ST EVALUTATION 1

In What Ways Does your Media Product use, develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

PLOT

• Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels (Richie, 1998) – similar story and stock character


• Location – dark/dirty


• Props – covered hostage face/black car


• Enigma of purpose / motivations of characters


• Continuity editing, with a clear narrative – conventional of action thriller

CHARACTER EXPOSITION

The stock characters and location quickly portray the mood of a conventional film, a hostage, gang member, protagonist and too a lesser extent the unaware girlfriend of the gang member. This is anchored by the dialogue exchanged by the two relevant characters, which is about criminal activities. And thus maintains the thriller genre to the audience.

MISE-EN-SCENE

• The costumes were quite an after-thought which shows in the final piece, although still works at conveying the ages and stereotypes.



• The set was littered with composition and props (wine bottles and general clutter) with implies cluttered and uncaring lifestyle – similar to opening of Watchmen (2009, Znyder), in which the old man is cluttered and dirty also connoting a carefree existence



• Transition of lighting when entering the stock room, was very good, expressed a sense of enigma and focuses the audience from the title to the action.

Prop-car black, (Skodia Fabia vrS, left) iconic type of car for the genre. Similar to that in the Transporter (Leterrier, Yuen, 2002) series –always using a black car for crimes (Audi A8, bleow).

The lighting in the warehouse is low-lit, which creates larger shadows connoting that the things that go on in there shouldn’t be seen by anyone else and it is a secretive location.

SOUND

· Non-diagetic sound – dialogue, weakest area from questionnaire, - used to connote a youth audience and from the point of view and language of youth.

· Intro guitar gives a nerving impression, while character is still unidentified during the sequence

· Used as anchoring to the character’s exposition

· Drops off to give the dialogue more prevalence, this was a mistake, adding the right sound would've anchored the piece more.

· Different guitar riff with higher tempo, gives complete different feel to the audience, also changes the character exposition, gives more unorganised feeling.

CAMERA WORK

· Initial bird's eye shot of Jack and his quick narrative shows him the protagonist to the audience, otherwise it would be very difficult to identify Jack as main character

· The over-the-shoulder shot is used even more to position the audience with Jack, despite not fully seeing his face before then. Rule of 1/3 used that shot while behind jack, gives the audience partial view of what he sees, also used to hide hostage to the audience. It’s a great shot since it positions the audience with the protagonist, but is still distant enough for them to remain unconnected to the character. This can be considered a break from convention as the audience is rarely so connected to a bad protagonist, because they are bad themselves, so the audience feels less inclined to like them.

· The point-of-view running shot connects audience to hostage, who isn’t really a character at all during the sequence.

· Shot-reverse-shot is used during the dialogue, to show the conversation and push the narrative quickly forward, giving the audience an idea of the premise.

· The framing of the final car boot shot is excellent, it gives the audience a Point-of-view shot from the hostage. The two characters are clearly identifiable in line with the rule of 1/3 lines in the shot. This type of shot is used in crime- action thrillers quite often – because it gives the audience a sense of how these people conduct their crimes.

EDITING STYLE

The editing style is very quick, cutting on action, which is used to push the narrative.

· It slows slightly and changes to continuity editing during the stock room scene to allow for coherent dialogue and a bit of character exposition.

· Jump cutting is used during hostage escape and recapture, this is used to progress the narrative in a less conventional way than continuous action.

· The colour used in the piece is conventional to similar pieces, the stock room is low-lit, which creates much darker shadows and dims the colours in the room leading to a bleaker outlook on the characters and situation.

· The titles are introduced and removed during the action, this was inspired by the ‘Lord of War’ (Niccol, 2005) opening scene, in which titles are introduced in times of no action to the audience.