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

My film-noir media piece largely builds on the devices used by other forms and conventions of real media product in that genre such as the frequent use of shadows and low-key lighting as seen in this still image from the movie The Big Combo (1955) below:

Another element of my media piece that is typical in other film-noir movies is the type of character. The character in my media piece could be looked upon by the viewers as a private investigator of some sorts due to his dress sense (a suit and tie) and carries a notebook around with him, all part of the mise-en-scene, although I was unable to attain a hat. However other viewers could argue that he's an average everyday person caught up in a situation after he stumbled upon the body accidently after entering the room where the body is. Pictured below is what a normal film-noir private investigator looks like or is stereotyped to look like compared to my character pictured opposite.

The narrative of the opening to my media piece is conventionally similar to a 'whodunnit' and also quite enigmatic, a crime (normally a murder) that has been committed and that leaves the audience wondering who committed the crime and what was his or her motive. The most popular element of the narrative of the film-noir genre is the 'plot twist'. A famous example of this is the 1995 Oscar winning film 'The Usual Suspects' which tricked the audience cleverly by revealing that the person they and the other characters believe committed the crime did not actually do it after all.

A twist on my film-noir piece is that in the film-noir films I have seen, the private investigator does not die so I twisted this idea and had him dying of asphyxiation giving the impression that the room was some sort of cleverly disguised gas chamber.

The use of sound in my media piece was mainly divided into two categories as diegetic and non-diegetic. The non-diegetic sounds in the piece consisted mostly of music by Bela Bartok and John Cage which was suggested to me by one of my tutors and which fitted to the mood and atmosphere I was trying to achieve in my media piece. The use of diegetic sounds in the extract included the sound of the door slamming shut on its own accord (which I did off camera) and my actor coughing to give the impression that he was being asphyxiated by a poisonous gas entering the room.