At first I watched films based on their storyline but then I realised that looking carefully at camera shots, angles and movement and Mise en scene shows how the director wants us to view a particular part, so we made sure that we used effective and smart camera techniques and appropriate Mise en scene. This was because the camera movements and angles help show the story better and brings films more to life and Mise en scene provides better quality of the film and makes the overall set design look realistic and nice.
We developed it by making sure that our main character progressed and changed for example being a coward to being brave and dressing geeky to dressing cool. These fit the forms and conventions of the genre as they tend to show character development through the protagonist completing their aim successfully e.g. in Home Alone 1 and 2 Kevin manages to set pranks on bunglers and get them caught by the police. I feel character progression is very important because it shows a change in our film which keeps our audience engaged as they feel the film may change a bit and excite them to continue watching. It also shows that me and my group are creative and can think of ways to change our character and still making him the protagonist. This is something I never realised and learnt through watching similar films and feedback.
Challenging forms and conventions of real media products was the hardest of all. This is because we didn’t follow the codes and conventions of the ending of films of our genre. For example in our film at the end the bully became the victim and the geek the bully getting his revenge. Watching films in class certainly helped me. We watched films like Amelie and short films like ‘Ice cream dream’ and ‘Job Street’. Watching these helped me understand how to use and develop forms and conventions of media products e.g. through narrative, character and sound, however they didn’t challenge codes and conventions of their genre which made it hard for me to know what to do to challenge as I had never done it before. I also had more faith because the films were independent and filmed on low budget which mine will also. I also watched some films at my own time on YouTube called ‘Future Shorts’ that show short films. I though this helped me a lot because these films were well filmed and interesting and I developed my creativity by thinking of things my target audience wouldn’t expect to see. Most of the films I watched didn’t challenge the codes and conventions so overall it was hard for me. From here I and my group thought about how to challenge codes and conventions of Media products to a great extent by changing bits of our narrative to see if it work or not. I feel this increased our creativity and teamwork skills because we worked much better to making it better, however there was risk that things could go wrong.
The genre of my film is comedy for the family. It is a family film that mainly targets young children from the ages of 8-12. The great thing about the film is that it doesn’t discriminate and targets all ethnic and religious groups however it doesn’t target people from all socio economic groups like A and B as they may not be interested because their lifestyle wouldn’t match the characters in the film while people from C1 to E will. My film and the ones I studied tend to attract families as they include characters from different ages and deal with funny issues. Also because are rating is PG and some of our target audience are young and will therefore go and watch the film with their parents. The aspects of comedy my film includes is pranks. I feel this is the biggest strength of our film and the unique selling point as it is what makes up the film. There is also a huge decline in pranks in comedy films so it was an advantage for us to use it as well as a threat.
This challenges the forms and conventions as there are not recent ones meaning we were going against the recent ones. The threats of us doing this were high as the audience may not be used to seeing pranks as much but research and feedback helped us solve this.
My film follows the codes and conventions of family comedy films in my opening sequence. This is as we don’t reveal our character to the audience but give them clues of how the characters are going to be like. This is when Harry gets dressed and preparing himself and leaves his house. We decided to include this as we wanted our audience to try and guess what the character looks like and guess his personality by the way he looks and his costume. This follows the conventions because family comedies always like to introduce the main character in the beginning doing something that they like or represent them which makes us try and guess who it is. This is used a lot in animation films e.g. ‘Flushed Away’. I know that this will make our audience like Harry because not only do they see him first but they are introduced into his life and follow his footsteps, which is going to school and setting the pranks.
In Dennis the Menace the director chose not to show Dennis in the opening sequence but showed his bike and Dennis riding fast and rough with props like a teddy bear and snake in the back and him scarring an elderly man suggesting the character is a naughty child disturbing a neighbourhood. This will make the audience know what to expect as they have already seen his props and him riding rough and just like in mine, bringing the audience into his everyday life. I believe it’s at the opening to tell the audience what type of comedy they will be watching. It’s a code and convention because they reveal a comedy scene when scarring the old man and it’s at the opening to tell the audience what they of comedy they will be watching. By showing the bedroom, costume and props of Harry they as well follow the codes and conventions. I feel that we challenge codes and conventions of family comedy by not revealing the character as most comedy films reveal their character.
