Evaluation Q1 script

In what ways does you media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions?

How does your short film conform or subvert conventions?

For our A2 coursework we had to create a short 5 minute short film, film poster and film review as a part of a promotional package. Before collecting any ideas for our own short film we researched into codes and conventions found in other short films as well as looking at micro elements and macro elements found in short films. The micro elements are camera editing, sound and Mise-en-scene and focus on any similarities seen across the short films. These micro elements make up the macro elements which are genre, narrative, representation and audience

Our short film is about an innocent online maths tutor that fits into society well, that unfortunately struggles with schizophrenia and has problems controlling his dark side which is the computer hacker that hacks banks and launders money from them. We have adopted this sort of Jekyll and Hyde storyline. We have looked at short film tick tock which gave us an idea of the type of short film format we should use which is linear, although tick tock is backwards linear it still gave us a good idea.

We conform and subvert to some of the conventions in a short film, such as the length of our short film is 6 minutes and usually short films lengths should be from 0-40 minutes but our specification was that it had to be 0-15 minutes therefore we have conformed to the length of short films. Secondly short films usually have a minimum of 1 character and maximum of 3 characters we have 1 character that plays as 2 due to the fact we are on a low budget so we can’t recruit a lot of people because each person would be expensive. We have subverted the conventions of a short film as there usually is only 1 but we used 2 locations in our short film to show the different natures of the characters, which emphasises the juxtaposition and development of the 2 characters as we have gone with the Jekyll and Hyde storyline. There is a theme/message running throughout our short film as there is usually a theme throughout short films e.g. ‘NADIA’ the message is that “if you’re struggling with bad housing/homelessness seek help at shelter advice”. Our message we are trying to put forward is that we are trying to raise awareness of schizophrenia being tough to overcome and can lead to suicide, if you give up and decide not to get it treat therefore you MUST seek advice/help from rethink.org. Finally we short films are usually on small budgets because they tend to be done for fun or to pass messages on, this is why ours is a going to have a low budget.

In the short film 'Inspire' through the use of the four micro elements as well as the macro elements Gramsci's Hegemony which states that representation is unequal and as a result dominant ideology is represented and therefore this is what most of the viewer’s believe. This can be seen through the narrative structure of the text as typical stereotypes of the different ethnicities are shown and you would not notice that they go against the typical dominant theory until you listen to the voice over which is a direct address to the audience which states what is wrong with the representations. The voice over is trying to portray to the audience that the typical stereotypes shown need to be disregarded by the society and therefore is going against Gramsci's theory as it asking the audience questions about the dominant theory.

We had a look at a couple of drama’s to get an idea of all the conventions that construct a great drama short film such as ‘deep it’ we zoomed into the micro elements (mise en scene, sound, editing and camerawork) and we found that for mise en scene in an intense drama such as deep it there is a dark colour palette suggesting the nature of the situation and instantly showing what sort of genre it will be, dark coloured clothing suggests it's a serious situation, use of knives suggest there is a threat and danger and there will be a form of violence, an ambulance is pictured at the start which is usually associated with drama and is connoting that this may end in a tragedy  and lastly the location is in council estates which are usually associated with violence and drama (this creates social realism which is a sub-genre of drama and identifies the event as a real life circumstance this contributes to a feeling of verisimilitude. Drama is represented through camera angles and movement by the mid angle shot shows the violent exchange between the two men which creates a sense of drama due to the threat posed by both of them, the close up zoom which shows how upset the character is as he recalls his story and lastly the over the shoulder shot shows the fear in the young man's eyes as he is put in a position of danger by the much more threatening man. Drama is represented through editing by the pace of the short film starts off slow then begins to quicken as more things happen this creates a dramatic effect because people might be thinking what is going to happen next, the discontinuity of the film is very good because it keeps people hooked as there is not too much going, this could also build suspense, finally the shot reverse shot between the young men on bikes and the man shows that there is tension between the two and the man is more dominant which could lead to a fight later, as the youth may feel intimidated. Drama can also be represented through synchronous of the young man doing a voice over and the sad music in the background, which could be indexical sign to what he gets himself into in the end. This could also create tension, the sound of the youth laughing could relate to the fact that youth are fun or trouble (hebdige) the atmosphere is lively at the moment but who knows what happens later. “…bruv…” this dialogue could represent that they talk in colloquial language showing that they lack an education and could lead to them being troublesome and getting involved with a lot of drama later in the film.

How does your film poster conform or subvert conventions?

Our short film poster conforms to some of the conventions of a short film poster, we have a simple colour scheme of black and white as its effective, and we have reviews from newspapers, social media links for recognition, production company titles at the bottom and short film website. We have also subverted because on our short film poster we have the main character at the front and that usually doesn’t happen as it’s usually on Hollywood film posters furthermore we have shown picture manipulation of him, we gained inspiration from splits cover because they are similar genres and types of film.

We looked deeply into the ‘split’ film poster because we have a similar narrative and we wanted the audience to instantly gather what type of film this would be, also split was very successful in their film poster as it forced people to go and watch the film as it was very mysterious and made people curious.

We mainly conform the short film poster conventions as we don’t have a huge budget to get detail and work in synergy with Universal, Sony etc.

How does your film review conform or subvert conventions?

We used empire to help us build our film review for of unsound minds, this drove us to use a similar the style and template as them and format out film review like their because it looked slick, modern and appealed to people from the age of 15-24+, we conformed to the conventions of a film review as we have, certification, star rating, reviewer name, snippet of film, detail around the margins, page number and empire logo.