In our A2 year we were all more comfortable as a group, as we all get on out of the lesson, which helped with dealing with more complex and technical parts of our course. This year we had to create a five minuet film, meaning we spent longer filming than we did in our AS year. Due to having a longer filming period, it meant that we struggled with continuity throughout as different aspects keep changing, for example a haircut or someones hair colour. Eventually this developed into a problem when it came to reshooting, meaning some parts had to completely be re-filmed.
The main problem we had with the actress who played Charlotte and as when we started filming she had a pink hue to the ends of her hair and it was long and curly. However once we came to reshooting these scenes she had her haircut three inches shorter meaning we had to entirely reshoot the scenes as waiting for her hair to return to the previous length and colour would have been too long. We also took the precaution of this not happening again, by adding a padded hooded coat and purple scarf to her outfit for the remainder of filming, allowing us to hide her hair.
We inhabited the key aspects of Drama conventions as we included real life situations, realistic relatable character and interactions between our main characters. We aimed to make our film relatable and familiar to our audience so that they create an emotional attachment to our characters. We aimed to achieve this through our flashback scene at the start of the film, as this allowed us to establish the plot and provide vital information to the audience, to create the relationship with the audience.
The next thing we did to strengthen the relationship with the audience was the title sequence which provided an insight into Georgie's house. To create our title sequence we used photos of various household objects such as, flowers, a foosball table, photographs and an empty chair. The empty chair was used to symbolise the emptiness within Georgie's life after the loss of her best friend. We uses 'Levi Strauss's' Binary opposite theory to juxtapose the two scenes (opening sequence and title sequence), this was done to emphasise the fact that Georgie and Charlotte were two young girls with their life ahead of them, however to portray the tragedy, that being in the Army out on deployment. This was cemented through Georgie's Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Charlotte's death. Once way we portrayed Georgie's innocence as a character, was through her mise-en-scene, she was frequently seen wearing Bambi pyjamas throughout, this implied her innocence and her mentality once she was away from the Army as she is trying to decompress, also the reference to modern pop culture as she is seen quite often with her mobile phone, while within the house, however once Georgie and Charlotte are outside they are seen wearing fashionable outfits. This is used to allow Georgie and Charlotte to be more relatable to the audience.
However throughout our short film, 'Aftermath' doesn't conform to the typical Drama conventions, such as our film doesn't reach a typical happy ending. Choosing to leave it open ended allowing the audience to decide themselves what happens to Georgie after the conclusion of our film, however we left subtle hints as to what happens with Georgie as she finally managed to open up to her therapist and tells her about what actually happened to Charlotte. An example of a Drama film that conforms to the typical genre conventions is War Horse, as Albert has to get over the loss of his best friend Andrew, who is killed by a gas explosion within the German trenches. Nonethess the happy ending comes when Albert is finally reunited with his horse Joey and they return home to Devon together.
The main media product we were influenced by was the TV series 'Our Girl' and 'Emmerdale' as both of these have dealt with the subject of PTSD and allowed us to gain some ideas on how to portray the matter through our film. From 'Our Girl' we were influenced by the war aspect and also the episode when Georgie is taken prisoner while on deployment over in Kenya on a humanitarian mission. This gave us the inspiration for how Charlotte dies as, in 'Our Girl' the aid worker Kiki is killed moments before Georgie is rescued.
The clip below shows the build up and the rescue of Georgie Lane.
We used 'Emmerdale' as an influence as the storyline of Belle being followed by a girl, who kept appearing randomly and always in different positions. This influenced our plot with Charlotte as we decided to follow there example and have her appearing and disappearing throughout, this was to hint towards the fact that she wasn't really there and just a figment of Georgie's imagination. However the only differnence is that when Charlotte appears it is to try and help Georgie, whereas the person 'haunting' Belle says hurtful and mean things.
The video shows Belle sleeping rough and the girl 'appearing randomly'
Also we used Richard Dyers theory of entertainment, this included five aspects, energy, transparency, intensity, community and abundence. Our film includeds energy as it is told through a flashback at the start which set the tone of the film, and the eliptical editing throughout. Through the use of transparency it allowed us to have Charlotte appearing randomly throughout and to go unnoticed in the threapy session. We portrayed the intensity through Georgie's PTSD and the plot twist at the end. Transparency can be seen in the film Eden Lake (Dir James Watkins, 2008), where the working class teenagers are portrayed as bad and
Jenny and Steve are portrayed as middle class good people. Emotion is
portrays through Shawshank Redmeption (Dir Frank Darabont, 1994), where
Brookes who has been instotutionalised is released from prision, and
eventually hangs himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment