Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our thriller is an inspired by the film noir aspect of thriller films. In our thriller opening, we use and challenge conventions of the film noir genre. Most of our inspiration came from 'Double Indemnity' as even the plot is like ours - the female character deceives the male character.

Costume

For the costumes of our characters, we wanted both of them to come across as sophisticated and professional, so we dressed Mr Mordecai in a suit, and Serena in a nice red dress. Serena's costume was inspired by 'Sin City', where the woman in the opening scene is wearing a bright red dress, making her appear glamorous. Red is a colour often associated with seduction, passion but also holds connotations of danger. These connotations perfectly fit into Serena's personality, and the idea of femme fatale that is quite evident in our film. The shoes Serena is wearing are inspired by a 1946 film noir film called 'The Killers'. We chose these shoes as they are quite high and have a thickness to them which just screams "dominant". The height of the shoes represent how Serena has more power over Mr Mordecai, and with the shot that they're closely shown in, Mr Mordecai is also in the shot where he appears powerless and vulnerable.

For our male character, we found inspiration for his costume from Harry Lime in 'The Third Man'. Throughout 'The Third Man', Harry Lime is a mysterious, secretive character spends most of his time in the film trying to escape from people a deceiving them, Although we couldn't find a large black trench coat like the one Harry is wearing, we came close with a black suit. Furthermore, something we did get right was the hat Harry is wearing. We wanted to portray Mr Mordecai as being a very intelligent, sophisticated man in what he wears, so the suit was a perfect way we could do this and still fit into film noir conventions.

Props

This is the area in which we felt we could use to best challenge traditional film noir conventions. Most commonly in film noir, women are portrayed as 'damsels in distress' and inferior, which is what we wanted to challenge specifically. One way we challenged traditional conventions is by giving Serena not one, but two weapons; the knife and the gun. Although the knife was never used and the gun was, Serena still has it in her possession. One film we found that also challenged is a 1947 film noir style film called 'Out of the Past', where a woman is shown to be behind the gun for once. (Shown below to the right)

Because we wanted to challenge film noir conventions, we displayed Serena as being powerful and dangerous, as well as secretive and mysterious; we aimed to present her as being more dominant over the male character - Mr Mordecai. 

The gun Serena possesses is very small and delicate, yet lethal and dangerous which is a perfect representation of her personality.

However, also wanted to incorporate aspects of film noir such as glamour and seductiveness which is why we have her putting on red lipstick, and wearing a red dress and heels. Red is the key colour in our thriller as most other colours are quite dull, whereas the red stands out against other colours. Furthermore the red has connotations of danger, but also seduction. The way we set out Serena's props was inspired by 'Se7en' as we wanted to show the audience that Serena is organised and neat.

Location

'Double indemnity' also inspired our location. We needed a house with stairs which had banisters with gaps between like in Double Indemnity. The reason we need this shot is we needed something to have connotations of prison; stair banisters are perfect for this as they look like jail cell bars. We needed this because it shows that Serena and Mr Mordecai are involved in dangerous, criminal activity which could lead to them ending up in prison (Serena especially as she murders Mr Mordecai). The connotations to a jail cell also create a claustrophobic, trapped feeling, adding to the tension and intensity of the situation. This idea of entrapment is inspired by 'The Third Man' when Harry Lime is trying desperately to find a way out of the sewers.

We filmed at a large house which looks very grand as it has pillars. We needed to film at a location like this as it makes more sense to have Mr Mordecai stealing from a wealthy person. Plus this suits the genre as most film noir films are glamorous and grand. We required a large house as we needed to show the extent to Mr Mordecai's skill in breaking into big, expensive houses. The bag he steals is our MacGuffin, as we never find out what's in the bag, which corresponds to how we do not yet know why Serena killed Mr Mordecai.

Similar to 'Essex Boys', our location choice has quite bleak colours and scenery, which we needed to have to represent hopelessness of Mr Mordecai's future. A certain scene from 'Essex Boys' inspired our opening scene shots, however ours doesn't have a vanishing point which would've been ideal to outline Mordecai's death and how he would come to an end. We changed the saturation in editing to be similar to the one in Essex Boys as we wanted to show bleakness. We found it difficult to directly replicate the locations found in most film noir thrillers, but the house we did film at was probably as close as we could've gotten.

Sound

Our original soundtrack idea was to have soft jazz playing in the background, similar to the 'Sin City' opening scene soundtrack but unfortunately, we were unable to find such soundtrack due to Copyright issues. Instead to build tension and uneasiness, we found a low rumble, which can be heard throughout the opening of our thriller, along with a soft drum beat to build tension. Although we wanted to develop film noir conventions here, our version with the rumble still worked just as effectively as a jazz soundtrack would've.

To correspond to Serena's mysterious, unpredictable nature, we used non-diegetic wind chimes to create an eerie, uneasy feeling. This creates the feel of uncertainty around Serena, with the audience unsure of her next move. The audience may even believe that Serena is mentally unstable, and the wind chimes that challenge the film noir genre may lead them to believe that she is morally evil.

We used diegetic sounds such as the phone beep, footsteps on the gravel and the gunshot where the original sounds we had were not loud enough, apart from the gunshot as we didn't already have a sound for this.

Camerawork

Many shots seen in our thriller are widely influenced by other film noir thrillers.
 The face-off scene between Serena and Mordecai is inspired by this shot from 'Double Indemnity', we added our own touch to it but its still, if not more effective.

This shot from 'Se7en' inspired us to use the same technique as we wanted Serena to come across as organised, neat and very prepared.