Evaluation Question 1

"In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media products?"

Our media product follows typical heist / gangster film conventions.

The first way in which we followed the conventions was that during the film there is to be a robbery of a bank, this follows the conventions of the genre as heist films are based around the robbery or theft of something using an intricate plot.

Although you do not see it in the opening two minutes, our film does follow the "three-act" plot. This is where there is a build up to the robbery, this includes planning the robbery and learning about different scenarios that could possibly happen. In the opening two minutes we are building up to the first stage of the three act plot as the three gang members are meeting Ronnie to get the blue prints to the bank so they can start getting prepared. As you can see from the short video on the blog called "Film Synopsis" in the middle section of the film is the bank robbery which is the second part in the three-act plot so this clearly follows the conventions of the genre. Also you will be able to see in the film synopsis video that at the end of the film is the twist, the two robbers that get caught by the police give the police information to get Don Capallo arrested which results in them getting a shortened sentence. This is the final part of the three-act plot.

An "All-Star team of criminals" is also one of the conventions of the genre, the three main characters in the film who carry out the robbery all have specific skills. Jacob is the highly skilled get-a-way driver who has been of service to some of the major criminals in the county. Matthew Benton is the genius safe cracker that can get into almost every vault in the world if you gave him the time and the other member of the crew is Chris Jennings who is the precision shooter, a gun wilding mad man who isn't afraid to kill. Last but not least is Don Capallo or also knows as "The Don". He is the "boos" and he doesn't like to get his hands dirty in his criminal operations.

In the film it features Don Capallo's "one last job". He is aiming to have this one last big robbery so that he can leave the life of crime and live the normal married life with his wife. This is common in heist films and usually shows something going wrong (like in our films case as they don't get as much money as they had planned and Jacob gets shot) then the story follows the survivor(s) and their side of the story which is exactly what our film does.

In thw opening two minutes of our film we use a lot of cut in camera shots, this is common in heist films as the camera shots can draw attention to certain characters and props such as guns.

Another convention that we followed was the use of fast paced editing. An example of this in our film is when Jacob first gets into the car, starts the engine, puts the car in gear and puts his foot on the pedal. This happens in a lot of heist films as the films are fast paced with many shots.