Question 1

Mathew BrayWelcome, today we are here to discus Snake in the Grass. More specifically we will focus on the question “In what way does Snake in the Grass use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?”

Kenya BellBefore they created Snake in the Grass, they researched the specific genre, noir. This included things such as characters, settings, themes, visual style, narrative, and the progression of film noirs.

Mathew BrayBehind me is some examples of the characters that were used in noir films. Here is a gangster (.), a detective (.), corrupt cop, and a protagonist.

Kenya BellGangster where included in Snake in the Grass. We will now show you a clip of each of the different gangster that where involved. Tony Pensiero who was played by Jack Waterman (.), Paulie who was played by Daniel Gorman (.), and Jonny who was played by Ethan Lang (.)

Mathew BrayThese character where of course used to ensure that the film creators followed the conventions of a typical noir film.

Mathew BrayConventionally noir films are used to show that the characters are trapped in the City, with no escape. Mathew and Kenya the directors showed this in there film. They did this by using the storyline and the characters.

Kenya BellThe story line goes like this, a detective (Show the clip of Mathew in the film) starts to question if he is on the wrong side, and eventually makes his decision after the gang had shown him the way things could be run from the other side.

Mathew BrayThe way they showed the convention of feeling trapped through the characters was by involving the character Dominic Hudson very early into the corrupt job. (Show the scene where Tony is talking about Hudson to the other two gang members)

Kenya BellAs you have just heard on the clip Tony Pensiero says the word “new”, this would imply that the characters don’t even need to be trusted to be able to join the gangs operations.

Mathew BrayThe main character Dominic Hudson has many roles such as being a detective, a corrupt cop and a protagonist. This developed the conventions of their film because the one character is the main focus for the audience.

Mathew BrayIt also means that this developed convention will intrigue the audience. The audience will then try to focus on the character because they will feel the need to connect and understand the character Dominic Hudson. (Show several images of Dominic Hudson at the murder scene, and the office)

Kenya BellDark alleys, bars, lounges, police stations and empty streets are all conventions of a noir film. They used some of these conventional places in their media product. The settings they used where an office, a lounge and an abandoned street.

Mathew BrayThe office they used is technically an office in a police station (Show a clip from the office scene), they used an abandoned street for the murder scene (Show a clip of the murder scene) Also they used a lounge which included a lot of conventions in its self (Show a clip of the gang scene)

Kenya BellAs you have just seen in the clip there was a pool table, this is a convention they used because there would be a pool table in a gang hide out. More specifically in a gang members house that runs all the operations. This is a strong use of the convention, because it makes the noir film look like it is set in the 1950’s.

Mathew BrayBefore filming they had to make sure they had the right filming location. Here are some of the location they considered (Show the images of the locations) After Kenya and Mathew talked about the locations they decided these did not have mise en scene.

Kenya BellThey chose to use conventions of a noir mise en scene, this made sure the audience believed the film Snake in the Grass was set in the 1950’s.

Mathew BrayNow let’s talk about the opening sequence and how it uses some conventional themes and how they also challenged the conventional way of using the themes. The themes they used where murder, betrayal and jealousy.

Kenya BellThey challenged the conventions by making Dominic Hudson use all of these conventions on his own. Normally feelings like jealousy and betrayal are portrayed from different characters, however they have challenged this and made only one character feel all these emotions. This makes Dominic an edgy character and an interesting character.

Mathew BrayNarratives have many forms such as flashbacks, voiceovers, first person narrative and flash forward narrative. The directors decided to use a mixture of narrative conventions such as flashbacks, a first person narrative and a voiceover narration. Using all of these themes made the film more interesting and intriguing to the audience. This will the audience have a little glimpse into the rest of the film.

Kenya BellTo make sure they had a wide understanding of the different institutions they researched who was most likely to produce there noir film, Snake in the Grass (Show the image of the title) They did this by taking a wide variety of noir films from different points in time.

Mathew BrayThey then carried on to choose a couple and research who produced them and how much the fil made in profit overall. Kenya Chose Warner Bros as a producer however they did not specialise in noir films so they went with Mathew’s option. This option was Paramount Pictures, and as you can see from the clip Paramount Pictures did decide to produce their film.

