Question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Characters
FILM
Research
Below are my analysis for two of the short films which were my favorites out of all I have watched. Both of these videos were from shortoftheweek.com and were under the same category as Dark Comedy. Below are the original videos and the soundclouds for the analysis for each films. I have taken inspiration from their mysterious and engaging story telling, over the top stereotypical archetypes. Especially from The Ellington Kid as it portrays a stereotypical image of gangs, mugging and chavs in South London which is the sort of issues the film deals with. Our characters our film, Monty and Levi are similar to the characters being depicted. We also feel sympathy for the Ellington Kid for when he is bleeding his pace of running/breathing is edited in slow motion as you hear what happens. Levi suffers the same fate as the Ellington Kid and we do not intend this scene to be funny.
Boom Boom portrays the stereotypical image of two terrorists who are willing to bomb to themselves in a cafe in order to "reach paradise." This too is an issue with what this film deals with: terrorism by portraying the discrete and riduiculous characters between these two comical terrorists and the visual paranoia of the people who are eavesdropping on their conversation. This short film is also linked to real life.
On your left is a Prezi of me looking at films from two directors who are both auteurs of the same genre we are making. I chose Martin McDonagh and Quintin Tarintino for they each have their own twisted way of portraying their characters and storytelling.
Dialogue
DRAFT 2
ORGINAL DRAFT
Below are several drafts of the script for our short film. Please look at the Voicethreads below for each draft and play through. You will see the comments I have written for the areas we decided to change or alter.
Narrative
Please look at my summary of the plot through Exposition, Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and Resolution are below in the Thinglink below.
The Narrative Theory we used for our film was Tzevan Todorov. This was when stories begin with an equilibrium or status quo, where any potentially opposing forces are in balance. This is disrupted by some sort of event, setting in c a series of events. Problems are solved so that order can be restored.
Mis En Scene
Props and Costume
INTERIOR
The locations of shooting interior had minimal space compared to shooting exterior scenes.Our interior scenes were shot in cars and inside the Tan Tropic Salon.
LOCATIONS
On the right, please click on the Voki so that you can listen to the beaver talking about doing our exterior shots.
EXTERIOR
Lighting
We used the lighting to adapt to our genre which was neo noire but by using the low key lighting but also adding vibrant colours to make it from "neo noire" to "neon noire" The locations of which we shot in were dark which the combination of that and the lighting gives it a mysterious feel. Our aim was to match the same lighting style as Drive.
Music
Here are the youtube videos to the music which are considered on putting in our film.
Sound of Da Police by KRS One
The music would be played in the scene where Monty and Levi are having their dicussion or 'banter' in the car. This song would be played on the radio. This music would support the dominant stereotype of London chavs listening to rebellious rap hip hop music in order to feel tough or above the authority. This foreshadows Levi deciding to rob the salon.
Crazy by Patsy Cline
This song would be played in the begining scene where the hitman is alone in his car listening to the radio. This will show that the hitman is at his peacful side when on his own or isolated. This conforms to Dark Comedy's use in music as it tends the balance of calm, tranquilness with the violent and gruesome. For example in Seven Psycopaths in the beginign a slow, solemn music plays whilst all you see is pitch black. This music pays tribute to that.
Funk My Life Up by Paolo Nutini
This song plays in the end when the hitman drives off and Monty's scared facial expression is depicted before the black out and ending occurs. I found it very interesting to play a cool, upbeat, jazzy, hard hitting song in a Dark Comedy after depicting a character just killing two people and ending with a shocked expression of a person (Monty's face) This subverts the stereotype of music being used. Also the music has a strong build up which leads to an eye opening finish.
Click on the music note. This will lead you to list of the non copyright songs of which I have searched for our film. You will find out songs of which I think suit best for each scene. All of the songs are from AudioNetwork. Click on the "A" logo which will lead you to the website.
