Evaluation: Influences

Comment on your influences:

For our AS project, we produced an opening sequence for a horror film. This year we wanted to excel and test our ability by experimenting with a different genre.There are many sub-genres of drama, for example, Social, War, Mental illness, Race relations, Youth rebellion etc.  We agreed on the film concept of mental illness, specifically depression. This was a topic I felt would really push and test our boundaries for the film research and planning.

To fully understand the concept of depression we conducted an in-depth research into the subject, especially amongst teenagers and women. Our main aim was to find the symptoms and causes of depression amongst this group.

There wasn’t a fixed or one answer to why women and teens experienced depression, but some of the typical causes were due to stress, bullying, school, home life, the family, and work. We used our findings from the research on depression, as the starting point, for brainstorming ideas for our trailer. We gained additional inspiration from personal experience from people around us, willing to share their stories, News articles of real-life stories and from books like Pieces of You by Daniel Armand and Autobiographies. From this we were able to come up with a few original ideas for the narrative and storyline, which we went on to further, develop. 

The reason we chose to make a drama film about depression was because we wanted to raise awareness about the mental illness. It’s a topic most people avoid; find uncomfortable and difficult talking about because its perceived negatively in society.  Therefore we wanted to inform the audience about the disorder through our trailer film. Additionally, when someone loses a loved one to depression the focus in only one the individual that is suffering. However wanted to break the border of how depression can affect the patient as well as those around them e.g. family and friends.  

Evaluation :Narrative

How do you establish the narrative in your trailer and what is established in the other two productions? 

The narrative refers to the different elements in the process of story making and structuring storyline. Some trailer may have a narration to unfold the narrative but generally, it tends to follow the logic cause and effect, which ties together character traits, obstacles, and actions.

Our trailer for “one day” follows a liner structure due to it being in a chronological order. The effect of having a liner structure in our trailer maintains the audience's attention keeping them emotionally invested throughout the trailer. Additionally, our trailer adheres to the 5 key stages in a film, known as the narrative theory (exposition, development complication, climax, and resolution) categorised by Todorov. The exposition phase in our trailer is established with an establishing shot of park with the characters Belle and Rose.In the development stage, we composed different montages of the three characters spending time together. Furthermore, to indicate the genre we adjusted the tone of the scene to colour blue-ish grey to illustrate the past. The complication phase lies in the scene after the development stage, in this stage we revealed the scene where Belle and Layla are arguing in her bedroom. In the build to the climax we used heavy bass instrumental music normally the trailer then ends with the resolution stage. However, in our trailer we decided it would be more impactful if we left the trailer with an open ending. This allows the audience to be actively involved in our trailer because they can draw their own conclusion; also captivates them to watch our film.

Furthermore, our trailer leaves a lot of enigmas this refers to the elements in the storyline that is not fully explained and leaves the audience with unanswered questions.  The scene where Belle is starting off to the distance at the edge of the car park leaves, the audience unsure about her faith. It important to leave enigmas as it attracts the audience wanting to find out more and watch the film.

Evaluation :Codes and Conventions

How has you established genre across the three products? 

The genre of our film trailer is Drama following the journey of Belle after the tragic loss of her best friend Layla. Like most drama films our storyline focuses on the vulnerable protagonist facing difficult circumstances and dealing with the gritty bleak side of life. It’s conventional in drama to exhibit real-life situations and settings, therefore, to conform to the genre we included conventional locations such as the park, home, and café. These settings are the most suitable in portraying a realistic representation of teenagers, as they are places they are likely to hang out with friends or alone. Furthermore, through the use of Mise-en-scene, we have applied the generic conventions of drama in our trailer. Props that were featured in our production were everyday life objects and characters costumes are causal and natural tone e.g. hoodies and jumpers. The use dull lighting and low – key lighting helps create an unsteady atmosphere, which conforms to the genre.  

My ancillary consisted of two products a film poster and magazine front cover.The main image on our film poster is the protagonist. We kept the poster very minimalistic only inducing the title, release date, tagline and production credits so audience focus on the character. After analysing a number of drama film posters this was conventional the trend that followed. In addition, there are many genre indicators in our poster. The protagonist is giving direct mode of address this is effective because it forms a personal connection with the target audience capturing their attention. Her facial expression suggests sadness and through her eyes audience can see the sorrow. This conforms to drama because the characters are dealing with emotional issues and dilemma. The greyish and black background on the poster also implies the genre, as the colours connote death, loss, and depression. To show the audience Belle lacks confidence and suffers with from mental illness hair covers half the face.    

For our magazine, we again used our main protagonist to stay conventional with other film magazine covers.  The main character in the magazine is using direct mode address, which is captivating as it makes the audience subconsciously want to buy it. Direct mode of address is a conventional feature in most modern magazines. In addition, to indicate the genre of our film we featured articles about depression and exclusive interviews/information about “One Day”-This a unique selling point.