Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Question 1 Draft
In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We have quite a few conventions of film noirs in our film
but we have also went out for our noir to be unique but have enough conventions
to show that our film is a noir just a little different. Film Noir’s were most
popular in the years of 1940s and 50s when film and television were in black
and white and as we wanted our film to be a classic noir rather than a neo
noir, we when editing made our film black and white to add to the classic ways
of film noirs. In many film noirs, someone is murdered in the opening sequence
which we were sure to follow suit to, for example in the film Destination
murder in which an old man is killed with a gun and in our film Donald is
murdered in the opening scene. Guns are the most conventional weapons in film
noirs but we went against conventions and used a big heavy rock, as we did not
have a gun available so we used what was available in the mise en scene. Due to
the time periods of film noirs the music tends to be quite jazzy and in our
opening scene we used some jazzy music to follow along with the conventions and
to set the scene of the films genre. Typical costumes worn in film noirs are
fedora hats and suits, we followed this to some extent as in the interview
scene our detective is wearing a fedora that we obtained from the college, we
could not get our hands on a suit that was nt a prom suit so we tried our best
with a shirt and trousers. Trench coats are big in film noirs and we managed to
get some for two of our actors so we followed the conventions of costume pretty
well apart from the character Rex who wore pretty modern clothing, which was a
definite fault. In our opening scene we did not introduce the femme fatale as
the femme fatale more as the killer who later would have been discovered to be
the femme fatale and the audience not knowing she was the killer at the
beginning, this fits into the conventions that the femme fatale is the
killer/bad guy but is not shown as the femme fatale so our film did not fit
into the conventions. Flashbacks are a very conventional in film noirs for
example in the film The Walking Hills a flashback is used to show what had
happened when a game of poker got violent and one of them ended up dead, in our
film a flash back is used to show and argument over the treatment of Donalds
wife which turns violent and we find out that Donald has ended up dead. The
setting of our film is supposed to be an alleyway type scene as it conventional
for film noirs for scenes to be set in alleyways but we could not find a
alleyway so we had to make do with the back of the cinema which looks a bit
like an alley way so we followed the conventions to some extent and it looks
quite believable that it is what it is supposed to be.
Question 2 draft
How does your media product represent particular social
groups?
We challenge the gender
stereotypes of the men being dominant and the women being the passive gender.
We do this as although we do not get to see the killer we do however get to see
that she is a woman. It is also shown by the woman killer holds a heavy rock
above her head before smacking Donald over the head with it, which woman
stereotypically do not lift heavy objects. Although the characters Rex and
Donald followed the conventions of the men being dominant as they were arguing
and being all boisterous and aggressive. Stereotypically both genders used to
smoke heavily and everyone did it, in our film because not a single person
smoked so we did not have anyone smoking in our film which went against
conventions and stereotypes.
This links to the target
audience of middle aged to elderly men as they can remember the olden days when
men were the more dominant and how they grew up watching film noirs as a child
and more generally when they were younger. The target audience will be able to
relate to the film as they have seen and experienced how the people in the film
act and their personality as that is what the audience would have been like or
the people they knew would have been like.
We did not show the
representation of race due to us only knowing white people who were willing to
act. All of our characters are represented as middle class due to the costumes
of them being shirts and ties and we find out that one of the characters is a
detective which is regarded to be quite a middle class and respectable job.
Although we went against stereotypes that the
middle class are well spoken and well mannered as in one of the scenes we had
some of the characters arguing and shouting, the character Rex then swore which
is a lower class manner of speech.
We represented sexuality with
the use of heterosexual relationships which also links into gender as
stereotypically the men are the more dominant partner and this is shown with
the use of narrative as we learn Donald was an abuse man who beat and abused
his fiancee Kathy, and the woman partner tend to be the more passive partner
and would let this abuse happen. Although the tables turn and Kathy becomes the
dominant character and murders Donald.
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