Ruby Blue is a romantic drama film that was inspired by a song and explores mental health issues among teenagers. The film challenges conventions by focusing on a girl struggling with mental disturbances and how it impacts her relationship. It represents teenagers, a group often overlooked. To engage audiences, the film uses beautiful original music and artwork and highlights an important issue rarely addressed. For distribution, Focus Features would be a good fit as they have distributed similar unconventional love stories and films addressing stigmatized topics. Through this project, the filmmaker gained experience with camera techniques, lighting, shots, and editing skills. Various technologies like a DSLR camera, tripod, and editing software were used to produce and submit the film.

1. How does yourproduct use orchallenge conventions and how does it represent
social groups orissues?
My movie, Ruby Blue, categorizes in the Romantic/Drama genre. Due to the genre,
the soundtrack was vital to my movie, which coincidentally, was also my main
inspiration for Ruby Blue. From when I first heard it, all I thought about was making a
movie track or video for it. That was when I decided my final project would be based
solely around the song. The depth, pain and the lost love depicted through the song
is, in my opinion, heart wrenching.
As my movie is from the romance/drama genre, there were a lot of conventions that
had to be lived up to. For example, the show of deep emotions that pulls at the hearts
of the audience. Flashback or dream sequences are also quite common.
Romance/dramas also usually includes showing the disappearance or absence of one
character from a couple which I have also shown in my movie. Where I challenge the
social conventions is at the part where my movie is not the typical, everyday dramatic
love story. It is a story of a girl facing mental disturbances, how it affects her love life
and a boy who wants to help her in any and every way he can but is unable to, again
due to the psychotic issues with the girl. I feel that mental issues are ones that are not
addressed enough and which should be.

2. The social group my movie uses are characters who are
from a group of 18-20 year olds. This, I believe is the age
group that is used very less compared to older age
groups. Teenagers need to be understood better and
more, in order for the generation to be stronger and
mentally stable and healthy, a huge part of which is
played by adults and how they often over look them and
do not relate or understand them.
Ruby Blue caters to the particular part of society that
acknowledges, accepts and tries to help with mental
issues. It also caters to the groups who understand love
in its true essence and are not afraid feel, reveal or
preach it.

3. How does yourproduct engage the audiencesand howwould it be distributed as a
real media text?
In my opinion, what engages audiences from the start is the music, which is beautiful
and captures the entire feeling of the movie opening itself. It conveys the
transcendence of it better than any other type of soundtrack could. The artwork that
used a lot in Ruby Blue is 100% original, which would also attract the art enthusiasts.
My movie targets an issue which is often hushed over: Mental health issues. It
challenges an issue that so many teenagers go through these days but so few speak
about, like depression etc., to name some. Not many movies are made about this,
which accept them and help the people going through them . I would also consider my
movie being something out of the normal that people do not see everyday, an
engaging thing about I, which I hope grasps the audiences attention.

5. For distribution of Ruby Blue, I would want Focus Features. My budget would not be
extremely huge, and Focus Features would suit my needs as well as my budget. I have
seen many of its movies and have liked the majority. Focus Features often goes for
movies that are not very ‘typical’ love stories, and often have a ‘different’ edge to them. It
also tackles the particular issue of homosexuality in one of its movies, Brokeback
Mountain, challenging a social norm and showcasing an issue that is not so easily
accepted by the world. This is also the same with Ruby Blue and the mental issues that its
shows.
Still from the movie
Brokeback Mountain
by Focus Features

6. Another still from Brokeback Mountain
along with a similar shot from Ruby Blue

7. Stills from Eternal Sunshine of
The Spotless Mind by focus
Features, yet another
unconventional love story

8. Stills from the award winning movie,
The Theory of Everything

9. Shot of couple dancing from The Theory of
Everything, which is also shown in Ruby
Blue

10. How did yourproduction skills develop throughoutthis project?
When I first started out Media Studies, I was hopeless with video making, I
did not properly know how to manually operate a DSLR, or anything about
angles. As the year progressed, however, and our teacher taught us quite
diligently about more and more things like different techniques, angles and
mise en scène required for various types of movies and a lot more, I
understood more and more and knew more than I ever had, when I started
my project.
When I started filming Ruby Blue, there was an obvious difference from
when I filmed my first project, which was supposed to be a video of a person
driving, to filming for my movie opening. I knew my camera better, I knew
its setting better and I efficiently switched from one set of settings to
another. I grew a better sense about lighting and the sort a particular sense
or shot needed. I also developed better skills with angles and shots and
came up with some unusual shots.

11. Learning the
usage of a
tripod

12. A direct quote from my best friend, who has seen all of
my projects as of yet, about my production skills,
according to her:
‘’Your knowledge about shots has increased a lot and
you know better about how to do certain things and edit
things more than you did before.’’

14. Stills from my first filming project, where the out of focus shot
is very clear

15. Stills from
ruby Blue,
which
look more
crisp and
better,
overall

16. How did you integrate technologies in this project?
There were a lot of technologies contributing to the filing, production and
editing of Ruby Blue. I used a Canon 550D to shoot all the scenes and the
entire movie. I leant the functions and correct uses of a tripod and shot some
of the scenes with the help of it. I used some Birds eye view shots, among
others, and a lot of fast cuts as I wanted to depict and show a dream/flashback
sequence. For this and all my other editing purposes I used Windows Movie
Maker, which was very user friendly to use and extremely easy to get around. I
used different color schemes from Movie Maker and inserted a slow motion
shot.
I also used the program Video Time Reversal 2.0 to reverse one particular
shot. The internet helped me with a lot of stuff, including the soundtrack,
downloading of various programs to help with editing and also for various
types of research throughout.
To submit my project, I made a blog on Tumblr and have submitted all my
other projects on Tumblr as well.

17. Birds Eye View Shot

18. Birds Eye View Shot

19. Editing in Windows Movie Maker

20. Video Reversing in
Video Time Reversal
2.0