New York was a very popular city for a lot of film noir's)), it is still set in the same time period that film noir's are generally set in: 1930's-40's. Because the location isn't mentioned it could be a development to the setting convention as we have followed half of the criteria (the time period set) but we have changed the location which also entails some form of enigma into the film as the audience won't know whether the location has any relevance or importance in the plot of the film.

- Enigma

For the most part of the film opening, the majority of the enigma created in the opening is caused by the murderer for the reasons that we don't actually see his face, know who he is, Dawson mentions that he's possibly trying to play games with him which could lead the audience to wonder why he was trying to end up getting caught and why he had killed so many victims, what the link to all the murders was etc.

Mise-En-scene

Characters

For our film opening, we tried to match the clothing for each character as close to the time period as we could (i.e. It was in the 1930's-40's time so there wouldn't be people in skinny jeans and shirts with punk bands on them, or many revealing clothes etc.) This is so that the characters look the part:

Dawson: He wears a smart suit, blazer, white shirt, red tie, grey trousers, smart shoes and suspenders (these were very popular in the 1940's)

Samantha Scarlett: Samantha wore a black, knee length dress with white polka dots

The Murderer: Although the murderers outfit isn't shown in the film opening, he still follows the criteria of clothing for that of a male in the 1930's-40's (smart-casual suit etc.)

The Victims: The victims also follow the criteria of basic time period clothing (I.e. the male wearing a smart shirt and trousers and the female, a knee-length plain dress and flat shoes)

lighting

In the film opening, most of the lighting is either low-key lighting or just natural lighting considering the fact that most of the film opening was filmed in area's outside of buildings but when there were any shots that were done inside a building (such as the scene where Dawson is in his office) the lighting isn't so much edited to be either high-key or low-key lighting but it's more just a natural lighting in the room, the most part, the lighting coming in from the window which spread across almost half of one wall. The only exception of a drastic change in the lighting for and interior shot is the scene with the interrogation as the lighting had to be done so that we can see Dawson's face and him walking into the room etc. but only see the silhouette of the murderer which proved to be quite a challenge but was eventually doable.

(above and below) the lighting is natural in most of the outside areas

Actors

The criteria for the Actors in a general film noir is pretty much followed in our film opening, only having one non-static character with dialog (That being Dawson with the narration on top of the video) whereas any of the other characters that were shown in the film opening didn't say anything at all (mostly because half of the opening cast were victims) And the way Dawson's speech portrays his character has been tailor-fitted to that of a typical 1930-40's detective. The only problem that was brought up during the filming was the fact that it was easily shown that the victims and other characters were quite young, therefore making it quite difficult to portray Dawson as being around 34 years old.

Make-up

The mass of the make-up used during the film opening was to make the corpses of the victims look realistically dead (fake blood, bruises etc.) The other items that make-up was used for was to show hits of age on Dawson (considering we were trying to pass Lewis off to be in his mid-30's)

Props

Any of the props that were used in the film opening were to fit the conventions of a murder-mystery story such as case files and murder weapons etc. Although, due to the allotted time we were given for our film opening, we couldn't film the scene which showed the murder weapon left by Samantha's body, which did rule out a prop in the opening, although it was still mentioned in the narration as a vital piece of evidence.

In conclusion, I think that we have hit most of the criteria for following the conventions of film noir film openings albeit skipping or altering a few structures so that it could accommodate our film opening more appropriately but even with the minor changes in some of the conventions or some parts of them which were missed out or couldn't be fit in, I still think it is obvious to tell that for the most part, we have stuck to the rules of creating a believable film noir opening.