Question One of Evaluation

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

Mise En Scene

Lighting.

Within the romantics scenes we wanted to keep the natural light, the movie shows the first few scene that we had this bright light this conformed to the stereotypical view of a romantic moment in a film to be bright and 'happy' atmosphere. The bright scenes also connote their youthfulness and develop the idea of a first meeting point as it creates the romantic setting.

However as the film developed we changed our lighting, for example in the above set of scene, the part where Megan goes in to the bathroom shows the dark surrounding and the artificial light only for a few seconds which connotes the change from light to darkness. We used the darkness and outside night light to our advantage within the fight scene, as it conformed to the stereotypical view of a dark and dangerous scene within a movie that also is the height of tension.

Costume.

We focused largely on the males characters costume due to his changing character throughout the movie. His first appearance in the movie is in a suit which connotes the positive view of him and an intelligent view, which means that when we change it to the bedroom scene and he is in a casual view it also conforms more to his angry personality. And then the part where it shows the most change is in his dark hoodie when he is looming over the weaker male.

Setting.

The first location of the whole movie is the canal, which is the natural and romantic location along with the lamp post, these conform to the forms of a romantic film genre. The romantic settings also had the natural bright lighting and the calming atmosphere. The girls bedroom was stereotypical with 'girly' things around the room however the boys bedroom subverts the usual idea of a males bedroom, this challenged the way in which we showed the bedroom and in which scenes as we had to take in to account what the characters were doing. The bridge and the footpath were the darker locations of the film and they conformed to the stereotypical view and genre of a dangerous location with hedges and seclusion.

Props.

Each prop played an important part within the film, for example even the bags connoted the way in which the characters met at first sight, which was a development of the stereotypical view of a 'romantic first meet.' The phone connoted the change in character of Harri from being nice and happy to defensive and controlling. This challenges the way in which we look at the different props and their effect on the characters. Another prop that develops and conforms to making the film realistic is the make up that we used to create the bruise. The main prop was the necklace that she leaves on the pillow at the end of the film, although jewelry is a stereotypical prop for a romantic film and connotes the way their relationship changes which conforms to the conventions we wanted to show.

Conclusion

We could have used mise en scene to enhance the characters even more by introducing more props to them for example Harri could have been involved with darker things and we could have shown his darker character more and we could have focused on Megan's costume to create her as a smarter and innocent person who would 'unexpectedly' fall for the bad guy. If we were able to we could have filmed at different times to improve our lighting in the film.

Music

To begin with we used our music throughout the movie to create the development of story as well as connote the emotions and themes we wanted to portray. The beginning with the first scene of Megan getting in to the bed and falling asleep creates a calming and romantic effect which carries through to the romantic couple scenes, however the music begins to change when the girl is scene in the black and white edits which were connoting the change in theme, when she is in the bathroom the dramatic genre begins and the music conforms to this genre by beginning to crescendo, this creates the tension through out the scene and carries on within the fight scene. The use of music develops our film as it creates the atmosphere and the reactions that we want from our audience. The video above shows the key scenes that the music effects due to its building of tension and suspense, which is a connotation of the change in characters.

We could have used the music differently and when the fight scene happened we could have had it very quite which would have created a disturbing effect on the audience because it would have subvert the stereotype, however we could have also had the romantic scenes having a happier tone to show the clear change in tone and emotion.

Editing

We used the slow edits and transition fades to create a dream like effect which conforms to a romantic genre theme of being 'dream like' and a 'fantasy'. Our edits become faster paced within the tense moments of the film, for example the fight scene, these edits conform to the dramatic genre of film in which it creates tension within the film. We also had edits which looked very professional throughout the movie for example the match on action of the door handle and the phone cut with the ring tone, these added to our development as they kept the editing neat and smooth. We has much difficulty in deciding if we wanted to edit the tone of either the past events or the present to black and white. In the end we decided to have the present clips in black and white to connote the darker which shows our development of adding to the theme of the film. Although this may challenge the typical romantic drama as changing the tint of clips may be risky to make them look grainy and older but we felt that the edit looked clear and effective within our film.

The edits may have been more frequent than they should have been to create the realistic view, the black and white may look odd because its the only change in the film that establishes the past properly. I think during the romantic scene we could have edited it to look more 'dream like' with edits in between so that it established the change in time and the development of the relationship.

Camera Angles

We used a variety of angles within our producing of the film, we wanted to create the emotions and atmosphere we were aiming for through the way in which we filmed the movie. Because our film was mainly focused on the relationship between the characters the camera stayed close to the characters throughout the film with the behind the shoulder angle and the point of view angles from the girl which allowed the audience to feel the girls emotions. Even the behind shot of the girl and boy at the pond side shows the camera staying close to the characters. We used the camera angles to build tension within the film for example the close ups on the girl in bed to connote her weakness and the close ups on the boys to connote his power. We used a lot of long shots within the film to create the realistic view on the film.

However I felt that we could have used a wider variety during the fight scene to enhance the emotions that we were trying to provoke as well as showing the setting a bit more for example a wide shot to show the setting which connoted the danger in the scene. I felt we could have mixed the levels we used throughout the movie to high and low angles instead of the medium levels and the long/wide shots that we used. We also could have used pans across the romantic scenes to create the realistic view as well as showing of the locations that we purposely used.