Our characters and narrative follows codes and conventions of comedy because our characters play typical comedy roles like protagonist and antagonist. The protagonist/s that is normally the main character goes through a situation and then solves it at the end e.g. ‘Click’. These are common because in films especially the comedy genre there needs to be a protagonist and antagonist so that the target audience can relate to the protagonist. In my film there is a geek and a bully. They both follow codes and conventions by their personalities and attitude for example the geek being a loner and the bully being angry which can be seen in our character profile. We developed the character traits from the films we studied by making our geek really geeky and our bully really heartless. We challenge it because at the ending the geek gets revenge by setting pranks to the bully and scaring him away which isn’t common in comedy films even though sometimes they get revenge like when Kevin gets revenge on the bunglers trying to break into his house in ‘Home Alone 1’ The difference between the endings of my film ‘FIX UP LOOK HARD’ and ‘Home Alone’ are that Harry(my main character) becomes confident and in a way acts like a bully even though Jack(Antagonist) slaps him before while in ‘Home Alone’ Kevin doesn’t physically gain confidence but calls the police to take them away.
One of my roles in the task was finding and using sound. In order to make sure that my sound was right and suited my film I had to do research on comedy films and see what types of sound they use. I researched films like Home Alone, Dr Doolittle, Dennis the Menace, Meet Dave to see what types of sound they use at different situations and scenes and. From here I knew I had to create and find sound that Parallel to certain parts of the film.
Below is a non digetic sound that features in Home Alone.
This is a sound that featured on my film and I chose it from inspiration after hearing the other sounds from the films I researched.
I chose this sound because I received positive feedback from it by my group and other students. I chose this sound for consideration to put in my film because it follows the codes and conventions by making the mood sad and the character is in a bad state.
I used sounds that have the comedy element and lots of Parallel sound so that my audience will understand. Sound bridges were also used when a certain mood was being played and so continued the same non digetic sound. Challenging sound was the hardest part because my target audience are children and young teenagers. I thought that if I used sound that isn’t typical in family comedy films or contrapuntal sound they wouldn’t understand so I made sure that the sound I used were not to serious and can possibly be seen lightly Mise en scene was used to create the setting of the location chosen for the film. Mise en scene was probably the hardest part in the production process but was the most I spent time working on as setting helps people know what is going on even without any sound. I did a lot of research on films with great Mise en scene and looked at the worlds grestest photos to see how a single picture can tell a lot or a story.
This picture which was shown in the opening was used to show Harry’s lifestyle. The room is very dull and boring and this tells the audience how he isn’t very creative or adventurous. It also reveals his costume which will get our target audience thinking he is smart, geeky, boring or posh and make them carry on watching to see who he is. Not only Comedy films but many other films with different genres do this as well to represent the character for example a short film I watched called ‘Hard Labour’ made their location normal with things like a fridge, chairs etc.
Props such as his school bag also follow codes and conventions of geeky characters because the bag he uses is old and today is considered unfashionable. The bully has a Blackberry showing he follows the latest trends that are considered cool to society.
Mise en scene also challenges the codes and conventions through the costume Harry wears the next morning. He wears a dark grey hoodie which is stereotypical associated with chavs or gangsters in the case of Jack. We decided for him to wear a hoodie because he has changed and become a new person. He also acts the role of what the bully Jack will do to him on a regular basis so wearing similar clothes will make the audience aware that he isn’t being a victim anymore. In a behind the scenes of the film ‘Black Swan’ the director Darren Aronofsky and costume designer said that costumes are important as they need to stand out and everything needs to connect.
No comments:
Post a Comment