Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?                  

For the title to our opening sequence we have challenged the conventions by bringing color into it creating a neo noir. We decided to create this effect for our film as we wanted a more stronger representation of women. The red colors also worked well as they made the more deadly features stand out more for the audience. 

Comparing our title to the one on my left we can see the obvious contrast between the two 'Behind closed doors' we can tell was set back in the 1940's. The contrast of the colors look archaic and old whereas we've included these features as well as some of our own, for instance the red and blue florescent colors bring a more modern feel to our sequence.

Here we have our next title. The font on the left is the font we decided to choose for all of our title sequences. However the font above and the one to my left both share some of the same similarities. This shows how we've brought more of a 1940's feel to our sequence showing a clear contrast between times.

 Our main location was set in a bar where the three characters were based. We tried to give the bar a 1940's feel with the singer in the background and the detective schmoozing the waitress.

 The image below shows how we have tried to keep to the same sort of conventions as a film noir.The image has been taken from a famous scene from the film, The Big Sleep. It's a scene where the detective and the femme fetale share a conversation. We've developed this further by bringing in a third character.

Our next location was based in a bathroom. Where we see one of the femme fatales planning to kill the detective. What we are unaware of is who actually did it. Here we have shown another shot of how we've made our sequence a neo noir with the red lipstick being seen as a deadly sort of prop.

Our last location was an alleyway which we used for a few of our scenes. Here we have a wide over the head shot which includes three characters. We have used low key lighting on the detective and his 'close source' showing something bad is happening. Then we have chosen to use high key lighting in the background where the waitress stands indicating to the audience that somethings about to happen.

Our first prop was a blood stained shirt which we used on detective, Harry. We wanted to show the audience he was dead as briefly as we could. This shot is again reiterating the neo noir we have used.

We then used a 1940's waitress skirt and blouse for this characters role, Helena who played an innocent waitress. However she is down as a suspect for the murder. We created this sort of personality for this character as we wanted to keep the audience guessing and the tension to be quite high throughout our sequence.

Our next character is seen as a more feisty and suspicious character. For her we decided to use red lipstick to show danger and of course reiterate our use of neo noir. Her hair was pinned up and we then used a scarf around the neck and a grey pencil skirt.

The next prop we decided to use was the knife which shimmered behind the detectives head. This was used as an indicator of what sort of person this waitress can actually be, and keeping the audience guessing whether she was capable of the murder or not.

We then used a gun as another prop indicating crime and also death. We had the ingenue seen with this showing a contrast between her innocent personality and what she may or may not have done to our detective.

Our final prop was the poison which was used by our femme fetale. This was used in a bathroom scene where our femme fetale was planning to 'kill' our detective.

During our bar scene we decided to use high key lighting around our ingenue behind the bar again indicating her innocence then we used low key lighting around the background where the femme fetale is showing indangerment and fear.

Here we have used an over head shot of Harry the detective in the middle of a 'deal' with a close source. We decided to use this camera angle as it includes all characters in one shot but also sets the mood and scene of the sequence. High and low key lighting has also been used here.

Next we have the femme fetale who was played by myself. I was dressed in more darker colors as my character held more of a dangerous and darker personality. The red lipstick also reiterates this.

Here we have Helena who played Bonnie our waitress. We dressed Helena in bright colours such as white and purple to indicate to our audience what sort of character she is. Her personality is sweet and quiet however we challenge the conventions with this during our sequence.

Finally we have our shooting schedule which helped us a lot throughout organizing our opening sequence. We arranged scene for a certain day and tried our best to keep to each bit of the schedule. I think the shooting schedule worked successfully as it reminded us of the things we needed to do and kept us organised.

For the detective we had to stain a shirt with fake blood to show the audience he was dead. We decided to do just one shot of blood trying to make it look as realistic as possible.

 The gun was used as a prop to show the audience what sort of weapon the femme fetale may have killed the detective with. We chose to use a gun as the main murder weapon as we felt it represented the 1940's the best.