A reflection on my opening film.

1. Conventions & Representations
How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

2. Through research, I've found out that the conventions involved
within fantasy genre films consists of many specifications. Films
that fit in this certain convention include; Lord of the Rings, Harry
Potter, Percy Jackson, The Chronicles of Narnia, etc. As an avid fan,
I've watched most of them, each franchise having almost the same
plot element as the last. These conventions vary from attracting
younger target audience, although it does also have some
significant appeal towards an older audience. They're also quite
emotive in terms of expressing certain feelings in a scene, thus
often romanticizing their narrations. Usually, they have high-key
lighting to match along with the light-hearted genre, although at
times these can change as the lighting tend to slowly move into a
darker element of the plot, thus progressively reducing the tone of
lighting to a much darker one. Following on, their primary colours
are usually saturated to emphasize on certain emotions that could
very well set the scene.

3. Furthermore, there is a significant use of CGI effects and
other special effects that differentiate the differing worlds of
real and fantasy worlds. This is done so that the audience can
enter and see a whole new world that was once just a part of
their imagination, now coming to life.
As for the characters, they tend to be aspirational, that being
they are strong in terms of getting what they want, and they
will not stop until they get it. What they want is usually the
resolution to equate the equilibrium via vanquishing the evil
and helping the good succeed. These characters tend to be
escapists at first, thus they often undertake a quest to escape
from their banal aspects of daily life, much like Harry Potter
who was maltreated by his family, thus he went on to enter
the world of Hogwarts to get away from them.

4. Occasionally, they've also got political narrative
themes that only an older target audience can
understand as it contains significant cultural
capital that sometimes focuses on minority
groups. These films are also often set in the past,
or within an imagined timeline. These usually lead
to hybridisation of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, in which a
dystopian timeline is what's used as a setting for
the film. Most importantly, the iconography
includes the use of magic, as well as mystical
creatures, and locations are used to emphasize on
the idea of 'New World'.

5. So, the question stands, how does my product use or challenge conventions? To begin
with, let's discuss the target audience. From what I've originally planned, it was meant to
simply be a children's film, one that will appeal to them the most. However, as it shows,
there has been a major change within the target audience, as it could possibly be PG-13
due to the involvement of drug abuse and hallucinations within Alice's sight. The idea of
drug abuse was brought up by my colleague and camera-person Cheena whom believed
that Alice In Wonderland was indeed somewhat involved with drugs, whereas I thought
however that it may have involved with hallucinations as one cannot simply call Alice as
being a...stable-minded girl. Thus, we've decided to implement both ideas, and now I've
come to a decision that whilst Alice does have a drug abuse problem, she's also got
schizophrenia, which is a mental disorder that's often characterized as an abnormal
social behavior, and a failure upon recognition of what is real and what is unreal.
Through the use of the echo effect, I was able to somewhat express this, though I feel
that it wasn't enough.

6. In terms of expected 'emotional' narratives
within fantasy genres, I believe that my
opening sequence has definitely challenged
this norm as my opening focused more on the
lack of emotions, but what makes it quite
effective is that due to the intentional
blandness, it becomes a lot more mysterious as
there is no facial expression which reveals the
personality of these characters, nor their
motives or characteristics. Furthermore,
through the use of non-diegetic sounds such as
the mood music, and the sound effects, they
assist in creating the mood and setting the
tension thus making the audience confused
and curious as to what the film will focus on.
My intention was that although it is indeed an
adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, it will take
on a whole new plot, and a whole new storyline
that will challenge its audience with the secret
messages it contains and the hidden
implications implanted.

7. As for the key-lighting, I immediately began with a low-key
lighting so to set the scene and immediately give a straight-
forward idea to the audience that this film will be of a darker
tone and will stay that way. As originally planned, characters
will indeed pass away, but endings must always have a happy
end right? Well, this film...not so much as a happy ending, but
more like something that will content the audience, and an
uncertain assurance, much like the ending of The Truman
Show. Anyways, focusing back on the key-lighting, through
the use of darker tone, it will set the scene for the audience to
become ready as blood and gore may be involved with the
film, much like Alice Madness Returns, however the
difference is that although that game started out as being
light-hearted transitioning to a much darker tone,
Wonderland will continue its dark tone till the end.

8. Speaking of colours, I’ve also done some saturation within the
opening scene, but mostly through the use of contrast
between the scenes, in which on some scenes I’ve used warm
colours and saturated this to emphasize on the focus of the
tones of red, whilst to contrast this I implanted a large amount
of blue on the other scenes and emphasized on this through
the use of blue tones. There are some areas where saturation
of colours wasn’t used, but only to keep those scenes on
neutral ground such as the ‘Wonderland World’ scenes, with a
CGI three dimensional over world used to differentiate it in
real-life scenes that I shot. As we know, CGI is always used in
fantasy films, thus it shows that I do use the conventions of
fantasy films rather than always challenging them.

