EVALUATION QUESTION 1

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

Overall I think our media product uses a lot of conventions of a typical film opening. It does this by setting the scene of where the film is to be set, in our film it is the village. Film openings including ours introduce the main characters to the audience, in a way that they can judge the character from first impression i.e from their mise-en-scene which is why you can see in our film that we focused on this concept. A film opening also sets a tone for the rest of the film, in our film we did this by showing the main character Lexi drinking and smoking on her own for no reason and she is underage to show what she is capable of doing in the rest of the film. We have challenged conventions of a real film opening by not giving our characters much dialoge, we are not the only film opening to have done this however this is very rare. We originally planned to have a voice over while she was walking down the road however, me and Dani changed our minds as we thought the clips alone would impact the audience enough.

 

Our media product uses conventions of real media products in a way that it has set the location of the film. It has opening titles and a main title. It introduces characters (two in our case) It generally introduces the concept of the film and the target audience, which most film openings do. It is developing a story line and introducing dialoge.

Frame One 

This shot is a location shot, this was to set the scene of where the film was going to be based so the audience could realise that this was a peaceful village until the arrival of our character. This shot in frame one was originally a pan from left to right however due to the quality of the shot we decided it would look less jumpy if we froze framed it so this is what we decided to do. We froze the frame using final cut pro and this also meant we could choose how long it could now be. 
Frame One
For the beginning of the opening we wanted to set the location of where we would mainly be filming, this frame is one of the shots we used to set the location. This would give the audience an indication of where the film will take place. The shot was originally a pan of the houses and knoll, we decided to use a still frame instead because of the cameras jumpiness. We were also able to choose the length of the clip on final cut pro.

Frame Two

Mary my neighbour kindly said her and her dog Bonnie could be shot for the film. This shot shows normal village life so is also a location shot to show the audience what the 'locals' look like and do. This shot we took first time, the movement in this clip I think is key for the starting location shots as most of them are still or frozen frames so shots like this and the tennis court one show that there is life in the village. 

Frame Two

This frame was also setting the scene, we wanted to show that the place in which the story would take place was just an ordinary village, with normal people. We asked our neighbour if she would walk her dog as we filmed and she agreed. This shot is also repesenting the "neighbours" or "locals" who Lexi might come into contact with later on in the movie.

Frame Three

This frame is the first time you see the main character Lexi. In our rough cut we had the titles before the arrival of Lexi which from feedback other media students felt that by having the titles inbetween meant the contrast in worlds didn't show as well as there wasn't just a sudden change in both imagery and sound. As soon as I recieved this feedback I realised that it didn't flow as well as it could of with the arrival of Lexi before the Lexi main title, I think me and Dani only didn't realise this before the feedback because in our heads we knew the twist and until producing a rough cut and putting the basic clips together it is hard to know how to improve your own work. 

Frame Three

This frame is when the audience first see the main character Lexi. This is also when the music changes and the dubstep comes in and the audience really get to see the real genre of the film. We decided to put the character titles on when you see Lexi, as our feedback pointed us into this direction. They also advided us to put the main title "LEXI" on after we saw Lexi on-screen, this helped it flow better with the audience. We were not aware of this because me and ruby knew the twist of the film opening, where as the audience did not.

Frame Four

The film title - We took a long time deciding on what to actually call the film we had a few suggested titles however we thought most of these sounded comical, after doing some research we found that many film titles of this genre have one worded title names i.e Kidulthood, Shank and Sket. We wanted our title to be big bold and explode however due to not having the software to blow the words completely up, we settled with making the title suddenly increase in size and out of view with a smash noise from Soundtrack Pro. The font we chose called TRASHED made the titles big bold and edgy which is typical for this genre of film and I also felt like it related to our main character.

 Frame Four

This frame is the title frame. We didnt know what to call the film for a long time, but we finally decided on the main characters own name. We thought this to be effective becasue she is the main character and the film is about her life. We wanted to have a dramatic film title opening, so we inluded an explosion sound with soundtrack pro and zoomed the word LEXI using final cut features. We felt this was a good way to create the films drama driven genre.

Frame Five

This is the first time you see our main character up close, by putting her name title there with her allows the audience to see that she is infact Lexi. The close up shot also gives a great view of her mise-en-scene. From her smoking with a black eye and hooped earrings, all the way down her body in a downwards pan to her short top, short skirt and heeled shoes.

Frame Five

This frame shows the first character title and shows a close up shot of Lexi and her mise-en-scene. This frame is important to the audience because they get to take in the characters apearence and overall. It shows her smoking, her black eye and the dress sense.

Frame Six

This shot in my opinion is brillantly acted by Darby (Lexi), her facial expression is showing her attitude and the fact that she doesn't care about what she is doing in the middle of the village contrasts the worlds of chav vs village which is what we wanted to achieve through this film opening.

Frame Six

Again this frame is showing Lexis attitude toward where she is, drinking in public in the day time is not something the villagers would do. Showing a contrast in cultures once again. We also wanted her to have a prop that would show her personality, we figured a vodka bottle would do the job.

Frame Seven

This shot is outside Lexi's home. We decided to make her stand still and give her opinion by her facial expression rather than adding a voice over. This close up shot is from low to high which shows how superia Lexi thinks she is as it looks like she's towering over the camera. This shot shows her attitude and feelings towards the house she is going to enter which pre-warns the audience that there's something not right between Lexi and this house.

Frame Seven

This frame Lexi turns up at a house. We show a close up view of her face to show the audience that this isnt a place that she likes or where she wants to be. This angle is good for this situation, we wanted the audience to see her from a low angle shot, to show her up higher than everything else, almost like she thinks she is better than everyone. We also included her face to be discussed at something to really dramatise the situation she was about to go into.

Frame Eight

This is the first shot of Julie (Lexi's Mum) in the shot you can see that she is very shocked to be seeing her daughter, so shocked that she drops a bowl. Lexi's Mum almost looks intimidated by her daughter which shows the relationship between the two characters. Lexi's Mum says 'Oh my god, what are you doing here?' to suggest Lexi has not been there for a period of time, this dialoge creates the main storyline for the audience.

Frame Eight

This is the first time we see another character in the opening. Lexis mum is also one of the main characters in the film, and we really wanted to show her reaction to seeing for daughter in a bad way. This part of the opening is also showing the relationship between the two characters and also showing the audience what the film may turn out to be about. 

Frame Nine

This shot is a mirror shot to show both characters, we never planned on including this angle of shot however, we had the idea on the day of filming so went with it and when we watched it back on Final Cut Pro we realised how good it actually was. I personally like this shot because you can see how much Lexi loves herself as she is being vain in the mirror not really bothered about where she is or that her mum is just there, in contrast to Lexi's mum who is very aware of Lexi and is very disturbed by her own daughter. During this shot Lexi has a cheeky bit of dialoge towards her mother '..did you miss me?' showing her teenage attitude. This clip is followed by Lexi turning around to face her mum with a massive grin which is the ending of our film opening.

Frame Nine

This frame is my favourite camera angle throughout the whole sequence, becasue we see Lexi and her mum in the mirror so we can see both emotions. This is also Lexis first bit of dialoge, this shows her attitude toward her mother and shows their releationship even more through their dialoge. We can also see the mums shocked expression which again is a dramatised version of mother and daughter relationships. 'I'm home mum, did you miss me?' her attitude is clearly shown in this first part of dialoge which sums up the film which is why we stopped it here even though it is just under 2 minutes. This also indicates that she is returning from somewhere.