Evaluation Question 1

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

The typical conventions of a film opening include:

• Production and studio logos                             
• Titles
• Establishing the location
• Meeting the main characters
• Enigma
• Music
• Non-diegetic and diegetic sounds 
• The genre made clear
• A variety of shots

The conventions of my genre, action include:

• A hero, damsel in distress, villain 
• Car/ vehicle chases
• Guns/weapons
• Fights and violence                                    
• Fast paced editing
• Fast music
• Some love scenes
• Drugs, in some films
• Titles will be bold and stand out

We used most of the conventions of film openings, we used the production logo at the very beginning and titles dipped in and out throughout the opening, the title of the film 'True To The Game' was at the very end. The title of the film is in a bold font and is in white on a black background, similar to the film 'This is England'

In the flashback scenes of our opening we showed the location of Market Rasen town but in the other scenes the audience isn't aware where the characters are, challenging conventions. This also helps build up enigma. Chaz and Lakeem are in a grotty room, giving a sense of unease and leaves the audience asking, where are they? What are they doing there? What have they done to be in that situation? 

We kept to the convention of meeting the main characters in our opening, we see two sides to the female character Chaz. The loving girlfriend side and the cheating, sneaky side to her. To show her loving side, we show her walking hand in hand with her boyfriend, Ray, and giving him a cuddle goodbye. For her bad side, we see her sneaky around waiting for Lakeem to arrive and then greets him with a passionate hug, and also when she is in the negotiation room she is wearing a dark jumper and has dark make up around her eyes. We also see two sides to Ray, when we first meet him he seems a very sweet caring character shown through his actions towards Chaz, he gives a respectful kiss on the cheek as he leaves. But when we meet him later on, we can tell he is no longer happy with his girl, he is a more angry and vengeful person as we see him walking towards the negotiation room. 

There is a lot of enigma in our film opening, the first thing the audience will probably ask is who is this girl? What is she doing? Where is she? The audience then realise that she has got a boyfriend and when she meets the other guy they audience will ask, what is she doing? Who is he? etc. The main enigma is in the negotiation room scenes, where the audience will ask what is going to happen to them? What is going to happen with the gun? Most film openings have enigma which leaves the audience wanting to see more and find out what happens to the characters.

In our film opening the only thing that indicates the genre is the use of the gun. In the negotiation room Chaz and Lakeem are passing back and forth the main prop in the whole opening, a gun, this is a convention of action films, however the gun isn't used in a typical way seen in other action films, in other action films, guns are used to fight of the enemy, like in 'Snatch'. In our opening the gun is used more carefully and in a way playful.

A lot of film openings have music involved somehow, in action films most of the time the music is fast paced and goes with the action happening in the scenes. In our film opening we have fast paced music which builds up, when Lakeem walks away from the gang there is a thud in the music which indicates he may not be so innocent.

When thinking about our initial ideas for our film opening, we got inspiration from Rihanna's music video 'Russian Roulette' this gave us ideas for the types of shots we were going to use. We wanted to have fast paced editing, we used a couple of shot reverse shots, close ups, etc.

Our film opening has challenged conventions of action films in some aspects, there are no chases, not much violence, you can't tell who is going to be the hero, villain etc. but we have used some conventions, we have a gun in our opening, a love story, there is fast music, some fast editing and the titles stand out.