In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The first thing you see watching our opening sequence is the photo montage. This has been slowed down so the audience focuses on the photo coming in to shot. We were inspired my the drama film 'My Sister's Keeper' at the start of the film we see many photographs depicting a child who gradually gets older in them. This montage shows the audience the key points in the character's life and makes it feel more personal to the viewer as they are allowed to have an insight into the families photo album. The use of this montage is also to get the audience up to date with the story so far while introducing what we think to be the main character at the same time. This is what Harriet and I tried to emulate. We used a series of photographs from my childhood to recreate this. We also decided that we wanted the titles to not be a prominent feature which distracts the audience's eye, we want the main focus to be the photographs falling into shot. we think we achieved this by making the titles white and in a small skinny font.
We then see the animation of our name OLIVIA. It grows to form a flowers. This is suppose to represent Olivia as a person from tiny baby beginnings and fastly maturing into a young woman. This fastley edited piece shows how fast Olivia had to grow up when she heard the news of her adoption. as you can imagine this was a lengthy part of our work to complete the film however i think it really works well. It is indeed unconventional for a drama film to include a piece of animation. We made our film stand out from any other of this genre.
Next we see our character Olivia in person. First we only see an extreme close up of her eyes which does seem a tad sudden but this catches the attention of the audience. There is a little sense of mystery about this character as we only see her eyes. Eyes are said to be the window of our souls. Taking Olivia's eyes in this shot into account we can see clearly she has tears in her eyes this emphasises her emotion to the audience. We know they are tears of sadness by the narration of the character. The audience are instantly on her side and feel sorry for her.
When we see a full body shot of the character we see is is dressed rather stereotypically of a teenager. Loose fitting jumper, red in colour signifying danger and passion which she will encounter on her journey to find her birth mum. She is also wearing plain leggings which are the current fashion for women. Teenagers are always up to date with the latest phases and this shows it. The audience may recognise this and believe her to be as equal as them simply by the clothes she is wearing. Our aim is to make this as true to life as possible, the costume helps with this.
Olivia is sat on her bed. Instantly recognisable as a young girl's bedroom as it is bright pink. Her room is small reflecting how she feels upon receiving the news. We took a lot of time thinking about the setting of the film and the location. We were originally going to have an establishing long shot of a house and gradually get closer. e;g, we would see the whole house, then a window, then a frame of a window where the audience would look in at the characters with a sense of voyeurism. We were going to watch as the news of the adoption was broke to Olivia. A series of close ups and extreme close ups would have been due to create a sense of tension. No speaking in this bit just the non diagetic sound track acting as a sound bridge linking shot to shot smoothly. This was going to unfold in the living room however we changed our minds and decided to go from her just having received the news. Escaping by locking herself up in her bedroom. As this was to be the new start we though the audience would expect to see quite a childish room then later as she matures so would her room.
We see numerous props sprawled out on her bed. These are supposed to represent Olivia's documents and letter her birth mum had written for her. We even included a photo in this. We thought this would be a good idea as it almost puts he life out in front of her, in perspective. The use of the photo was great as it depicted father and daughter not mother. This only further frustrates the character as she doesn't even know what see looks like. The photo frame is also babyish emphasising the point that Olivia was young, well and still is. A little later on we see Olivia hold a teddy bear and cuddle it, squeezing it tight. It almost looks like Olivia is holding it like a baby, rocking back and forth. This is meant to suggest her innocence and enhancing the fact she is still a child.
In the last shot you see a pull focus on a tree in the distance as Olivia is looking out her window. This shows her looking in the distance. This is then followed by a fade out transitions. The editing of this piece has a mixture of paces. The titles are slow and long, the animation is a complete contrast being extremely fast and finally the acting I think is quite averagely paced. This keeps the audience watching as it is such an assortment of of pace.
We tried to use as many shot types as possible to keep it interesting. We start with an extreme close up on the eyes, long shot, over the shoulder shot, a series of close ups of varying lengths. We think we have done this well in keeping the audience's attention.
So have we represented the drama genre well? I believe we have and stuck well to the genres conventions. We have the emotional single piano playing throughout the piece which is common in dramas and adds extras emotion to the visuals. We have also used a narration, the character is directly telling the audience about her life, this makes the audience feel they have a personal connection with the character. Also the story often begins at a different part of the film, e;g: in the middle or end and the story is narrated by the character getting the audience up to date. We haven't included any special effects as this would look unreal to the viewers as we are trying to stress the point it is a real story, true to life. We focused on the emotional story line we wanted to show.
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