Evaluation 1

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

While making our film opening, we used different ways of developing, challenging forms and conventions based on real film openings.

Title, credits and fonts of the film

In the beginning, the title of our film comes up; ‘Drugteen’. As you can see in the picture, we have used the Sans Serif font to make sure that our title stands out. As a group we decided to have the title in bold and use caps lock for all the letters as we researched a few teen drama films and saw that they used caps lock to grab the audience’s attention. The colours of the title aren’t too dark or too light; this is because we didn’t want the title to look different to the background. Due to this, we used a grey for the title and a shade of purple for the shadow; the colour of the shadow made it easier for us to put a fade as it all blended in well. Before choosing the colour, we thought about what colour we could use as we wanted to attract both male and females, therefore we decided to use grey so that it isn’t biased against one another. When the title came up in the film opening, it appeared slowly as we used a fade when revealing the title. This is another way of getting the audience’s attention as they’d be eager to know what the title of the film is.

For the credits of the film, we used a simple font however it was still effective towards the audience. We used white for the credits as we believed that white is a colour that indicates calmness. This can relate to our opening as our film has a calm opening instead of it being really flashy and quick. In addition

to this, white is a colour that is most likely used in school for example, shirts that students wear at school. The credits of the film change whenever the frames of the film opening change; this can catch the audience’s attention. In addition to this, we decided not to keep the

credits for long as during the research of other films opening titles and credits, we found out that the timings of the credits have decreased. We have also added the fade to the credits as we wanted to have a consistency of the titles and credits. Setting/Location

For our film opening, we only used two locations as a group we believed that having too many locations can sometimes confuse the audience which may prevent them from watching it. The first location we used was the skate park. The reason we used this was to show the hobbies and interest of the protagonist; this allows the audience to understand what type of character he is. As you can see in the image, we have used an establishing shot to show the view of the skate park. By looking at the view, we can suggest that there aren’t as many people there which may be the reason the character goes there; this indicates that the character has a quiet and calm personality.

The second location we used was the school. As this is a teen drama film, the main part of this genre is viewed in school. As we wanted to target our audience, we decided to use the school instead of another socialising or public place. In addition to this, using the school as the

second location helps the audience to understand what the character is doing for example, studying, working etc. as well as this, using the school as a location also indicates what age the character approximately might be. We used locations that the audience would pick up easily as we wanted our target audience to recognise the genre of the film. Even though most teen drama films start with the location of the school, we didn’t follow this and decided to develop our conventions by starting with the character in the skate park. This suggests more about the character instead of who the character is.

Costume and props

By looking at the pictures, we are able to say that each character is represented in a different way because of their costume. As all the characters were different and unique, we wanted to portray this using costume so that the audience are able to pick it up straightaway as they

say the characters costume. We got the idea of portraying the characters with different costumes to make them look different from our research we did before. During our research, we inspected a few teen drama films and saw that each character had a different costume to represent who they are.

The image shows the main character, as we can see from the image; the main character is wearing a black jacket, check shirt and black jeans. As you can see from his costume, the character is wearing informal clothes, this relates to what a skateboarder normally wears. We decided what costume the main character was going to wear by doing some research on each individual to see what they would actually wear in reality. As we know that antagonist are mostly seen as wearing black clothes as the colour black indicates evilness, however, we decided not to follow this convention as we wanted the audience to infer that something may change the attitude and behaviour of the main character and during the film they may be seen as the antagonist instead of the protagonist.

The female character is also wearing dark clothes which suggest that her behaviour and role may change in the film further on. During the flashback scene and the school scene, she is wearing a black jumper/jacket which shows the evilness and negative side of her. However, during the skate park scene, she is wearing casual clothes such as jeans and a t-shirt; whereas, during the school scene she is wearing formal clothes such as a black jumper and black trousers. We have also broken the conventions for the costume of the female character, the

reason for this is that teenage girls are normally seen as feminine and usually wear short clothes to reveal their body. However, for our film opening, we did the opposite to indicate to the audience that not all girls wear short clothes in school to grab attention from others. From the girl’s costume, we can assume that she likes being seen as more of a normal girl than all girly because of the way she dresses, this indicates her personality as well as how she wants to be portrayed towards others.

