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

The first convention used in real films are the production logos. Originally we wanted these in order to have a sound bridge from something other than blackness. Then, whilst making the logos, we decided to use them to represent the kinds of production companies that might produce our product. ‘B Productions’ is stylish, ‘Bullseye Productions’ could be linked to the poker side of the story and ‘Spark Studios’ could be a studio that made explosive films.

We also placed producer credits at the very beginning of the piece, followed by the actor credits (following the presentation style of ‘Trainspotting’), and then production team credits over the title sequence.

In most films made for the big screen title sequences aren’t used in the way we used them for this is a more TV style of presentation. However, we chose to do this as it mimicked the opening sequences of real life poker shows such as ‘High Stakes Poker’ which I see having a high influence on the style of the piece if it were to go on to a full length film.

The pre-title sequence is a rarity in most films, however was used in films such as ‘Lucky You’. We felt we needed this to set the atmosphere and to use dramatic irony (as used in the film ‘21’).

The abstract sense of the piece is never really used in poker films. Our abstract sense was created through the completely black background and the angel and devil element of the piece. However, conventions surrounding the abnormal were followed such as having a ghost trail around the angel and devil, and allowing the white of the angel’s shirt bleed (which would normally be stopped with different lighting or an off-white shirt instead of the stark white shirt).

Regarding representation of players, a lot of our players followed the slick ideal of poker players that is often used in films surrounding the game. There is often a cocky player (here being Gary) and the main character is often downtrodden and the underdog. These stereotypes are used possibly to gain the viewers sympathy as people tend to support the underdog, and are used widely in films such as ‘21’ and ‘rounders’. However, we did challenge the conventions slightly by adding the character Holly, a rich ‘daddy’s girl’ to the table to add variety, something you don’t normally see.

Editorially, we desaturated the picture which is a commonly used technique to take away the ‘peachy-ness’ of the skin colour. We also used the music to various effects. As in most film media projects, music and background noise levels decrease when important dialogue is being said. We followed these conventions as it was the most logical thing to do.

We also used a convention found in ‘21’ whereby we used a lot of Extreme Tight Close Ups of the players which contained small gestures that flawed the players’ ‘poker face’.