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What I cover in this post:
- General conventions (vodcasts summarising them)
- genre conventions (film cast studies)
- issues of representation and how we tackled them (gender, sexuality, ethnicity)
- How we applied the genre conventions we noted
- How social realist and indie productions challenge conglomerate conventions
Creative use of technologies:
This is my creative input, the points covered are:
- The 8 conventions we looked at in social realist films, and how we used or challenged them in our film opening
- Idents, companies, production context
- Titles research
- Sound, genre signification
- 1st shot
- Central protagonist and narrative
- Mise-en-scene for exposition
- Transition to main film
- Issues of representation, and how we chose to represent different social issues (gender, sexuality, ethnicity)
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As the creative part of this evaluation question, I recreated Vogue's 73 questions interview, like this one:
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1A How does it use or challenge conventions?
I began research on general conventions looking at these films:
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Blogging on these films, I made posts on these 8 conventions:
- General conventions 1: Idents, companies, production context
- General convention 2: Titles research
- General conventions 3: Sound, genre signification
- General conventions 4: 1st shot
- General conventions 5: Central protagonist and narrative
- General conventions 6: Mise-en-scene for exposition
- General conventions 7: Transition to main film
- General conventions 8: Other points
To summarize each convention, we made vodcasts
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General Conventions 1: Idents, companies, production context
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- short audio visual clips played before films
- first thing to see at a film opening
- one of the simplest area of film openings
- showing their brand to the audience
- usually 3 company idents to spread the risks
- usual to be 1 - 5 secondslong per ident
- idents for conglomerate or subsidiaries are longer than indie idents
- a lot of production companies competing
- Big Six are dominant both in distribution and production
General Conventions 2: Titles research
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- a method where film credit production companies
- about 20 - 30 titles
- there can be exception, in the Mexican or The Wicked Man there we only see under 10 titles
- at high end tentpole movies everything is pushed to the back so the titles start after the movie
- usually about 3 mins long
- in title sequence you find a lot of signifiers
- exposition what the genre of the movie is going about
- different positioning
- different size font for titles
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General Conentions 3: Sound, genre signification
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- audio bridge between titles (eg Bride of Chucky, Baby Driver)
- ambient and Foley sound for verisimilitude (The Mexican, The Quiet Place, Baby Drive, Chucky)
- music can be diegetic or non-diegetic - often used to signify genre/target audience (eg Baby Driver and Chucky)
- music is not usually continuous - fades in and out (eg Baby Driver)
- sound can signify setting (eg Submarine)
- Can be used to build tension/narrative enigma (eg The Mexican, Drive and Chucky)
- Institution aspect - OSTs
General Conventions 4: 1st shot
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- balance between exposition and narrative enigma (eg The Mexican, This is England)
- Mis-en-scene for exposition (keep brief)
- Setting/period (This is England, Submarine, Spectre)
- ABC1C2DE?
- incorporate elements of the narrative (eg Baby Driver)
- framing (anchoring, rule of thirds, eg L4yer Cak3)
- inter titles (break up panning shots, exposition, signify genre)
- conventionally and challenging convention (Spectre)
General Conventions 5: Central protagonist and narrative
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- Uses and gratifications theory - identification (Submarine)
- Todorov 5 point narrative (Submarine)
- Counter+stereotypes - realistic representation (eg Molly Pretty in Pink)
- Binary opposition (eg Bridget Jones Diary)
- Archetypes (Bond)
- Narrative enigma + voiceover (Bond, The Mexican, Drive, Baby Driver)
- Amount of time the camera spends on protagonist/first character introduced - cutting back to protagonist - reactions, rule of thirds(Drive)
- iconography as part of narrative (Baby Driver)
- establishing/panning shots + tracking (Bond)
Todorv's 5 point narrative (from DB media blog)
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- set dressing, props, lighting(high/low-key?) (Submarine, Need fro Speed, This is England)
- Makeup (Baby Driver)
- costumes and iconography (Baby Driver, This is England, Submarine)
- accents and sound (This is England, Submarine)
- exposition v narrative enigma, also subverting expectation/body language (Mean Girls, Baby Driver, Need for Speed)
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...General Conventions 7: Transition to main film
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- represented from Todorov's Narrative theory
- it suggests that it follows a 3 part equilibrium structure
- this equilibrium is disrupted by something (binary opposition)
- then reaches a solution when equilibrium is restored
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General Conventions 8: Other points
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Genre Conventions
After doing all this research on general conventions, we came up with our film idea, and made a pitch. Our film was inspired by Paddy Considine's 2018 Journeyman, which I saw at a British and Irish Film Festival here in Luxembourg - an indie social realist film.
Following this decision we did case studies on these indie social realist films:
I saw/ I did
A large part of social realist films is to portray darker themes of real life with accurate representation - this in itself challenges more conventional aspects of studio productions, which are created to make as much money as possible.
However, we aimed to follow most of the conventions of the social realist genre.
This presentation goes through the conventions we followed and changed from other social realist films:
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Here is a commentary vodcast I made showing the influence of or genre conventions research on our final cut:
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(SAM'S WORK)
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This is Sam's Carpool Karaoke on the same topic
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Genre Conventions
After doing all this research on general conventions, we came up with our film idea, and made a pitch. Our film was inspired by Paddy Considine's 2018 Journeyman, which I saw at a British and Irish Film Festival here in Luxembourg - an indie social realist film.
Following this decision we did case studies on these indie social realist films:
- '71
- Grimsby (a contrasting study)
- Journeyman
- My Beautiful Laundrette
- This is England
- Tyrannosaur
- Withnail and I
I saw/ I did
A large part of social realist films is to portray darker themes of real life with accurate representation - this in itself challenges more conventional aspects of studio productions, which are created to make as much money as possible.
However, we aimed to follow most of the conventions of the social realist genre.
This presentation goes through the conventions we followed and changed from other social realist films:
...
Here is a commentary vodcast I made showing the influence of or genre conventions research on our final cut:
...
(SAM'S WORK)
...
This is Sam's Carpool Karaoke on the same topic
...
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