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

The title of our media product is appropriately named 'Rags to Riches' as the storyline of our sequence is how a young man made it from being a nobody to being extremely wealthy in just a day. Our title is the kind of phrase you could expect a typical 'Gangster' to say. Therefore conforming to the Gangster genre.

The setting and location of our opening is London city. This heavily challenges the traditional convention of an American city setting. We have chosen this to stand out amongst the rest of the films in the market of a similar storyline, as the inner runnings of London would be relatively different to the majority of the American films that have already been produced, being a point of difference that makes our piece stand out.

The costumes of our props have been kept similar to those of other films in this genre. A formal, black coat and a briefcase are what a typical wealthy/rich Gangster would wear. However, the black London cab we have used is different to the traditional American yellow cab, and the audience will notice this as a difference and relate it to our setting.

The camerawork and editing we have used for our opening sequence conform to the typical conventions of a Gangster movie because we kept our main character a secret, similar to things like godfather, because this has built tension. This kind of camera work is also used in the gangster genre as this allows the audience to see the main character in the cab drivers eyes, this also builds tension.

The font and style of our title sequence is one that represents blocks of gold, and this is quite appropriate according to our storyline, and this also conforms to the gangster genre. Shining blocks of light is the typical 'bank vault' environment, and this represent the money motivated storyline, foreshadowing future events.

Our story is introduced by a narration of the background runnings of London. This is similar to films such as Shawshank Redemption, but also the method of telling a story then cutting back to how it happens, is similar to that of the Godfather, therefore this follows this convention.

Our genre is introduced by the passing of a huge amount of money. Other films also introduce the idea of money etc by showing items or something like that being passed from person to person, i.e drugs. Therefore our opening sequence conforms to this convention of a gangster film.

Our main character is introduced in a harsh tense revealing scene which takes 2 minutes to be shown. This makes our audience constantly questioning who he is. This is seen in other gangster films such as Godfather where they have low lighting on a main character so that you cannot see his full facial details and you don't necessarily know exactly who that is.

Finally, the special effects have been kept minimal in our opening sequence as we want to keep it realistic, however the typewriter effect is one thing we used because this makes our sequence look professional. Other films in this genre have also used the typewriter effect because this also brings in the 'olden day' theme and represents the stylish gangster.