The document discusses how the media product develops and challenges conventions of real media forms. It summarizes how the trailer, poster, and magazine for the film "Freeze" were created: 1) The trailer develops conventions of film noir by using a female lead and black and white footage with increased contrast. 2) The poster combines classic noir icons with modern technologies and social media references to portray the film as neo-noir. 3) The magazine advertises in a women's fashion magazine to reach a wider audience, relating content subtly to the main character's profession.

1. In what ways does your product use, develop of challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
The Trailer:
When researching for our trailer, we initially had to research into the codes and conventions
of trailers. There were certain aspects that we knew we had to include in order for it to be
clear that our product was a trailer advertising our film, ‘Freeze’. Our initial inspiration for
the voice over came from the film ‘The man who wasn’t there’ this was something that we
definitely wanted to use in our media product, however we wanted to develop it by having
it not appear at the beginning of our trailer and be used to increase the pace of the trailer
and to help keep the narrative enigma but still have the narrative be clear. We were also
inspired by the use of black and white in ‘the man who wasn’t there’ however in some
shots, the lack of colour had an detrimental impact on the shot, for example when Selena is
walking up the stairs, in order to fix this, I increased the contrast and adjusted shadows so
that certain tones became more apparent. This is also an example of us developing the neo
noir genre as it usually done in colour whereas we choose to change it to black and white in
post-production. We also challenged the usual conventions of film noir by having a female
lead, typically in film noir the female characters are either femme fatale or a damsel in
distress. Our character is portrayed as dominant and ruthless through the use of the
voiceover.
The Poster:
Before creating our poster, we first researched into how narrative image is created through
the poster. We looked at the film poster for Prometheus where we explored the use of
typography, mise-en-scene and lighting and how this influenced the audience’s expectations
for the film. From this we decided that we needed to make sure that our choice of film
genre, film noir, was clearly evident in our film poster. We also wanted to make sure that
we used the classic conventions of a film poster in order for it to be clear that we had in fact
made a film poster; these conventions included a credit block, a colour scheme, slogan and
clear title. We decided that this is a necessity that she be used in our poster. We then
looked at the codes and conventions of film noir posters and analysed them for the
following films; Inception, Good Night and Good Luck, The man who wasn’t there, Public
enemies, Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential. All of these films are part of the film noir genre
but whilst some of them are classic film noir, some are neo-noir for example Inception
which uses the concepts of film noir but delivers it through modern technologies and
modern concepts. This was something that we wanted to include in our poster. Although
the Inception poster is modern but still keeps with the classic icons of the guns and the dark
grey colour schemes. This was something that we wanted to develop in our poster
combining the classic film noir with the new neo noir. We did this by using modern
technologies such as the Cannon 550 DSLR camera to capture the image. We had the male
models wearing black trilby hats which are signifiers of the film noir genre but also added in
the quote “Film noir reborn” which highlights the neo noir aspect with a twitter and
facebook icon which highlights that this is a new 2012 film poster. Whilst our film is in black
and white we choose to challenge the use of black and white film noir poster convention as
seen in the ‘The man who wasn’t there.’ This was because we didn’t want to limit our
audience to only those people who are interested in black and white films. The layout of our
poster was inspired by the film poster ‘Lawless’ which is something we used to help us in

2. the layout of our poster. However we also developed this by choosing to have our poster
layout in a more linear blocked fashion.
The Magazine:
When we researched into the different types of magazines used to advertise films, we
focused mainly on magazines such as Empires that specifically focus on film magazines.
However when we looked at the film ‘We need to talk about Kevin’ the women’s fashion
magazine was used in order to advertise the film focusing on the main actress Tilda Swindon
and her role in the film. This was something we wanted to use as it will attract a wider
audience to our film which typically has a niche film audience due to the genre. However we
wanted to develop this to make sure that there is a clear link between our film and the
magazine. We did this by using the flash and making it related to our film, but on a more
subtle level, for example when talking about fashion for the ‘workplace’ as Selena is a
business woman this is relevant to her character.