How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film opening uses several genre conventions, as well as a few teenage and gender stereotypes. For example, our protagonist superhero is male, like the majority of superheroes out there (Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Deadpool etc.).
In addition, Jessica wore a floral dress, as well as having a bright pink coat, flowers and pink both being associated with girls. Later on in the film, she is also a damsel in distress. However, she is also higher in authority than the bullies, as she forces them to stop harassing Angus.
Bully on the left
One of the bullies is wearing an American jock jacket, which fulfils the stereotype that jocks are bullies and stand on a pedestal of power. He throws a paper ball at Angus’ head, laughing and high fiving his friend when he does. This is inverted, however, when he stops bullying Angus after Jessica admonishes him for doing so. Stereotypically, jocks are the ones in charge of their relationship; in this case, women are given more power over men.
Angus wears a long black trench coat, the coat symbolising the wall separating him and the rest of the world. This separation is further alluded to when the sketch he drew comes to life, shaking its head. Angus is shown to be a socially awkward teenager, a figure we can empathise with because we’ve been in his place before. His social awkwardness is emphasises when he stares at Jessica, to the point where she notices and feels creeped out by it. The comic style freeze frame with the love hearts around it also makes it feel like Angus is in his own little world.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our fiction film opening definitely uses standard forms and conventions of real superhero films. We have followed many conventions of a real opening sequence. We took a lot of inspiration from Spiderman 2 and Kick-Ass. For example, conventions we followed:
·Two of the main characters are introduced during the sequence, Angus and Jessica.
·The drone of a teacher in the background, as well as the fold down chairs suggests a lecture hall and/or a university.
·Our sequence has various titles, including the names of our actors as well as specific positions such as director and producer. John Solomon isn’t a real person, but he does have a specific role; later on in the film, he would have played the villain.
We also followed conventions of our genre: superhero. We haven’t especially broken the mould with this; we’ve used common stereotypes, as well as using some less used ones, for example:
·A voiceover from the main character
·Comic book styled drawings, quite an unorthodox way to tell his backstory (similar to Spiderman 2)
·The “average” super hero, someone you don’t expect to be one (Peter Parker, anyone?)
·The love interest, almost always popular and pretty. Usually a damsel in distress as well. (Mary Jane Watson)
·Telekinesis, one of the original super powers
Aside from conventions, we have also used narrative techniques in order to sequence our opening. For example, we have followed Todorov’s theory of equilibrium:
·The Agents – Angus, Jessica and the mad TV presenter.
·The Equilibrium – Angus lives the life of an average teenager, bullied at school and in love with a girl who’ll never look his way. However, there is one thing that he’s good at…
·The Disruption – Jessica is kidnapped by a crazy TV presenter, who thinks it’ll give him the last scoop he needs. No one in the school but Angus seems to care though.
·The Journey – Angus uses his powers to get into the mansion where the presenter is holed up in order to rescue Jessica.
·The New Equilibrium – Angus and Jessica start going out, the presenter is arrested and locked up and Angus gains the confidence to deal with the bullies in his own exceptional way.
We have also used things like continuity editing to give the sense of a real time sequence, which is really important both film and TV film and TV, as well as things like crossfading to make it seem like more time is passing, as well as disorienting the audience and adding to the eerie build up of music. Our title sequence is quite similar in style to the Spiderman 2 opening, with the lines crawling over the comic style drawings and revealing names of actors and film staff.
During the course of the project, I have learnt many things, but one thing that stood out for me was the fact that careful planning can easily be thwarted by unreliable actors. Both of our initial actors had to be dropped because their prior commitments meant that waiting for them would have been an illogical decision. Jasmine, who was to be our Jessica was busy with music and Gabriel, who was Angus, seemed to be all over the place, sometimes he was there and other times he cancelled for something else. In the end, we just used Eoin and Olivia, maybe not the best actors possible, but sufficient enough so that we finished our project in time, as we had about 2 weeks to film and edit the whole thing. The reason we had so little time was because of the afore mentioned actors, who caused us to keep pushing back our shoot schedule. Apart from this, I haven't really learnt much in the way of technology, as I'd already learnt it all previously during the prelim.
What did we do well? What could we have done better?
I think we all managed to keep a cool head in the face of adversity. When we had to deal with our actors, we made our decisions quickly and swiftly. I also think that our pencil scene is rather well done. It looks real enough from a distance, so it really looks like Eoin was lifting it with his mind.
Using various filters on PS, such as Poster Edges, I have managed to make a somewhat cartoony/pop-art esque look. This will work well for our opening sequence, as we are trying to give it a sense of superhero-ness.
I've managed to get a few other artists to draw our characters, to see how other people draw them. Every artist observes a character differently and it's interesting to see the kinds of personality that come out when drawn. For example, here, Jess looks particularly studious while Luke looks cooler than he ought to be. This kind of thing may create new avenues to explore that we otherwise may not have seen.
Angus, Luke and Jessica, they're all here, the 3 main characters to our film. This is just a basic artist's impression sketch of what they should look like in the film, the actors we choose may or may not be similar to their equivalent designs. Also included is an initial design for the poster and how I expect it might be laid out. The initial sketches were done in pencil on a piece of A4 paper. Sadly, Angus and Luke decided to have a manly hug and as such their sketches became rather smudged. It's more apparent on the individual profile than on the poster (mainly because I spent half an hour trying to cut them out cleanly).
