Media Evaluation Question 1 - Conventions

1. Evaluation
Question 1

2. For my AS Media Studies, my team and I had to create and develop an opening
sequence for a hypothetical film in any genre of our choosing. We unanimously
decided to create a crime thriller/gangster film. As this is a complicated genre
to pursue, we had to have regular team meetings both in and out of class. In
these meetings we had to decide the narrative of our film as well as having to
create a presentation in order to pitch the idea and get it commissioned.

3. Before pitching our idea we researched the forms and convention commonly
found in films similar to ours, they include:
• Creating a sense of suspense – In our opening sequence we created a sense
of suspense with Javid waking up on the chair mysteriously and then trying
to escape
• Tension being built throughout the film – Tension is built in our opening
sequence as Javid continues to try and fail to escape

4. • Dark lighting – We did this throughout our opening sequence
• Dark colours (red is also used frequently as the colour represents a variety of
themes common in gangster films, such as anger and pain)
• Formal outfits (such as suits, ties etc.)
• Contained but fast paced action

5. • One of the narrative’s lead characters is a woman, this is quite
unconventional as it is uncommon in ‘gangster’ films for their to be a lead
female character. Therefore this is one way in which our film could be
described a unconventional.

6. • Another convention, not only for crime films but films of all genres, is not
to reveal too much in our opening sequence. I believed we followed this
convention as we did not reveal that much information. However, an
argument could be made that we revealed too little information. As we only
revealed that it was set in Chicago, and that a gang or serial killer named
“Locust” was murdering people.

7. • As well as researching the conventions within the film narrative, we also had
to research the editing and titling commonly found in crime
thrillers/gangster films. We found that the edits are usually smooth and we
tried to follow that convention within our opening sequence. We also found
that films such as “Goodfellas” and “The Godfather” have big, bold titling
and so we tried to follow that convention as well.