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

We created a two minute opening video sequence to a crime thriller in a film noir style. We tried to conform to the conventions of a film noir mostly through our choice of mise-en-scene. It's all filmed in a small apartment room, a typical location for a murder in a crime film as this leaves the detective lots of places to look for clues which allows the story to progress. We achieved a low key lighting effect by using a few small lamps to light the room. This conformed to the conventional lighting featured in a film noir as it gave the footage quite high contrast and cast strong shadows around the room. Our main protagonist playing the role of detective, was also dressed in dark clothing consisting of a black trench coat and grey trousers. This costume also conforms to the typical dress of a detective from a crime film. We also used the theory behind set design of traditional film noir in order to develop our own style. Film Noir began as a low budget and quite surreal style. We created a surreal effect with our mix of both modern and old fashioned props and furniture. The room contained an old phone used by the protagonist which conforms to the film noir genre as the key film noir era was between the early 1940's to the late 1950's. This was then juxtaposed with our use furniture which has a less determinable era.

As the protagonist navigated his way around the apartment room we used a number of panning shots typical of film noir crime thrillers. This helps to set an even pace which is ironically quite unnerving as it sets up an opportunity for the even pace to be broken. This brings in the thriller element to our opening sequence. We made these shots blend fluidly using transitional cross fades in the editing stage. These cross fades gave a dimming effect to the lighting which again conformed to the low key lighting of a film noir. As the detective is he dominant character in the crime thriller we reflected this by keeping the camera stationary and allowing the detective to move around it. This showed his control of the scene.

We only used non-diegetic sound in our opening; this consisted of two parts. We looped an instrumental part of the song 'hello skinny' by The Residents to create background music. This song choice conforms to the genre of film noir as the The Residents are an experimental avant-guard band known for their surreal approach. It also uses woodwind instruments which reflect the 1940's feel. We then over layed a narration. The narrator talks in an American accent which conforms to the film noir crime genre which where traditionally based on hard boiled American crime stories. The use of non-diegetic narration as a representation of the detectives thoughts was common in noir crime thrillers as the detective would often be alone. The narration allowed the audience to get an insight into his thoughts.