1: GENRE CONVENTIONS.

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

 


When making a short film there is a lot of preparation and planning before the filming and creation of the movie. Firstly, we had to research how short films were made and created, we did this by watching different short films and seeing what they had in common, we also looked at websites such as "short of the week", and a short film course run by the BFI Future Learn Programme proved helpful in our research on short films. Through this research we learnt about the different codes and conventions used in short films and tried to transfer these into our film, making it look professional and of a high standard, in order for it to be widely recognised within the short film industry. This research taught us a lot about short films including how long they should be, the different styles of plot and narrative, and how the plot should be presented to the audience, it taught us that the film characters should have depth and meaning however it also taught us things that we would apply to our film when editing it, specifically how the titles and credits of  the film would be displayed.

When planning and developing our film we ensured that we fulfilled all of the criteria we had discovered relevant to short films. The main aspect we focused on when developing a plan for the film was the narrative and how we would include a twist within this. We were looking at basing our film around the genre of romance and therefore we researched romance films further in order to discover how we could include a twist successfully. It was important to keep our audience engaged when filming the short film therefore we ensured we had a detailed plan to follow. Whilst researching short films we looked at narrative theorists which helped to ensure that our plot would make sense to the viewer, these included Todorov, Barthes, Propp and Strauss, however we mainly focused on the theory of Todorov in which he states that there in an equilibrium that is disturbed, creating a disequilibrium until the new equilibrium is found. This relates to our film by the way in which there is a state of equilibrium at the beginning, represented by the quiet girl that leads a stress free life and visits the library regularly. This is then disturbed by the fact that she gains an admirer; this is the state of disequilibrium. There is a stage where there is slight confusion when he sees her admirer flirting with other girls, this reinforces the state of disequilibrium.  She tries to remove this and regain equilibrium by leaving the library. The new equilibrium is established when she drops the sticky notes and finds out her real admirer was not the boy from the library.

The storyline to our film is about a girl who is in the library and finds sticky notes that have been left for her, the librarian claims to have left these sticky notes and they begin to see each other until it becomes clear in the twist at the end of the film that it was another person that left them for her that is seen subtly in the background throughout a wide range of shots within our film. In the final see the girl also seen as the protagonist in this situation when she sees the librarian flirting with another girl and runs out of the library in a tearful state, as she runs out of the library she bumps into the person who actually left her sticky notes, it just so happens that he is holding a pile of books that he proceeds to drop onto the floor. The girl helps him pick these up and finds the book with the sticky note that reads “I see you got my sticky notes”, to end the film there is a pan upwards of the girl and the boy holding the same book, gazing into each other’s eyes, signalling the genre to the viewer .

The genre of our film is romance and in order to represent this to the audience we looked at theorists such as Roland and Barthes and Laura Mulvey, with the help of these theorists we chose to portray the genre using visual codes, including clothing and camera angles. Roland Barthes has two codes that he invented the Hermeneutic Code and the Proairetic Code. The Hermeneutic Code refers to the element of a story that has not been explained in full and therefore is a mystery for the viewer. This provokes the viewer to predict the end of the mystery themselves giving a personal twist to the film. The truth is avoided in order to make it a mystery through snares, equivocation, partial answers or hints towards the ending, suspended answers and jamming’s that prove there is no resolution to the problem. The Proairetic Code on the other hand, builds tension by linking to events or actions that hint that something else may happen and therefore letting the viewer decide what happens next. The two codes work together in order to develop the tension within the story, keeping the viewer interested. The Proairetic Code keeps the viewer on edge, wanting to know what happens next and what the final event will be and how the roles within the film with react. The Hermeneutic Code relates to my film by the way in which we leave a mystery for the audience even though they do not know it. The film that we made hides truths about the boy who left the sticky notes relating back to the Hermeneutic Code. The Proairetic Code links to my film by the way that we successfully make tension for the viewer leaving them on edge, making them wonder what will happen next in the series of events. The audience decide for themselves who leaves the sticky notes when the girl starts to follow them. This keeps the audience engaged. Tension is reinforced when the male is on the date with the female but seems to be interested in the waitress when the girl is not present, therefore making the viewer doubt their decision. This proves his intentions are bad from the start making the audience wonder how the film will finish. Whereas Laura Mulvey speaks of the male gaze theory and how women are sexualised, glorified and objectified within films, we chose to use this idea with the protagonist. We wanted her to look desirable therefore her general attire was important, she was wearing a bright red, chiffon shirt and skirt, the colour of the shirt is suggestive of romance and makes her appear feminine and desirable. We used close ups of certain features of the face that men generally look at such as the eyes and the mouth.

Short films range in length, they can last anything from 3 to 20 minutes long, our film is within these time boundaries at 5 minutes long, we decided on this length as a result of the research we did at the beginning of the projects and the short films we watched. This time frame meant that we had enough time to portray the information to the audience and keep them engaged with the film, without it becoming boring and them losing interest.  The typical number of characters within a short film is 2 to 5, this is due to the fact as there is not a lot of time to introduce many more. When researching short films we found that the characters had depth and meaning behind them, so we tried to apply this to our film by the way in which the characters were portrayed onscreen to the audience. This helps the audience to connect with the characters and relate to experiences the characters have been through, bringing the film to a more personal level, having more of an effect on the viewers involved.

When adding credits to the film, we found through our research that short film credits were often seen at the end of the film. This would then be followed by the final blog role including everyone involved in the film. In order to keep in keeping with short films, we too decided that our credits would be seen at the end of the film. To ensure they related to our theme we decided that the credits would be written on sticky notes, we tried doing this both digitally and physically, however we felt that digitally looked neater and worked better with the film; the credits appeared on a sticky note that was made in the shape of an electronic heart. This was used as a code and convention for portraying the genre of romance within our film.

To support our film, we have made two ancillary products; a film poster and a radio trailer. We researched both full length and short film posters and it became obvious to us that the institutional information was often less on short film posters as opposed to full length film posters. However, both film posters it appeared in a tall, thin font. I tried to keep in keeping with this by finding a font on photoshop, then making it taller and thinner. On my poster there are also the signs for the social media sites such as twitter, Instagram and facebook, informing the public that we are on social media and that if they followed us they would receive inside shots and information on the film. We chose a release date during the peak season of summer in order to build our audience and be legible for short film festivals, as this is one way of screening the film. The poster we created individually, however the radio trailer was made as a team. For my film poster, I hosted a photoshoot with the three main characters of the film, in the main location in which the film is set; the library. In this, we see protagonist gazing at the player lovingly, with the player looking in the other direction. The hero is in the middle of the characters, however is only seen as a silhouette as the audience are not meant to know who actually left the sticky notes and I wanted to carry this idea forward when designing my film poster. We researched short film radio trailers at length, in order for us to gain an idea of how they pan out and the information given to the audience. We planned for our radio trailer to start of the formation of a story and then be interrupted by the tag line “shhh quiet in the library” this hints to the audience the plot of our film but doesn’t reveal vital information, making them want to watch the film to find out what happens next.