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

Evaluation 1:

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?Our film ‘Beyond Closed Eyes’ does not challenge forms and conventions of real

media products, our film is a very stereotypical teen drama film with very typical conventions. These conventions are things such as a signature theme song, indication of place, introductions to the characters, information regarding the mood and tone, types of editing and mise-en-scene that would be repeated further on in our film.

When we were researching and planning our film we decided that we needed some inspiration for ideas, themes, stereotypical conventions of films of the same genre as ours and things that would suit our storyline well. We decided to use the signature scene from the film ‘Juno’, when she is walking to school with her Sunny-D bottle. We decided to use this signature scene but put a modern twist on it. We decided to change the Sunny-D bottle for an iPod to create a more modern feel.

The most common convention that we used in our film was our characters, the characters we used were very typical of a teen drama film. We wanted our audience to be able to relate to our characters so we decided we should use very typical teenage characters, for example the “bitchy” group of friends, the quiet girl, the quirky and loud best friend, the good looking boy etc. By using stereotypical characters we wanted to attract a wider audience.

The Title Of The FilmThe title of our film is ‘Beyond Closed Eyes’, we didn’t want our title to be in the beginning of our film we wanted it to be shown at the end of the credits and after the dream. This is similar to the film ‘Juno’ which has the same genre as our film, both films show the title at the end of the opening credits. We did this is because we wanted it to be the most important part of the credit sequence. The name of the film was used because it is related to the film but also gives it a mysterious feel and doesn’t give away too much. The mysterious feel comes from the title as having closed eyes is linked with the fear of the unknown because when your eyes are shut you are in darkness and this connotes the fear of the unknown. We wanted it to be clear that our main protagonist is unfamiliar with what’s going on and the title of the film helps portray this to the audience.

Setting and LocationFor our setting and location we decided to use Georgia's house, we knew that we could do a really good establishing shot for the first scene from outside her house. We also decided to do this shot during dawn, to give the scene an eerie feel but also because our main character is sleeping at this particular time. We subverted the genre stereotype here as most indie drama films are filmed in urban areas. As well as Georgia’s house, we used our school as the other setting, we wanted our film to be realistic and as our main character is a teenager, we thought it would be appropriate to use a school setting and our common room was perfect for this. It was also perfect as it was an informal setting which matches our film genre. Our other location was the walkway to our school, we used this as we wanted to establish her surroundings and it was also a good opportunity to use some different camera angles and shots. As well as this, by using settings that are typical locations for teenagers to be in, their homes and a school/college setting. We wanted our audience to be able to relate to the locations in the film opening.

Costumes and PropsOur characters didn’t have any particular costumes, we allowed them to wear their own clothes as we wanted to give the film opening a natural look and let their personalities show as we chose the characters specifically because their personalities in some ways matched the ones of our characters. This worked well also because their costumes matched our target audience well. The props that we used were the balls of paper which were thrown at Abby and Ella, we also used an iPod for the scene in which Abby is walking to school and a picture of Abby’s crush, Chris for when the picture falls out of Abby’s pocket. As well as this we used Ella’s mobile phone as a prop for when she was waiting for Abby at the school entrance, technology is important in modern day and we wanted to make sure that there was something that showed this in the film opening as the modern teenager is always seen as using the newest and most popular technology.

Camerawork and EditingDuring our film opening, we tried to use a lot of different camera shots and angles.

Mostimportantly we wanted to use establishing shots were it was necessary, for each

scene we triedto create an establishing shot, for example we used Georgia’s house for an

establishing shot before going on to Abby’s dream. We also used a number of different camera

shots and anglesduring the scene of Abby walking to school, we wanted to portray her as cool and

relaxed as she was walking to school and we tried to do this with a number of shots.As well as this we wanted to make sure that when any of the characters when

having a conversationwe wanted to make the emotions of our characters clear so we mainly used two

shotsand over the shoulder shots to show the emotions of the characters. Also we used

close-up shotswhenever there was a serious emotion that needed to be portrayed.For editing, the main use of editing is during Abby’s dream. We wanted to find an

effect which would make the dream seem more realistic, we found the warping effect on iMovie

and it worked perfectly to help create a more dreamy effect.