Kenya BellBoth Kenya and Mathew looked at two different opening sequences each. This meant that they could choose a variety of conventions to bring back and use in there film. A convention that Kenya found was a flash-forward, this was in the film opening Bugsy Malone. (Show a clip off the opening sequence of Bugsy Malone in our video)

Mathew BrayThey decided that using a conventional flashback would give Snake in the Grass a nice smooth feel, giving the audience just enough glimpses into what is going to happen in the rest of the film (Show a flashback from our opening sequence)

Mathew BrayKenya looked at Sunset Blvd as another opening sequence. The sunset Blvd’s titles are in a different order from the modern conventional titles. They did not choose to use the conventional title sequence like in Sunset Blvd, because in the modern times it would bore the audience. This would make the opening sequence uninteresting and therefore people would not watch their film (Show an example from the film with the titles all shown at once on a black screen) Not following the titles conventions makes their film more modern and watchable.

Kenya Bell

They liked the convention where the film Sunset Blvd showed the murder victim in the opening sequence. They incorporated this into our opening sequence by showing Tony Pensiero lying dead on the floor at the end of the sequence. (Show the clip where Tony is laid dead on the floor)

Mathew BrayThey used this convention because it intrigues the audience and makes them think of these questions. Why did Tony get murdered? What will happen to the rest of the gang? What happened to the operation they were on? This will make the audience want to watch the rest of the film to be able to find out answers.

Kenya BellMathew watched the opening sequence for James Bond Casino Royale. This opening sequence was focused around gambling and private meeting rooms. To follow this convention they decided to include a private room in their opening sequence. And this opening sequence also lets the audience know what type of character this person is. (Show a clip with the gang hide out on)

Mathew Bray

(Show the titles time lines when we are speaking during the video) For further research they needed to find out the chronological order that the titles should appear on their opening sequence. They did this by looking at two different opening sequences. Kenya looked at the opening sequence Natural Born Killers and Mathew looked at James Bond Casino Royale’s opening sequence.

Kenya BellWatching the opening sequences allowed them to see how long the titles should stay visible on the screen, and which order they should show up in.

Mathew BrayTo make sure they followed conventions they used the correct order of titles. Although they did challenge one title convention by putting the name of our film at the end of the sequence. Choosing this order made sure that the title of their film was remembered in the audiences mind right at the end of the opening sequence.

Kenya BellKenya created a survey which was given which was given out to a wide variety of people. This was so they could find out what the audience would expect to see in Snake in the Grass. However doing this showed the directors that 90.9% of the peopled surveyed knew nothing about the noir genre or the conventions it normally follows (Show the survey pies from the questionnaire)

Mathew BrayEven though the audience didn’t know as much about the noir genre, they still liked some of the conventions that are usually found in noir films. Such as a plot twists which is a huge convention of noir. They made sure they used this convention in their film because 70% of the audience liked a plot twist, therefore using this convention gave them a bigger audience. An example of how they used a plot twist is when the detective murdered Tony Pensiero (On the video play the murder scene while one of us is speaking this paragraph)

Kenya BellAfter finding out this out they decided that they should stick as closely as they could to the noir conventions. An example of this would be when they picked the names for the characters such as Tony Pensiero, Paulie, and Dominic Hudson (In the video show clips of the characters saying the names)

Mathew BrayHowever the directors did challenge some conventions of noir. These where things such as not including some conventional characters like the Femme Fatale. They made this decision so that the audience focused more on the storyline of the one main character Dominic Hudson rather than focusing on a romance that would distract the character and the audience.

Kenya BellAlso they pushed the boundaries for the narrative of the story, because in their opening sequence they created a narrative where the character is letting the audience in on all the secrets by directly talking to them. This is challenging conventions because the character breaks the 4th wall between the characters and the audience. (On the video show the scene where Dominic looks at the camera towards the audience)

Mathew BrayThat’s all for today’s news, but come back tomorrow when we are interviewing the characters from Snake in the Grass.