Evaluation question 1

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film

Our film is called Vengeance, and is a thriller revenge drama influenced by such series as Revenge and films such as Kill Bill and Haywire.

It involves our female protagonist Rose going out on a quest to find her missing sister who has been kidnapped and sent to a brothel. She manipulates people around her in order to find her sister, including her 'boyfriend' who she uses, as he has vital information about where her sister is.

Genre

Our gripping storyline reaches out to fans of the thriller, and drama genres. We used and developed iconography and symbolism, narrative and themes and character to present our media product in such a fashion that it would appeal to our target audience.

Character:

 

Female Character

 

 We decided to have our main character as a strong female protagonist.

How it defies stereotypical conventions of female Characters in action/ thriller/ drama genres.

Stereotypes of  females we see in action/ thriller/ drama films are typical 'damsel in distress' characters. This represents them as weak characters, who must rely on others.

Our character however strives and thwarts the male characters in the film, dominating and empowering over the males in the film such as her boyfriend who we represent as 'vulnerable' to emphasise this.

 

Events and Themes

The content of our film represents the thriller/ drama genre. Our explicit material suggests the film is far from a comedy or Rom-com, but contains fear, action and suspense expected from thriller/drama genres.

Our films contains controversy topics such as:

 

• Human Trafficking and Kidnapping- Rose's sister is kidnapped and sent to a brothel, in which Rose goes out to find her. This explores the nature of kidnapping and human trafficking in the world of today.

Running themes of:

• Deception- Rose must play a character throughout the film in order to get her way and find out where her sister is. This involves constant lies, as she pretends to be someone she's not in order to cover up the truth of what she is really searching for.

 

Iconography

 

Typical iconography in our chosen genre involves:

Confined spaces:

We created our opening sequence in one room.

Shadows

 

Little lighting/ single streetlamp or light switch
We represented this through our use of mood lighting, allowing us to control the intensity of our lighting.  
 

Explicit images of violence, weapons, blood

You can see in the following clip our representation of some of the typical iconography of the genre, such as shadows, blood and our mood lighting :

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Main Structure:

From the outset of creating our film, we established that the storyline meant that our film wouldn't follow generic narrative construction. This is due to the fact our film begins with a disruption, contradicting film theories such as Todorov's:

 

Todorov's Theory:

Our films narrative structure

 We decided to begin with a disruption as it hooks the audience from the beginning, and introduces our thriller themes and genre from the disequilibrium outset.

Our decision of our dis-conventional narrative structure was influenced by revenge, kill bill, Haywire and the Hangover:

Narrative techniques used: 

 

Enigma Codes: 

 We decided to leave the last line of the sequence with no obvious definition, to leave room for the audience to question what it meant. This was to represent the kind of film we were creating, and give the audience an insight to the genre. Presenting this sense of mystery, represented the themes our film would involve such as suspense and unknowing.

'Oh it will be'

 

Form

An opening sequence involves an insight to what the following film is about, probing into inevitable events through things we see occurring and symbolism.

I feel like our opening does do the job that an opening sequence is supposed to, by the way in which we establish genre, introduce the characters and introduce themes of the film.

However our opening sequence does not give too much of a sense of the storyline to come, only suggesting that Rose is getting ready to meet the male we are introduced to (the boyfriends) dad.

 

 

We purposely focused on a specific event occurring within the film and created a stylistic approach to this instead of  giving too much a way about the film as a whole because of the genre we were trying to represent. We wanted to create mystery in order to attract the audience to find out more.

However we did use symbolism of Rose getting ready to represent different aspects of the film: 

• Whole concept of getting ready:

Putting on all the make-up,the perfume and dress was all meant to represent as a whole, her 'covering up' what she really is/ who she really is. This represents the act/ person she puts on in order to find her sister.

 

• Staring at the picture:



We see Rose look at a picture of her and her sister, introducing her sister as a character within the film.
We used this shot to represent Rose's longing for her sister, she is looking at this picture because she misses her, reminding herself of the times they have spent together.

When we see her put this picture away into the drawer which she slams tightly shut, it symbolises the way in which she has to keep the truth of her sister hidden, to keep from her 'boyfriend' why she is really getting close to him.

 

 

• The Mirror shot:

 



The two contrasting facial expressions we see of Rose are meant to represent her deceptive role, and her true feelings, compared to the feelings/ character she puts on:

 

The happy, smiley facial expression we see in the mirror is what she puts onto her boyfriend.

 

The solitude facial expression we see up close represents how she is really feeling. 

 

• Finishing Line:

This suggests the relationship between Rose and the boyfriend's father. Although the audience do not know this yet, Rose must later on seduce the boyfriend's father in order to find out more about her sister. The nature of the last line, and the way in which she says it behind the boyfriend's back, probes into Rose's devious nature involving the boyfriend's father.

We were influenced by the style and framing of this shot by similar shots from Vampire Diaries:

 

 

Style  

Our opening sequence has a mysterious and seductive atmosphere, style and feeling. We represented this using, titles, soundtrack, pace and rhythm, colours and dialogue.

 

Titles

We began our title research by exploring different fonts, to try and obtain the atmosphere. We decided that our the colour of our main title 'vengeance' should be red, as this is a running theme throughout our film such as:

 

We decided that red was a good colour to represent our film because of the intensity that red represents. This intensity emphasises the heat and strength of our the gritty themes, storyline and female protagonist. It also enhances the seductive nature to the opening sequence.

 

 

We decided to focus on a thin font style in order to represent the eerie/ mysterious style to our opening sequence and film.

 

 

Leading us onto our Main title:

 

Style of our Titles:

The style in which our titles appeared was very important to maintain the atmosphere and mood we were creating. We decided to have the rest of our titles in white, contrasting and emphasising the final 'Vengeance' title that appeared in red.

We decided to fade to black in-between each of our shots in our opening title sequence in which our titles would appear. This was influenced by the following title sequence:

 

 Our Title:

 

Although the Kill Bill Title doesn't fade to black, the integration and incorporation of a separate title was the main influence it provided us with.

Kill Bill Title:

We felt this was appropriate as it gave our sequence a sense of pace, slowing down our sequence and emphasising our atmosphere.

The pace of our sequence we created from the use of our titles also allowed a better timing in consideration to the music

 

Music:

 We chose this music as it created a mysterious ambiance to our sequence, accentuating all the movements and actions that we see in our opening sequence.

 

Shooting techniques:

We also used framing to heighten our atmosphere. We focused on close up shots in order to emphasise the intensity of our sequence as a whole as well as the objects we were focusing on.