9. Meanwhile, for the characters, although not shown, it
was originally intended that Alice is an aspirational
character as she aims to return to the twisted world of
Wonderland. Through the opening, it was shown
within their scenes that life has been a bit too normal,
thus the silence and the awkwardness between the two,
which is something that Alice is trying to get away
from as she is not used to it. Although she does have
schizophrenia, even that’s not enough to feed her
hunger for imagination, thus she wants to return to
Wonderland, but the hallucinations prevents her from
doing so, thus she undergoes a quest to end it all and
return to the latter world once and for all. As for the
use of occasional political narrative themes, I have
actually somewhat made it so that adults do
understand the meaning being implied, in which drug
abuse amongst the minority these days have become
far too common and far too dangerous.

10. Moreover, in terms of iconography, I made it so that there is
barely any within the scene. The lack of use of magic and
mystical creatures will hopefully confuse the audience as to
why there is none, for generally and stereotypically these icons
are used to establish the idea of fantasy. What I did was
through the use of CGI effects, recreate some of the areas that
has been memorable in Wonderland, but with some of my
own twists.

11. In terms of representation of fantasy films, the
Medieval era is typically used as a setting,
especially after the long success of the ‘Lord of
The Rings’ trilogy. I believe the most recent
one is ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’, placing
the beloved children’s film into a much darker
tone. Due to this, there are less fantasy films
set on the modern day era, probably due to the
lack of authenticity of the modern era’s
clothing as they are now considered norm,
whilst the costume in the past are quite
authentic and shows a huge difference in the
norm.

12. Furthermore, in many fantasy films there tends to be a
hero/heroine who embarks on a journey to save the world
they’ve only just discovered. They also usually go against
villainous characters to succeed, such as Harry defeating
Voldemort as an example. It should be noted that typically the
heroic role is taken by a male lead; however, nowadays more
films are beginning to use female roles as the lead.

13. The representations of fantasy characters
tend to have characters of mythical or
magical origins, such as dwarves, centaurs,
ogres, fairies, elves, etc. A common feature in
fantasy films is weapons, but these weapons
are different from the norm as they tend to
be swords, bows and arrows, a medieval type
of weapon that is. It could also be a wand, a
staff, or a broomstick, depending on the
character. An example is Alice Kingsleigh’s
Vorpal Sword in Tim Burton’s ‘Alice In
Wonderland’ adaptation. Meanwhile, in the
musical ‘Wicked’, the character Elphaba’s
main weapon is a broomstick as she is a
witch. Some props help form a reality to the
film. An example would be in the film ‘The
Borrowers’ where the props are larger than
what they normally to help the audience
enforce the idea that all characters are
exceedingly small.

14. Costumes in fantasy films tend to focus on the colouring,
whereas the heroes would wearing something light, the evil
characters tend to wear dark clothing, usually consisting of
black or red as these colours emphasize danger, which is what
directors are trying to aim to express to their audience.
Fantasy films also involve the use of magical items that float
about, or have at times show significance in the film. These
things include spell books, enchanted swords, etc. In some
fantasy films, there is a quest that solely focuses on the object
of typically magical origin.

15. Within my opening film, I do believe I’ve challenged the stereotypical
representation in terms of the era the film has been set in. As it shows, my
film is set within a modern era, but this is later contrasted by Alice entering
Wonderland as the place isn’t set on an era but more like a whole different
world compared to Earthland. Due to the modern day’s lack of authenticity,
it’s made me attracted to the whole idea of simplistic clothing of the
modern era, as it does not completely reveal the character’s personality. In
Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, by the end we can see Alice’s
genuineness in character as her outfit had clearly shown this through the
amount of dirt, and the fact that it stands out from all the other clothing
worn by other partygoers.

16. Through my Alice’s costume in modern day era, the use of black and white
stripes focuses on confusing the audience whether she’s a good or bad
character, but her Wonderland costume makes a statement that she’s
mysterious through the use of colour blue. Meanwhile, she is contrasted by
Daniel through the yellow in his clothing, which immediately reveals his
character to be good and focuses on the good side which challenges the
norm as male characters tend to waver off from good and evil every now and
then. Furthermore, the use of a female lead is what yet again challenges the
representation of media as female characters tend to be secondary
protagonists, but within my film the primary is a female. Additionally,
female characters tend to be less aggressive than male characters, but as it
will be shown and as mentioned earlier and within the script, Alice will
become aggressive and psychotic as the film progresses on, thus leading her
to become a killer of some kind towards the end, which isn’t usually how
women are portrayed.