The picture above is an image of the cheater. As you can see, the character is wearing casual clothes however he doesn’t look smart as his shirt looks all scuffed up. As a group we thought it would suit the character as we wanted to show the audience that anyone can achieve a popular girl in school. From the image, we can see that the character is wearing a white/grey shirt. Even though he is the antagonist of the film, we want the audience to think about why the character is dressed up in that certain way.

The last character is the drug dealer. From the image you can clearly see that the character is going to be portrayed negatively throughout the whole film because of his costume. The character is wearing jeans, trainers and a coat with a hood on; this suggests that he s going to be up to something. There are many stereotypes used in teen drama films such as characters with a hood on

tend to be the antagonist. Due to this, we decided to follow this convention of the antagonists’ costume.

The first prop we used was the bracelet. We decided to use a simple and natural looking bracelet as boys don’t tend to wear bracelets that are plain. Due to this, we wanted it to look like reality so we decided to keep it simple. The prop is a hint to the storyline of the film opening as we see in the flashback that Rebecca gives this bracelet to James, this suggests that there is something going on in between them. The audience feel the suspense and tension when James gets rid of the bracelet during his anger in the skate park. This may bring up questions to the audience about what the reason was behind him doing all this.

The last prop we used was the drugs; this prop was used at the end to create suspense and tension. This helps the audience get engaged with the film as they would want to know what James decision may be. We faded this out so that we left a cliff hanger for the audience.

CameraworkDuring the process of making the film, we identified and wrote down the different shots we were going to use for each scene; this made it easier for us to shoot this shots as we already had them planned. We had used many different shots to show different perspectives for example, we used shot reverse shot to show the conversation between the two characters. We also used a close up of the props to show the importance of them throughout the film.

We also used an establishing shot to show where the character is and the atmosphere he is in. In addition to this, we also used the 180 degree rule to show what the character is doing. Not only this, but we are able to see the characters hobbies in much detail as we can see him rollerblading from head to feet.

Establishing Shot

Shot-reverse shot

Close up shot

Editing We used many different editing techniques, for example, we used cross cutting to show the relationship between the two scenes. As well as this, it builds the suspense as in one scene; the character is rollerblading whereas in the other scene the drug dealer is walking towards the skate park which may suggest that something tragic might happen. In addition to this, we used continuity editing when doing the 180 degree rule so that the audience could grab their full attention and follow the character rollerblading with their eyes.

SoundFor the film opening, we have used a voiceover and some music is being played. The music that we made is quite slow, calm and low. The reason for this is that we wanted to portray the atmosphere the character is in as sad. This can change the audience’s mood as they may feel sympathy towards the character and may get gloomy. During this film opening, we follow the sound conventions of a teen drama; I say this because after researching many teen drama films, we found out that most likely all of them use voiceovers during the opening. Due to this, we decided to have a voiceover of the main character talking a bit about his life; this helps the audience understand the characters feeling and is able to identify his personality.

Story and the setting upThe story is set up with an establishing shot to show where the scene is located and the title of the film appearing on the screen.

This is then followed by a small view of the character taking out his roller blades along with his name appearing on the screen. This helps the audience understand that his hobby or

Cross Cutting

interest during his free time is to roller blade. After this, a voiceover of the main character during the beginning of the film opening is heard; this helps the audience to know a bit about the main character. There is a small hint of the story when the main character talks about his life in the voiceover. We didn’t open up the full story during the set up as this could ruin the audience’s interest as they will know the whole story beforehand.

Genre and the setting upWe used many hints to show that it is a teen drama. The first hint was the characters used, the use of teenage characters suggested that it was based on teenagers. Another element that suggests it is a teen drama is the costume of the characters. As you can see from the images, the characters are wearing causal costumes such as jeans, trainers, Hoodies etc; this

shows the impact of modern generation.

Next was the location at the school during the flashback. The location of the school suggests that the main character is still studying and is having all these issues at school. We set up the genre by showing the location of the skate park along with the voiceover and the flashbacks of the school.

Not only this, but the flashback also suggested that it is a teen drama as nowadays there are many issues with teenage relationships.