1. EVALUATION: in what way does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products? Emily Capon
My filming partner and I challenged and developed previous works to benefit
our short film PROMISE from the influence of other media products, their forms,
and conventions which helped to contribute to our research and initial ideas
both post and during production to build on our narrative and cinematography.
During the period of high school most students are overjoyed with the idea of
been taken to prom. However not all students are able to attended the event due
to different reasons, and for Ellie’s it was her illness. We wanted to display
struggles of a teenager living with cancer and deterioration due to short film
being based on realism.
Developed
We decided taking on a similar narrative to something that was already out there
but developing it slightly more different and making it our own would be the
best option. We decided on the genre we wanted to work with and researched
both mainstream and short films that fell under the romance drama category.
Kayyah and I immediately decided that we wanted to follow the conventions of a
romance but incorporate a wider issue other than a break up etc. therefore we
thought ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ would be brilliant to base our short film off. We
evolved Ellie’s personality from Hazel, and followed common forms that were
great at displaying an illness, which is why we added scarf and medical
equipment to add to the mise-en-scene.
Moreover we developed our characters lives regarding popular culture of
Britain. As technology has changed our culture from our values, to our means of
communication we wanted to develop this form. Now, many people spend time
communicating with friends and family on their phones, tablets, or computers.
IPhones are commonly used within short film and are now making an
appearance in blockbuster films for example; ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ and ‘Taken’
consistently shows reference to Iphones as well as apple products such as the
Apple MacBook. However we took the use of technology within our short much
further to display the communication between Ellie and Sam. We decided it
would be more appropriate that the viewers actually watched what the
characters were texting each other rather than just viewing Ellie texting Sam,
therefore we edited the texting sequence on Photoshop and challenged the file
type from PSD to JPEG in order to transfer it onto Edius 7.
Furthermore another film that had a massive impact on the structure of our
short was ‘My Sisters Keeper’ and the family dynamic. We wanted to display a
strong family closing the film; however just like in ‘My Sisters Keeper’ there was
repetitive arguments that we wanted to convey. During these arguments we
approached cinematic ways to display how tense it was such as Jump cuts
between each character, as well as a P.O.V from Dave. Which we took inspiration
from ‘Breaking Bad’ which although is the complete opposite to our genre its
holds a variety of great P.O.V shots which was easily to incorporate into our
short.
2. EVALUATION: in what way does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products? Emily Capon
Challenged
Kayyah and I wanted to challenge was the narrative of short film. During our
research stage we discovered that shorts are usually based on simplistic story
lines, such as everyday issues. However we also found that they were very
limiting which resulted in standard films that weren’t very complex, however we
decided to take a narrative that was more lengthy that acquired the viewers full
attention at all times. However we broke up the narrative by using a vast array of
locations, which included, Titus Salt School, Kayyah’s house and Roberts Park
which helped to make our short film appear less complicated while keeping the
audience engaged, and was slightly more different than other typical short films
which are set in one particular location. We knew we were limited with time and
we stuck to typical conventions of short film , which is why storyboarding and
planning was crucial.
Furthermore we wanted to portray our protagonist as the more young and
innocent type rather than young and sexualised, particularly due to the nature of
our production and the conventions that follow. It has been seen more recently
that there has been limited female protagonists in films, as the females are the
ones mirroring Propp’s narrative theory and the princess role. Females in films
are often sexualised by their behavior, looks and dress, therefore we challenged
this throughout our production thus supported by Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze
theory. Ultimately we gave Ellie outfits that were comfortable as well as well
covering, not only to portray the fact that she is ill but also to show her self-
respect and innocence as a character. The clothing she wore was often pastel
colours whereas in mainstream film women are often dressed in revealing, tight
and dark clothing so we basically inferred the opposite. As we are also creating a
short film it needs to representative of real time and real problems such as
illness, insecurities, growing up and daily hassles. Vladimir Propp’s theory is
unrepresentative of reality, and therefore we contrasted the sexualisation of
women and the way they behave. We challenged this by Ellie’s on going struggle
with her illness and although it’s limiting her she still has the strength to want to
be able to live a normal life. However it could be seen that Sam comes to Ellie’s
savior when it is in fact Ellie who confronts her own father so there could be a
gender swap in terms of the ‘Prize’ as Ellie wins her father over and is given
Sam’s company. We also adjusted a few factors in terms of the set we wanted
Ellie to have a younger looking bedroom with a single bed to display her
innocence but also changed the scripting so instead of saying ‘nonsense’ she uses
‘bullsh*t’ which shows her inner confidence and drive in which is normal
pursued by the male role in mainstream film.
In short films such as ‘I Miss You’, I found that the audience is drawn to products
in which the characters are aesthetically pleasing to look at, as it adds a
professional look to the short such as mirroring Hollywood films in which 90%
the actors would be conveyed as beautiful, however we challenged this as the
progression of Ellie’s illness deteriorates her beauty which is more realistic than
a patient looking beautiful throughout the course of their illness. As Jim Morrison
stated ‘Whoever controls the media, controls the mind’ in which audiences views
3. EVALUATION: in what way does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products? Emily Capon
on beauty are manipulated.
Conveyed
During pre production before the initial idea of Promise was agreed we decided
the best way to approach planning a short film was researching common forms
and conventions of short film which we could use as our basic guideline
throughout both the planning (including scripting) and the production stages of
our short film. It became apparent to us that a successful short film included a
small amount of characters and duration of no more than 20 minutes although
short films last up to anything between 3 minutes to 40, we wanted to keep it
limited in terms of duration. In which we insisted we would have no more than 4
characters and duration of 15 minutes to keep the audience engaged at all times.
We found short films usually have a narrative that resembles every day struggles
or had educational value. That usually instates a problem or twist converting to
disequilibrium thus supported by Tzvetan Todorov and Claude Levi- Straus’s
structural analysis and development particularly with semiology. This is the
easiest and most effective way to perceive the protagonist is on a journey in
order to resolve the issue that has risen in our case the problem had already
begun in the first couple of minutes when the audience comes to terms that
Ellie’s mother is no longer present. However we didn’t over complex things as
this would result in the audience being lost and confused in which we had come
across in other students work, therefore we decided to take on a more simpler
but dynamic approach by following successful short films and their conventions.
Additionally like any other short film we had a low budget so we were refrained
from using any large scale and modern technologies, however these aren’t
commonly used in short films because including mass amounts of special effects
and could be detrimental for our film. We ensured our short film was more
vibrant looking as a large amount of short films are actually set in light
environments and as ours was set majorly inside we wanted to keep the same
bright look throughout so the viewers were not put of by the image of our short.
We also followed the conventions for the type of music that is held within
romance dramas we took inspiration from artists such as Adele that have a very
warm tone, therefore we contacted James Cheung who developed a similar
styled sound.
