Evaluation- Question 1

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

Film noirs portray the mood, style and tone of the film rather than sticking to a rigid structure. The narrative is normally non-linear and based around a pessimistic, disheartened male who becomes infatuated with a seductive female (femme fatale) who double crosses him. I used the idea of females having a new-found independence as a tool for my media product. The idea I visualised for my media product was that it would be based around a female gang rather than male but still using the basic concept of a ‘femme fatale’.

Film noir first evolved in the 1940s, post-world war two and lasted successfully into the 1960s. Film noir consists of themes such as, corruption, mystery, deceit and violence and portrays topics such as murder, sex and criminal activity. The film ‘Double Indemnity’ is a classic example of a film noir that displays all the known conventions, varying from the anti-hero who gets lead astray by greed and lust. The film also uses a common prop ‘Venetian Blinds’ to cast shadows and create mystery. My media product conforms but also strays from the conventions of Film Noirs, I wanted to stick to the characteristic of a film noir but also further develop it to appeal and relate to a contemporary audience. I used a distinctive feature of a film noir, the black and white filter which would make it easy for audiences to identify the style of my trailer. However, my use of the black and white filter was for revealing it as a flashback, further conforming to the non-linear and twisting narrative that film noirs follow. The characters that are first introduced are a murderer and victim, linking to the thematical portrayal of the inhuman and destructive side to human nature, emphasising on the sadistic, unhealthy and brutal acts the characters perform.

My media product goes against the conventions of later gangster films like the ‘Godfather’ and ‘Scarface’ in respect of the value and depiction of women. Within the Godfather women are viewed as sexual ornaments that hold little value, contrasting against my portrayal of women, as I have constructed them to fill the stereotypical role of the males within gangster films. Gangster films much like Scarface can be compared to a certain view that associates it with the ‘American Dream’, leading the impression that directors try to glamorise and romanticise the concept of violence and immorality as it’s a goal that everyone wants to be able to lead and dominate. Whereas throughout my media product I show a montage of violent actions and glimpses of characters that play a role in the murder and obliteration of a character. Rather than glamorise the ‘gangster lifestyle’ I believe my media product depicts and harsh and gritty reality, having been achieved through the choice of location, council estates, rundown and urban areas.

My trailer goes against Tordov’s Narrative Theory. Tordov believed that all films follow the same narrative pattern. The state of equilibrium, disruption of the equilibrium (disequilibrium), acknowledgment of the disorder that has occurred, attempt to repair the damage of the disruption (solving) and lastly a restoration of the new equilibrium. Whereas my media product starts off with a murder scene that is a flashback and then moves to show a montage of various clips that have no relevance to each other regarding that they are not chronologically in order. Which conforms to most structures of gangster films, as it flip flops between past and present.

The overall impression I tried to create for my media product was to show that women within the gangster genre can be represented in more than two lights, one being the loving, dutiful wife and the other being a predatory, lustful, manipulative woman.