1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our opening sequence include different film noir generic conventions such as the use of a gun, our main character is established within the opening sequence and is shot at by the typical bad cop character.
In our opening sequence we have also, last minute, included the femme fatale in the opening sequence having her smoke a cigarette with her bright red lipstick with a voice over the actual opening sequence giving more insight as to what is happening in the opening sequence and the story line of the film.
Our characters are determined in the opening sequence and one of the characters (being the bad cop) is a silhouette figure, which is a typical generic convention in a film noir, however more common in neo-noir’s.
Low-key lighting is also apparent in our film noir as the location was in an old warehouse and all the natural lighting was very low-key. The use of the camera light gave a good spotlight effect.
Our main characters were also wearing suits in the opening sequence making them the dominant characters and also showing their role as good cop bad cop.
Leaving the blood red when Carter gets shot is similar and has been inspired from the neo noir Sin City.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Men and women are conveyed in a particular, stereotypical way, as far as film noir goes. The female is a seductive femme fatale and the males take on a role of an important detective with good cop, bad cop roles.
Target audience: Mature audience, film certificate18+.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Warner bros are more likely to take on our film as there productions has dominated the film market for many years and has produced many great film noir and thrillers throughout the years.
I think after the release date it could be a TV movie, maybe a film4 movie.
Currently film noir is becoming more popular in the media industry, this is shown by Rockstar’s latest release of LA Noire, and also celebrity Britney Spears new album Femme Fatale. Our film could be later released after the big re release of the film noir genre bringing many different audience types.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience is of those who enjoy a film noir movie and of those who are of 18 years and over. We aim to attract a mature audience, bringing in fans from other film noir films, and with a wide range such as, Sin City, LA Confidential.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
Our advertising would be displayed near other film noir products and products of a similar nature such as the new release of Rockstar’s game LA Noire, it would be advertised as commercials on Youtube when people search other film noir products.
Some camera shots and angles are not so steady and are hand held/canted as it is action based and quite fast paced. Some POV shots make it possible for the audience to see from the eye of the characters and put them in their position making it easy to connect with the character and feel their emotions, whether it’s fear or power. The impact of this then ticks the boxes of generic conventions of film noir as a sense of suspense is felt within the audience, not particularly making it suitable for a young audience.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
Strengths of camera equipment.
We could manually control the shots we got, allowing us to get different angles and view points such as the Point of view shot and close ups. We used the camera in the manual mode to control the amount of light coming into the camera, therefore allowing us to achieve the dark film noir effect.
The microphone was sensitive to great detail in noise, allowing us to get great different sound effects and noises. The area in which we shot the sequence was echoic and the sound of feet running was very effective because it enhanced the eerie atmosphere and combined with the breathing turned out to be very successful.
The camera light was also very useful in shooting as the dark atmosphere was a perfect low-key lighting with the camera light, however without the camera light the natural lighting would have been to low-key and unable to see a clear picture.
Tripods also came in very handy as it helped us create steady shots and closeups without having a jolted hand or camera shake and making the shot more realistic.
Weaknesses of camera equipment.
Unfortunately we were unable to carry a dolly to our destination due to transportation issues but our hand held camera movements worked just as successfully. However, with not being able to carry the dolly, we were limited with our movements and we had to be careful with the cameraman's footsteps as previously stated the location was echoic and any sudden random movement was picked up by the sensitive camera microphones.
Using colour correction to turn our footage to black and white was found very useful because it gives the footage a more film noir effect. Chroma key was also used in the editing of the footage to get the red of lips and blood to stand out the most. Chroma key helps take out a section of the image to add colour on top of the black and white. This effect allows us to create the effect which was used in Sin city. Also other effects such as the Luma key were used for us to achieve the effect for the film logo.
7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at our preliminary task we can see that it wasn’t so successful, however, we feel like our group has massively progressed in the filming area as our rough cut seems to be quite successful already and with editing knowledge and techniques by Laimis we could have a winning final piece.
Different opening sequences of film noir’s and neo noir’s helped gather ideas for our opening sequence such as SIN CITY and USUAL SUSPECTS. Other film noir enigmas such as the femme fatale and smoking also were put forward in our thought web when deciding what to include into our opening sequence.
Shots such as POV shots and close ups were thought of when thinking of action points in film noir’s such as the POV shot of the feet running and the noise of the heavy breathing.
Some particular shots such as shot reverse shot is not needed in our sequence and it is different shots of different movements, the same with match on action shots.
We feel that our final product is filling the specification as it agreed that our opening sequence will be quite successful. Our opening sequence also meets the needs and generic conventions of film noir by including the conventions of real media products such as other film noir’s.
