Question One

Joshua Liam Whincup

           

Evaluation - Question 1

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

The opening sequence that we created follows the codes and conventions of it's genre to a certain extent. However it also challenges the codes and conventions. The film we created, 'Fragmental' is an urban drama that involves crime within youth, relating to the social problem within the UK of knife and gang crime. However usually in these types of dramas it has a strong male leading role however we decided to focus on the other side of the violence and decided to have a vulnerable female as our leading character. Within the opening sequence we off course used some stereotypes of the genre so the audience could automatically familiarise themselves with the genre, however involved something’s that go against the codes and conventions so that the audience would be surprised and this would also make 'Fragmental' different to those other films within it's genre.

The typical codes and conventions we used within the opening sequence where:

Introducing the main characters, supporting characters, the storyline and the genre of the film.

Titles and using music that fits the genre of the film.

Our film does include many of the codes and conventions that you would expect from an opening sequence that is of this genre. However our film, 'Fragmental' does far more than this due to it rebelling against some of these codes and conventions and by doing this it allows our film to be separated from the rest of those other films within its genre.

Themes:

Violence

Death

Drugs

Isolation

Crime

Typical themes within a film of this genre are crime, violence and death. Our film does involve all of these themes within the opening sequence however we portray them all in a different way than film makers would usually portray these themes. We do this by firstly deciding to come at the film from a different angle and instead of being right in the mix of the gang violence, because usually the narrative follows a gang member however we have decided to follow the narrative of someone who affected by gang, knife and crime within the youth. We see that it is extremely common to be right in amounts the gangs and violence in films of this genre, we see this in such films such as Kidulthood’s, Adulthood and Shank. These three films are of the same genre as the one we created, however all of which have a male leading role in a gang or involved in some sort of trouble and violence we wanted to change this within our film and avoid cliché.

The music we used we used within our opening sequence was to fit the genre so we used urban music. We found it extremely differcult to find exactly what we was looking for. We wanted to get across the character's emotions through the music due to us not using dialogue. So we decided to create the music with inspiration from some urban rap music. Eventually we made a track that was dark and showed how depressed Nikki was and also had that also involved that urban edge.

Within the opening sequence we tried to challenge the typical conventions so the audience would not lose interest. We did this thought mise en scene, by altering the mise en scene it allowed us to the boundaries of the codes and conventions. We did this with lighting, we filmed 'Fragmental' in black and white to represent our main characters emotions however many of the films in this genre do not use these effects and use very bright colours. Such props as the alcoholic beverages left upon the kitchen table and the knife are props we usually see within films of this genre however we used them in different ways. For example instead of people drinking the alcohol it was just left upon the side and the knife is usually scene in a climaxing scene that leads to the end of the narrative however we decided to involve a knife within our opening sequence. The house we used being the size it was shows that Nikki was out of place living in this area and that really highlighted the difference from her home and outside her house, that as soon as she stepped outside she was risking her life just because she was in that area. The camera movement and angles are also slow and involves a lot of panning, we also used an effect while editing named cross dissolve that would be put in-between shots, so the transition between shots would almost have a slow passed ghosting effect. By doing this it was building suspense for the last shot of the opening sequence when Nikki puts the knife into her pocket and leaves her home.

The opening sequence of our film follows a narrative pattern, showing the character waking up, getting dressed, brushing her teeth, drinking a drink and leaving her house. We showed normality within our opening sequence and then equilibrium. With Nikki doing every day to day things and then finally revealing the knife it comes as a surprise to the audience, and with such a shock coming so early it reveals to the audience it is going to be an action packed, exciting drama