POSTER
Here are our film posters made by other members of our group. The one in the middle is our main one which I have analysed through Thinglink. Also look at the other film posters of which I compare them to.
Click on the link to go to my Film Poster Research and my planning and sketchings of our film poster.
Design Of Our Poster
We used our best stills from our film which was Levi standing in the tunnel to the car park. decided that we wanted our main character to be depicted in the poster.
The location is already set, you can see the Salon of which he's going to go inside.
The bold white font also also stands out from the low key lighting. The picture also contained bright, vibrant colours such as: pink, purple, etc. These colours combined blend well with out genre being Dark Comedy.
The darkness makes the charcter, Levi, look mysterious and creates enigmas for the audeince.
Making Our Poster
We decided that the layout of our film poster would be portrait because that would be sort of the norm when considering a movie poster and also it is more marketable as it is more likely to catch the eye of the reader. Photoshop was used as our editing software for our film poster.
The image, since it was very dark, was first layered on a black background
The saturation was brought up to really bring out the purple/pink vibrant colours since we used pink lighting gels to stylize the film in neo-noir way.
We then decided to layer the bold, white font (above) over the top. In film posters, the white bold colours of the font stand out from pitch blackness in film posters. We used this idea to make the title of our film more revealing and will catch the eye of our audience. This font also appears in our title sequence. We also included credit billings for our film poster as well to make it look professional. The credit billigs are barely visible but they hardly are in any film posters.
Our Second Poster
We also made a second film poster. This was our teaser poster. Film posters would often have teaser posters which would give the littlest of details for the film. Looking at this poster, you can only tell what the film's genre is only. This poster only includes the title of this film, our production company's name. You don't see the cast and crew's.
We used an image of the Hitman's car surrounded by security cameras to look as if the Hitman is being "surveyed." The sniper target is symbol which portrays our genre that film may link to spy, epsionage, thriller or that someone will get hurt as we also included a figure of a person inside the car to portray our character. A fancy looking rectangular border was also used around the poster to make it look sophisticated.
THE ARTICLE
Clik on the link to go to my Little White Lies Research and analysis of the article.
Our aim when writing the article was to make the language techniques, layout, etc. look identical to a Little White Lies film review. The article opens up on a quote from the movie to immediately engage the reader.
The article is written in the personal beliefs and points of views of the reviewer. In a Little White Lies review, the writer delves deep into the story, theme and message behind this movie. They try to emotionally attach with the characters or empathise with them. He opens the review by explaining the events happening in the film and also revealing the wittiest, craziest, funniest dialogue he can pick out from the movie to hopefully engage with the audience.
For the layout, we used the shots and stills from our film to illustrate what our film would look like as in this review we also list the technical elements as well such as the bright neon lighting adapting to our genre, the angular wide shots, close ups to establishing shots to show what that this the range we are using within our cinematography, costume and props which the reviewer thinks the director uses these to support the dominant ideologies of codes and conventions of our genre: Dark Comedy.
Also to show that we are not too vain, biased as any film review would not be, since we are the ones writing the review. We decided the critic to be harsh as the critic gives us some criticism and also openly mocks us for the director, Jada Bravett, that she watches too many Tarantino movies, however it is all in good fun as we tried to make the review less formal. To make it even less formal we give a funny verdict which overall says that it is enjoyable and that “if the film were submitted into film festivals we would love them forever.” which is similar to LWL’s verdicts when they tell the audience to watch the film “again and again and again…” in Inside Llewn Davis.
If I were to change this article, I would also comment on the score as well for that is also another element of the film which could emotionally attach you with the film, set the tone, etc. I would also caption the images as well to give it a caption to show what is going on, however that would spoil the film, give away any twists. We considered that the quality of our images were visually stunning as the front cover, it no longer needed any information as it is engaging enough for the audience to go see the film.
Overall, I am pleased that the outcome of our article turned out to look professional, visually engaging and had the sam witty language techniques that Little White Lies used which was exactly what we were getting at.