Evaluation Question 1

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

Our film opening creates a sense on anticipation and also mystery, you get a good idea from our film opening that the film is going to be about two young girls who are best friends, also the audience learn that there is a loss in their lives, this is through the use of voice over. Our finished product uses, develops and challenges conventions which are used in media product a great deal.

 The title of our film is integrated into our shot which means it is part of the clip and we have used our location and surroundings to make our title. This challenges the typical conventions of a film opening because in most drama film openings the titles is not integrated and is he same as every other title, it normally just comes up in the same font with the titles of the people in the film and the people who helped make it. For example the film My Sister's Keeper (2009) uses a very small white font in the corner of the screen for their film titles, where as we have chosen to write the name of our film in the sand, so it takes up the whole screen and draws in the audience.

When picking a location for our film, we wanted to pick somewhere which would suit the story line and plot of our film but also suit the situation of the characters involved. A generic drama location is somewhere which the audience have probably all been to, which means the audience will be able to relate to it and will have memories of being in this place. We decided to pick the beach as this is somewhere you would expect two best friends to be playing and also somewhere the audience have probably been before. When picking our location we stuck to the typical generic conventions of a drama film. An example of our location being used in another film in the same genre is My Sister's Keeper once again, as part of the opening to this film is on the beach.

When we picked the costumes for our characters we wanted to focus on making the audience aware of the genre of the film, we decided to dress both the girls in dark colours, as opposed to light colours, which would be common of young girls to show that something bad is going to happen as the film progresses. We dressed the character who is going to die in a darker colour than the other to show that something bad is directly going to happen her, by using a dark blue/black we conveyed the message of death or tragedy to the audience, a drama film which uses colour in its opening to show an impending death or tragedy is Now is Good (2012) which dresses the main character in the colour red in the opening, this also conveys a message of death, due to red being the colour of blood, to the audience. In this aspect of our film opening we used the typical generic conventions of a drama film.

In our opening we wanted the camera work to focus mainly on the way the two girls interact with each other and to highlight the friendship they have with each other. We used a variety of camera angles and editing to show the friendship and the future that the girls are going to have. In shots where the girls are walking with each other, we use fades to show how the girls friendship is going to fade and this allows the audience to get a clue of what is going to happen later on in the film. We used a variety of long, mid and close shots to show the audience how the girls interacted with each other and to highlight their friendship. We used a pan from one side of the beach to the other with the girls in the middle of the frame, a shot like this was used in the opening of the film Now is Good, in our opening I feel we used camera angles and editing which is generic of the genre drama.

When picking a font for our titles we wanted to stick to the generic font of a drama film, we did research into font types and decided to use the font we picked because it fits in with the mood of the opening because it is classic with a twist. A font similar to the font we used in our film opening is the font that was used in the opening of Now is Good, the opening to both our film and Now is Good both have similar moods as they are both presenting the main character of the film to the audience and both hinting at the fact that something bad is going to happen to them as the film progresses.

We set up the story of the film opening and the rest of the film by using the two characters featured, making them interact a lot with each other while also making them give the audience an idea of what their friendship is like and what may be happening in the future. The thing which helped us set up the story the most was the fact that we used a voice over of the character Amy, who is left to deal with the grief of losing her best friend later in the film, even though the audience are unaware of this, it still adds to the setting of the story and also adds emotion which is a generic convention of a drama opening. My Sister's Keeper does similar to what we have done in our opening by showing you shots of the family interacting like the one above, however I think in our opening we have developed this because we have to characters interacting through out the opening.

We introduce the genre of our film from the very start of the film opening, a combination of effective shots, music and a voice over means that the audience are able to tell from the very start that our film opening is in the genre of drama. One of the main generic conventions of a drama film is the use of a combination of music and voice over, we use this convention to help set up the genre of our film and help the audience understand from the beginning what it is. The film fits into the sub-genre of Tragedy Drama, this isn't completely obvious in the opening however some viewer may realise that the voice over hints at the character in question is 'forgotten' and almost 'uncared' for. A film similar to ours which uses music and voice over to present the genre is again My Sisters Keeper, it had the main character giving an over view of past event and what has happened in their life, while also giving an idea of what the future holds, like our film.

We introduced the characters in our film opening by giving the audience a rough look back on their lives so far, this is a very common thing with a drama film due to the fact the audience need to know about the characters past in order to understand their future and what is happening in their lives now. Our film opening is a flashback, a look back of the girls life and friendship, with a voice over explaining what has happened briefly, this is very common of drama films. The first shot you see of the girls in our opening is of them running down the steps onto you beach, this portrays them as very happy, carefree children, this juxtaposes the voice over of the film, as the shots seem to be very happy, however the voice over shows the turmoil in their life and their problems. A film which present the main character in a similar way to ours is Now is Good, this shows how we presented our characters in a very generic way considering the genre.