Evaluation Question One

1
Generic Conventions of Your Film

• Our film belongs to the crime thriller genre.
• Our film followed the narrative conventions of a
  crime thriller as it involves a murder
  investigation and follows a typical who done it
  scenario. In our film we had two male detectives
  and we also used an interview room were cross
  examined. We carefully constructed our mise en
  scene when selecting costumes and props for our
  characters so that it fit the bill of our film. I
  followed the conventions of the genre by using
  blood and murder
• However, unlike conventional detective films
  which depend on a degree of realism or
  verisimilitude our film requires the audience
  to suspend disbelief because we have used black
  and white for parts of our film. We used black
  and white as it goes against the generic
  conventions of our genre as a lot of crime
  thrillers are set in contemporary times and
  aren't in black and white and this challenges the
  our genres stereotype. We used black and white
  in silent scenes and when voice overs and music
  occurred.

2
Compare and Contrast Your Film

• Compare and contrast your film to 3 examples.
• Prisoners, The Usual Suspects and Out of the Past
  
• Narrative structure
• Prisoners is based on a kidnapping that takes
  place in America and focuses on a detective who
  is trying to solve the case and a threatened dad
  who will do anything to get his daughter back.
  This also follows a twist where the person who
  seemed to be the good guy is the kidnapper all
  along.
• Plot
• The plot of our film follows a classic who done
  it.
• Themes
• Friendship, Mystery, Love, Betrayal again you can
  relate these themes to prisoners
• Characters
• Good Cop/Bad cop like in most crime thriller
  films and dramas
• Setting/mise-en-scene
• Police station, Peoples houses which is like out
  of the past and the usual suspects
• Cinematography/Editing
• The scenes with voiceovers were in black and
  white with orchestral music to describe how the
  detectives were felling. We used different angles
  to portray different characters in different
  ways.

3
Barthes Codes

• Applying Barthes Codes to our film.
• We created expectation by following typical
  convention as it wasnt abnormal for the
  detectives partner to be the killer. We used a
  selection of shots that would have suggested that
  he was the murderer as he was always a distance
  from his partner and also didnt have much to
  say.
• Suspense was also created in our film through the
  use of music and camera shots for example in
  scene 3 there is a shot that is recorded behind
  the antagonist which is then focused onto the
  protagonist which created suspense, then in the
  last scene the roles reversed and the shot stayed
  the same where the protagonist is being filmed
  from over the shoulder of the antagonist again
  this created suspense within our film.

4
Genre as a Concept

• Genre is important and very useful to apply to a
  short film as it outlines what you want your film
  to achieve and feature and also helps the
  audience to understand what they are to expect
  from your film.
• Our film doesnt follow all conventions of our
  genre and takes conventions from both crime and
  thriller and also takes conventions from
  different types of genres such as drama with the
  use of montages and action which occurs in the
  final scene of our film.
• Within short films it can be hard to fully
  complete the conventions within a genre as you do
  not have a lot of time to fit every convention
  in.

5
Cinematography conventions

• Within our film we followed conventions that
  would attract our target audience and used a
  specific style of cinematography. By using the
  right conventions of cinematography within a
  crime/thriller and focusing on the villain in a
  different light than we see the good guy. We also
  used low angle shots of the villain and higher
  angle shots of the hero. By using these
  conventions we were able to give an idea to the
  audience of who was the good guy and who was the
  bad guy.

6
Sound conventions

• We recorded voiceovers and added them to our film
  as these are featured a lot in conventional noir
  films. Using these voiceovers allowed our
  audience an insight into what out characters were
  thinking