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

Our opening sequence used shots which either challenged or developed the conventions of crime films. I have selected a series of screen shots as examples to show this.


Titles:

Spy films tend to have the action of the film incorporated into the main section of the media so we struggled to add this convention to an opening sequence. They tend to apply the text over the film to allow crediting to happen, but not let the narrative be disturbed. We placed the titles above the footage in available spaces that corresponded with the action e.g. actors names appearing as they did. This worked well as it wasn't overpowering the images on screen. The font style we used for the opening sequence  was difficult to find at first as we wanted it to reflect a computer code and have a spy feel to it. We eventually decided on the text displayed and chose the colour green to incorporate the computer code idea to the film, developing the convention of the titles used in films such as the Bourne series and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.


Location:




We decided to have a mixture of interior and exterior shots in the opening sequence of Renegade, developing spy film conventions set in films such as Charlie's Angels.  We had two different settings we needed to create, an office and the exterior of a house. We used basic equipment  and nothing to over the top that would  make the scene look out of place. Whereas if we used one of our crew's houses for the interior shots, it would not fit the equipment and style we were looking for.  As we did not have the budget or resources to create such an extravagant office or hire a large manor house for the exterior shots, we tried to work the film around this and use our imaginations in the studio to ensure that the audience  saw an office set, not a TV studio. The exteriors we filmed at a group member's house, but edited the footage so that the audience never saw how large the house actually was. 




Costume/Props:

Typically, spy films have a wide selection of props, such as guns, fast cars, guns which always appear during there films, setting the crime convention. As we didn't have the budget for fancy gadgets and extravagant costumes, we stuck to the "all black, slick spy" convention, developing on images we'd seen in Charlie's Angels. Other props were basic things like tables, chairs and furniture to create the office scene, making sure we got a realistic verisimilitude throughout shooting. The main prop problem we encountered was retrieving guns for our characters to use, so we ended up spray painting toy ones to complete the look we wanted. 

Lighting:

The lighting in Renegade proved harder to control than we originally thought. We could not challenge the lighting convention of crime films as most "heists" take place at night, which ours did. After shooting the exterior shots, we discovered that the lighting was too dark and the footage was unusable. After shooting it for a second time, we used a lamp borrowed from the college to supply enough light to illuminate the shots, but still give the impression that it was set at night. The lighting in the interior shots was easier to control as it was a series of lamps we could turn on and off. Spies would not typically turn on the light when undergoing a raid so we tried to keep the shots as dark as possible, only using an overhead lamp to illuminate the frames and make the footage usable.

Characterisation:

As the opening sequence could only be 2 minutes long, we could not characterise the characters as much as would have liked to. We stuck to the stereotype of stock spy character and watched James Bond and both Charlie's Angels films a few times to try and mimic their characteristics. We challenged the convention by having a mixed gender team as oppose to all women or a solo male. 

Camera Angles:

With shooting an action sequence, we had the opportunity to use close-ups, midshots, and wide shots with a variety of other camera angles. We used an ariel shot when the team is shown looking up at the house, midshots when shooting the main task and low angled shots as they escaped the house, and a low shot when the team drove off in their car. The main series of close-ups we used was when the team react to the discovery of a memory device, and we then edited the close-ups to a split screen, to see them all in one shot.

Editing Transitions/Visual Effects

As the editing suite had more technological resources, we managed to achieve a slick feel to the film, without cuts seeming jagged or sharp. We used fades to begin and end our film, so it did not appear too robust a beginning and used dissolves in between some slides as the camera had shifted slightly so the dissolve helped to hide this filming blunder. The editing of the music had to be disguised so we attempted to blend the song together at some parts to achieve a smooth sound.

Genre/Style

The crime genre could be looked at in many ways, but our sub-genre of spy films made it possible for us to both challenge and develop the genre. We developed the genre by sticking to some of the conventions typically used in spy films e.g. costumes, props, location, but then tried to challenge the conventions of the film using characterisation, including having a mixed gender team, which many spy films do not have.