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

Our opening sequence uses a range of conventions, inspired from several different genre’s of film, containing different conventions. We then combined them together, rather un-conventionally. Our film includes a mixture of rom-com, drama and realism film genre’s and their stylized ideas, which I believe came across in our opening two minutes.

Mood board showing a few of our Genre influences

We found inspiration for our shots largely from High Fidelity (2000). The use of dark lighting and drab colours throughout the internal scene help the audience get a sense of the monotonous and deeply saddening life that our character leads. The use of a medium close-up lets the audience engage with the character, but does not give away the emotion of the character or any particularly important information. In High Fidelity’s shot Rob’s head is turned, not revealing the identity of the character. In our shot we only see the silhouette of the character due to the use of dark lighting, once again keeping the identity of the main character a mystery until later in the film. Here we have used a convention from a comedy, music, drama and romance film, High Fidelity.

Medium close-up from High Fidelity Medium close-up from Pavement

Here we used inspiration from this shot from High Fidelity. An external shot presenting the setting and giving a sense of the type of house/apartment the character lives in. We did not use this completely religiously as we included it at the very start of our opening sequence, thus becoming an establishing shot instead of a piece of context or action.

For our shot of Craig’s apartment we wanted to differentiate our film away from Hollywood clean-cut blockbusters by creating a gritty, kitchen-sink, British visual style. We hunted down this shabby apartment block and felt it would be perfect to present Craig's un-glamorous lifestyle and help set the genre. Here we strayed far from any typical film convention, but by doing so we followed the style of a few inspirational films, as shown, High Fidelity.

When addressing how to present our titles sequence we decided we wanted to incorporate them into the set, placing our names onto items that presented Craigs lifestyle and interests e.g. wine bottles, cigarette packets, book spines and cassette covers. When we had decided on the titles we focused on how we wanted the main title ‘Pavement’ to look. We used inspiration from High Fidelity, once again, by recreating their title frame. The use of a dark background suggests a down to earth and disheartening theme to the film, whilst introducing the lifestyle of the character featuring in it; smoking or record collecting.

We developed ideas from ‘Wristcutters: A Love Story’ (2006), a comedy, drama, fantasy.

The general feel of this film is one we tried to

replicate, it’s stillness, depressing manner and

simplicity mixed to create a comedic feel.

This shot especially is one we took influence from

and replicated in our opening. We positioned Alec,

our actor, lying on the bed with next to him a bed

side table holding a cigarette packet, half empty

bottles of wine and other random objects to clutter

up the room and give our shot a messy and care-

free atmosphere.

Here is a still from our opening, the misplaced and un-

organized items suggest to Craigs clutter filled life,

hinting to the audience that he has lost his way before

we even introduce Craig. As you can see we have

been influenced by Wristcutters: A Love Story and this

can be seen through the grungy look of our set and

the positioning of main our character.

Napoleon Dynamite’s (2004) title sequence was our stimulus when it came to deciding how we wanted ours to look. Napoleon Dynamite obtains a playful, childish and comedic overlying feel to it, as is presented here with the use of bright colour and simple, neat objects. We did not wish to portray that with our opening and so instead we used books, cigarette packets and wine bottles. With the use of these slightly more grown up and taboo items we hope to convey a dismal tone to our film.

It is a convention to create your title sequence, presenting the names of those involved, as a separate and non-diegetic piece of film. It clearly disconnects the action of the characters from the creators of it, making it obvious to the audience what they are watching at that moment. But by combining the two we submerge the diegesis, the world of the film, and the real world to push the boundaries of film. As you can see above Napoleon Dynamite is a film that broke that boundary and our group has followed it’s lead. We wanted to rebel against this convention and so we merged our title sequence in with objects in the film, creating a seamless and clever opening.

I believe our opening sequence challenges many conventions of a real film opening, especially in terms of defining a genre. Our film challenges the convention of conforming to one definite genre of film, we did this by combining a range of Drama, Rom-Com and Realism aspects to our film.

Our decision to put our film in black & white also challenges the convention of using colour which is the norm for 21st century films. By doing so, I feel our film contrasts strongly from the majority of all films made nowadays.

If we were to produce our film in colour it would have altered

the tone of of the overall product. Possibly introducing a light

and positive manner to the film resulting in the loss of our most

important dismal tone. You can see by looking at the two stills, to

the right, the difference colour adds to a frame. By not allowing

the audience to experience the moods and certain emotions that

colours can create, you gain their focus much to a greater level

as they focus on the action and other subtle additions, rather

than being distracted by colours.

Overall, I believe the opening two minutes of our film embraces and adopts quite a few conventions of real films. These are things like the use of dark lighting and dull tones to establish and set the mood of a certain scene (usually a dismal tone when creating a realism comedy). Another convention our film has been influenced by is Napoleon Dynamite’s title sequence. We incorporated our titles into the set to catch the attention of the audience and separate ours from the ordinary way of presenting the credits. As well as adopting conventions, I feel our film rebels against many traditional concepts of real films by boldly placing our film in black & white. Finally, we drastically question whether a film has to stay within the boundaries of a certain genre, or couple of genres. By combining a variety of specified and un-specified genres we have created a multi-genre film that uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products.