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

2. Scene 1: Where Joe wakes up, looks over to his phone and smiles at the photo of his Nan. Throughout this film I wanted to represent Joe as being a young thug trying his best to support his Nan in her retirement home. I wanted to develop moods and characterisation from films such as Kidulthood and Anuvahood in which represent youths in a way in which society frowns upon these days. This scene where Joe is happy to see his Nan challenges these representations of today’s youth and gives Joe a character in which audiences can sympathise with instead of despise.

3. Scene 3: Where Joe sits on his sofa receiving constant phone calls and drug deals. In this clip, I developed ideas from the film Scarface in order to continue to build Joe’s character. This screenshot (right) of Scarface sitting low on his seat with enormous amounts of cocaine in front of him wearing a miserable look on his face was exactly the message I wanted to put across to the audience, that Joe does not like what he is doing with his life. Joe sits low on his throne scowling at the idea of making this dirty money but has no choice if he wants to support his Nan. I also wanted to represent Joe as being “top of the food chain” in the way that he has worked his way to the top to be able to sit on the sofa all day making a lot of money, much like Scarface.

4. Scene 3: Where there is a time lapse of Joe making calls and doing deals. During this scene I wanted the audiences to see the progress Joe makes in a day and the revenue he receives in his daily routine. In order to do this I used multiple clips of him doing “business” and sped them all up. I initially got this idea from the film “Limitless” where Bradley Cooper takes the wonder drug and time seems to fly past him as he gets all his work done easily. Using this technique from limitless in my media product gives a similar effect in the way that time flies by and a lot of “work” is getting done. It is an effective way to show progression and repetitiveness whilst only using a small time frame.

5. Costume The media product I used in order to get an idea of what I wanted Joe to wear came from music video’s from Grime artists; Boy Better Know. Boy Better Know are a rap group which started from the bottom in rough London estates and worked their way to the top of the underground music scene. They rap about money, clothes, cars etc, so there is no question to whether they wear designer brands. Because of Boy Better Knows influence on the music scene today and the fact they share a similar back story to Joe is why I chose to dress Joe in a similar way they do; still in tracksuits and hoodies, but in expensive designer brands to show their wealth and the fact they like to spend their money.

6. Scene 3: Joe answers the unknown call to a deep, secretive voice. In this scene I developed ideas used in the film Jack Reacher starring Tom Cruise. During the phone scene in Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise is faced with a conversation in which is unavoidable, random and with no idea who’s on the other side, much like what I wanted to achieve in my media product. Instead of using my actors actual voice like in Jack Reacher, I decided to deepen the bad guys voice to firstly give it a more aggressive sound and to further make the character more unidentifiable.

7. Scene 4: Where Joe meets the thieves in the tunnel. For this scene I attempted to find an urban location with graffiti in order to achieve similar scenery found in the film Kidulthood. Kidulthood is a film that is closely related to my product because of youths association with drug use, dealing and violence meaning that it was essential that my film remains urban even with the fairly rural location. To do this I attempted to choose a spot in which looks a lot like the streets of East London; graffiti covered brick walls, and to make it the part of the clip that stood out the most so audiences would immediately recognise that these were the “streets”.

8. Scene 5: Where Joe takes the drugs in his depressed state. The idea of the shot of Joe preparing to take the drugs actually came from the music video of the song playing in the background,“I’m in love with the Coco”. during this scene. The music video was purely just a man shouting about cocaine, but the way it was edited gave it an expensive, professional look to it by cutting to another clip with every beat to the instrumental. I liked the way that the music video was so simple yet so effective purely because of the music and how it was pieced together, so it was vital for my final film.

9. Scene 5: Where Joe is on the drug fuelled rampage. I chose to shoot this particular scene using a fisheye lens. A fisheye lens allows for a wider angle shot and distorts the clip by bending the edges, a good lens to use to show Joe’s confusion, illness and distortion in the scene. I actually used this method from many skate videos I have seen in the past. Using a fisheye in a skate video allows cameramen to be able to fit the entire skater in the frame whilst making everything look longer, taller and better as seen in the screenshot on the right. It is a good way to get close up to the subject whilst including other things in the periphery.

10. Music Music used in my film I believe highly challenges today's forms and conventions used in real media products today as the music can be seen as underground, anti- mainstream but extremely relevant to my storyline. I believe I had chosen fitting music for every scene during my film, most of which are UK produced. This helped me to keep my film attractive to my target audience by choosing music in which I believe they would prefer over the frequently used mainstream music. For example during the scene where Joe finally see’s sense after the drug rampage and calls his Nan, the music that plays begins to sound like a standard woman singing but then turns into a upbeat hip hop instrumental in which fits the story better and is more attractive towards viewers.