1. EVALUATION QUESTION 1 – IN WHAT
WAY’S DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS
AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL
MEDIA PRODUCTS?
Characters
In our short film we have kept it to having only 2 main characters and a few
extras.. This is because due to it being a short film characters do not have to go
into a huge insight about their past. We wanted to keep Sonder simple with the
characters of are David ( Played by Eimontas), Ellie ( Played by florence) and Noah
(As Himself).We decided to stick to the convention of a short film and a drama as I
believe that by using a small amount of characters, it allows the audience to feel
more in contact and intimate. In some sense the characters used in our short film
are similar to those used in another comedy/drama film called ‘Submarine’ in
which the main protagonist is a teenage male. Submarine also has some referral
to the idea of using a ‘School girl’ or ‘School boy’ in which our film represents our
main female character Ellie being your typical young school girl in her uniform.
Mise – en scene and props
Because of film was a dram I found that mise-en-scene ofter uses very mellow
tones such as dark lighting and the use of drugs, alcohol money and crime.
Costumes of teenagers always show the typical conventions of a low life in a
tracksuit and hoodies or school uniform. In our film an example of this is us trying
to make the audience try and find out what this mysterious object is without
pointing it out to them this is what they need to figure out. The most significant
prop in the film is the bag and money. Also the bench can be know as an iconic
scene for example ‘forest gump’ of his sitting on the bench explaining his life to a
complete stranger.
Genre and storyline
Short films oftenstick to common and well known genres rather than attempting
to combine a range of different genres into one. In a short film there is limited
dialogue, instead the characters will be developed through their actions. Our
2. short film could b seen to have a very complex storyline to put across in 5
minutes. Yet we do stick to the conventions to having hardly any conversation. I
feel that Adam Deacon’s comedy/Drama film ‘Adulthood’ compares to ‘Sonder’ as
we follow similar storylines and aspects of this. We used our fight scene a the
beginning of the short film to make a twist and gave the audience the impression
the young girl was in trouble. We decided to use a twist to copy the conventions
of other shorts films but also to make it exciting.
Location and Setting
After carrying out research I found that typical drama films oftenuse settings and
locations such as council estates, flats, ghettos, schools, neighbourhood streets,
run down houses,estates and workplaces. Our short film uses these conventions
as our main locations are school, the house/council estate of our main characters
and the park. Some drama films such as ‘The breakfast club’ also take place in
school. The locations that we used was Hermitage council estate in Snaresbrook
and also Wanstead Park. The use of the council estate is similar to comedy drama
films Kidulthood and Adulthood with the whole idea of a youth representation.
We did somewhat challenge the typical locations however as we used
Leytonstone Job Centre.
Structure
Short films can be form 1 minute to 40 minutes long but our task was to make a 5
minute short film. Many drama films often use something called reverse in which
they start of by showing a significant part of the film or the ending and then they
flip back to showing the audience how that happened throughout the remainder
of the film. We decided to put the put our fight scene at the beginning as it is the
more significant and exciting.
We also used a typical convention which is theory of Toderov. Toderov’s narrative
theory suggests that most stories and plots follow a similar pattern or structure.
3. This is the equilibrium which is the first part which shows some background
knowledge and shows the setting and characters. A disruption which is a problem
or major cause of event and the realization in which the problem becomes
apparent and is either solved or dealt with. Sonder uses this as the equilibrium of
our film shows our main characters and highlights the main settings. The
disruption of our film then involves the problem occurring which is the fight and
mugging of the bag.
