Question 1

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

Our film opening sequence follows the forms and conventions of real opening sequences, but it also challenges and develops some of these conventions as well. Our film forsaken is based around the Drama genre. We used some of these conventions which include, plot-driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction. Usually, they are not focused on special-effects, comedy, or action making it more familiar to the audience and meeting their expectations of their preferred genre but challenged certain aspects to give our film a small twist and create curiosity.

Like most real media products our film follows the same form of an opening sequence by:

• Introducing the character
• Introducing the narrative
• Establishing the setting
• Incorporating titles and music throughout our sequence

The main themes in our film are:

• Drugs
• Death/suicide
• Poverty
• Parenting

The use of drugs and the presence of drug equipment reflects on how hard the main characters life has been, all of themes link together and are seen in the film, as the film begins we notice the state of our main character her hair is messy, hands are dirty and the location she is in which seems to be a basement is very dark and dingy. This all plays a major role into the character and her background; death/ suicide is the most prominent theme throughout the film as the character faces loss of many loved ones, leading her to commit suicide in the ending of the opening sequence.

We made most of our themes clear to give the audience a small insight into what may happen and a clue about what the theme may be about, parenting theme we decided not to make as obvious because it was the most important part of the film which links all themes together so instead of giving it away, we incorporated small clues like pictures and baby voice overs. Small effects like black and white show the audience how isolated the main character is and symbolises how she feels along with the world that she is living in, the music play parallel to this in order to create more of an atmosphere.

In our opening sequence we challenged the typical conventions of a normal film by shooting in non chronological order; most films follow a linear sequence (Beginning- Middle- End) We done this because we believe that it would engage the audience at the beginning and keep them intrigued into finding out what happens.

In regards to characterisation our film also challenges the conventions of most dramas as our main character is a female, this is very unusual especially when the main concept is of drugs poverty etc which is normally played and portrayed by a male. However to create a more powerful film we decided to go against these and subvert the normal conventions also to create more sympathy for the character. (Trainspotting 1996) is an example of how males are normally used to portray drug use , the main character addicted is infact a male unlike our film forsaken, we also subverted conventions by making the character quite young this make our film even more effective.

This is similar to the film (KiDULTHOOD 2006) which also follows some of the same themes as our film showing how our film relates to real life media products, In KiDULTHOOD the characters are teenagers and reflect the issues faced in their community, In one specific scene there are two young girls taking cocaine, this is similar to our film as we see the main character injecting herself however we challenge this by making the effects fatal. 

 Children are normally the spirit of most dramas, for example the (Pursuit of happiness 2006) the main character’s son makes the film uplifting, but in our film forsaken we surprise the audience by the death of the baby challenging the codes and conventions.

Like most films sound is a combination of three main elements; - the human voice,

The sound effects and music to give the film more meaning. We followed two of these elements (sound effects & music) however we didn’t use the human voice as we wanted to build up the atmosphere and give meaning through the way we filmed rather than through speech.

We used diagetic sounds such a glass cracking, baby voices, and non diagetic sounds such as a flat line and the music for the mood of the film. In TV dramas such as Holby city, sound effect such as flat line and heartbeats can be heard as symbolises what is the condition of the character we incorporated this into our film by adding the flatline to show our character has died.

Our narrative like most films started with an equilibrium which was then disrupted, this was then followed by a resolution and started with a new equilibrium, however our film followed a non linear approach and therefore was shot in non chronological order we decided to begin our film with the ending sequence and then flashback to the beginning of our story to reveal the events that led to the final tragedy, similar to films such as (Inception 2010, Kill Bill 2003, Memento 2000) we believed this would explain our narrative more effectively , it will hook the audience from the start and in the end all questions should successfully be answered.

Lastly in regards to Mise En Scene, we used a black and white special effect throughout the opening sequence, but showed colour on the baby pictures this automatically gives meaning and importance to the babies character and hints to the audience to pay attention to small details as such, the costumes and props were all in relation to the narrative, for example the empty alcohol bottles, newspapers, empty wrappers all related to her poverty and also state of mind. We challenged these aspects by contrasting these objects with children toys which creates confusion and also links to the death of her children which the audience would not be aware yet at this stage. It subverts the typical conventions as toys are normally seen in children/fantasy film however we have placed them in a very dingy area and next to contrasting objects such as drug equipment which creates irony.

I believe our films follows the conventions necessary to still be of a Drama genre, we use the norms but challenge these to give more effect and make the film more enjoyable instead of being able to predict what may be approaching which sometimes occurs in predictable films, the way we present the character , our opening sequence use features of real life media products but we are able to develop these to give our own edge and twist to the film in order to make it more enjoyable for our preferred audience.