Title Font and Style For our title font and style, we wanted to keep it simple so we used a simple white font for the credits. We decided to use the simple white font as they were quite cool and contemporary forour target audience and also they didn’t take the focus away from the main character. For our title we decided to use the same concept of keeping it simple but we knew that the titleshould stand out more than the credits so we decided to keep it simple but change the font and changed the font colour to blue as its also simple but looks good. We also thought that the babyblue colour connotes a dream like feel, therefore hinting the storyline.We didn’t use any specific transitions or animations for our title’s or credits for the same reason that we wanted to keep things simple.

Story and How The Opening Sets It UpWe wanted our story to revolve around the idea of dreams and how they become reality for ourmain character, further on in the story our plan was for Abby to realise she could control howher dreams worked and what they were about. We wanted the opening sequence to be left on a cliff-hanger to leave our audience wantingmore. I think we were successful in doing this as the opening sequence ends with a highsuspense clip and also our camera shot helped us to do this – we used a close up shot of Abby’s face to portray her shock clearly. We also didn’t want the story just to be about her love interest so we made sure that Abby’scharacter and personality was shown. This is why we incorporated the scene of Abby havingpaper thrown at her because it gave the opening something else to it.

Genre and How The Opening Suggests ItDuring our research into our genre – independent film featuring a young protagonist – welooked for lots of stereotypical conventions of a genre of this type. Lots of the things we foundwere to do with relationships and what goes on in these relationships. As well as this there wasusually things to do with problems at school, social group and cliques and general problems including in growing up. We thought that we should stick to some of these problems to makeour genre stay clear. We decided to use relationship problems, social cliques and decided that using our school as a location would be a good idea as all teenagers can relate to this. In our film we made it obvious that our main character had a love interest, we put pictures whereverwe could and made it more obvious by drawing hearts over these pictures. We also used thescene where Abby and Ella get paper thrown at them to show our genre. It’s clear that ourmain protagonist is Abby as she is shown in every scene.

How Characters are IntroducedThe characters in the film opening are introduced in different ways, we wanted Abby to be introduced firstly to the audience to ensure the audience knew that she was the main character. We decided to introduce Abby’s best friend Ella at their school, it’s very typical for close friends to meet up before school to catch up and walk to lessons together so we decided to introduce Ella outside the school setting, this also allowed us to show the relationship of these two characters and it also allowed us to get an establishing shot of the school. As well as this Ella we wanted Ella’s character to have some resemblance to Lily, a character from the film ‘Princess Diaries’. Lily is a cool, quirky character who is very different to her best friend, and the main character in the film. Abby’s crush Chris was first seen when Abby was in bed, there is a shot of a picture of him on Abby’s head board, we didn’t want the audience to be unsure of who Chris was. We also made it obvious that Chris was Abby’s crush by showing the picture of Chris drop from Abby’s pocket just as Chris ran into Abby. Chris is a very stereotypical character because as with most other teen drama films, there is usually always a love interest for a female character. Chris is very masculine and good looking and this is similar to modern day films with teen drama as their genre.

Special EffectsThe main use of special effects is shown with Abby’s dream, we used a warp effect that wefound on iMovie. It really emphasised that Abby was having a dream, it made the voices echoedand also made it so that the audience wasn’t able to clearly here the dialogue but could still hear snippets. It also gave the camera shots high-key lighting and give it a rippled effect which again allowed the audience to see some things and remember them but not give away too muchabout what was going to happen in reality. Another effect that we used was the school bell when Abby and Ella are talking outside school,we wanted to make it seem more realistic and also make it obvious to the audience what theywere doing. The final effect that we used was when Abby wakes up from her dream, we found that it washard to hear her say ‘Whoa’ when she woke up so we re-recorded her saying it and over laidit to make it easier for the audience to hear and understand her confusion.