The Codes and Convention of Coming of age Films

Researching the film Submarine

Here I have been researching the codes of conventions in coming of age indie films. The film that I researched was submarine. Some conventional things that I have found in a variety of indie films are, the main character is usually suffering from depression/an unfortunate event has taken place in there life (death of family member, usually parent).

Due to the fact I have to create a opening sequence, I watch the opening sequence of Submarine and I found that the main character seem sad/lonely staring into space. The Opening scene takes place in his room (boy looking out the window), and also next to the sea (staring at the horizon). It also takes place in a seaside town, that looks very boring and lifeless. The main character is framed in a way that makes him look vulnerable, depressed and quiet boring, this is done by a high angle shot, looking down at the character, and framing him centred of the screen which makes him look plain and boring. I also found that the main character wares dark colours (Blacks & Greys) to re-enforce the fact he is suffering from depression, and is in a dark place


This title is something that I want to take for inspiration for my film, because it is bold, and very simple. The Simple font fits/works with the atmosphere very well because its not cluttered and over the top.

Here is a presentation on the film Submarine by Richard Ayoade

Final Film Production

 

 

Here we decided to go into more detail on the setting and location etc. We used a spider diagram to make it easier to think of ideas for our film. We used it to help us decide on the location and the date/duration of our filming. We have decided that we want to shoot on Hayling Island in the country, because it is near a beach which we think will suit our film due to the faked we want our character to seem shut off from the world.



Steve Neale

Steve Neale states that 'genres are instances of repetition and difference' and 'genres are not systems, they are processes of systemisation'.He also say's that, definitions of genre are historically relative and are historically specific. He believed that there was a system of expectation and that by using own knowledge and applying conventions of the genre, the audience should be able to understand the narrative of the genre. He also declares that difference is accentual in genres because repetition is to boring for and audience.

For example, in soaps like Eastenders every couple of weeks new topic occur like, a characters death, a wedding, pregnancy etc.

 

 

Binary oppositions are opposites in a genre, for example, we see this in the crime genre between the crime solvers vs criminals, police vs truth, innocence vs guilt. In this genre, this is used to create conflict and give the audience a chance to take sides to feel more involved in the programme/film.

Todorov

The Narrative Theory:

Todorov in 1969 produced a theory which he believed to be able to be applied to any film. He believed that all films followed the same narrative pattern. They all went through stages called the equilibrium, disequilibrium, acknowledgement, solving and again equilibrium. 

These are the five stages of the Narrative Theory:

A State of equilibrium (everything normal). A disruption of that order by an event. A recognition that the disorder has occurred. An attempt to repair the damage of disruption. A return or restoration of a new equilibrium.

 Institutions and Audiences

 

List five media sectors and one leading profit making company for each sector.

- Film: Warner Bros.

- TV: BBC

- Internet: Google

- Music: PMR

 

Name Two Independent music Labels.

-Rough Trade

-ATP Recording

 

Why is some music downloading legal and some illegal?

-Downloading music can be legal when the company, like iTunes, has bought the rights to sell the song. However, if the company have not bought the rights for the music and then sells or gives the music out for free it becomes illegal.

 

Who owns the British board  of Film Classification.

-Patrick Swaffer

 

Name three organisation that own British  Newspapers.

-The Guardian

-The Sun

-The Times

 

Why does the BBC have no adverts?

-Because it is a public service broadcast, so they get their money through TV licencing this means they do not need to earn there money through advertisement.

 

What is OFCOM?

-This is the communications regulator in the UK

 

What is an MP4?

-Is a digital multimedia  format, so is used for playing music, videos etc.

 

Why does the sound regulars disappear on Live Big Brother feed?

-Because

Creating Our Final Film 

Here a small group of three and I have been researching ideas for a film that we want to create. We realised that the best film to make for our level of production would be a indie drama genre.

This is because these films are low budget and set in the present day, we realised this when researching films made by Film4. I found that most of their films were deep dramas that were low budget and aimed at younger audience, for example films like Train Spotting and Submarine.

When researching ideas for our film we debated over many ideas for a film, ranging from a fast pass action adventure chase sequence to a slower drama about the difficulties of teen life.

 

So far we have decided to make an indie film about the struggle of a teenagers life through a very dark stage of his life, in this case his parents have sadly died. It starts with the character looking very depressed and suicidal, maybe on the edge of a  high place or next to the sea at night. Before the audience see if the teenager will chose to take his own life the camera cuts away from that scene which will hopefully draw the audience into the film, wanting to find out what will happen to the character. The next scene that the film cuts too is the teenager moving into his grandparent house a few days earlier. We have decided that this scene with cross-cut between him moving in, and a few days before that when he receives that his parents have tragically died in a freak accident of some kind.

 

We have also agreed that we want the main character to be a boy. It will be set in a seaside to emphasis how shut off from his old life he has become (where he lived in the city). 

The representations of people in Love thy Neighbour 

In the programme, Love thy Neighbour, there are many outrageous jokes towards both black and white people. For example, The programme makes it clear that it is ok to say cruel racist jokes towards black people when Eddy calls Bill a, "Nig Nog", this shows Eddy feels it is ok the call Bill very racist names. This shows that in and around 1972, when this programme was made, people felt it ok to here and say these things.

However, I also found that even though the programme is very racist to black people, white people are also represented poorly. They are shown to be stupid and senseless, we see this in season 1 episode 6 where, for a bet, where Eddy paints himself black to show Bill that he would be aloud in a bar. This make Eddy, the whit character, look extremely stupid because he believes he looks just like Bill, the black character.

Warner Bros

-The company was founded by four Brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack.

-American company found in 1903 and became big during the golden age.

-In 1995 WB’s decided to produce programs. The WB’s early programming included shows like, Buffy the Vampire slayer, Smallville, Dawson's Creek, and One Tree Hill.

-They have produced successful films like, Interstellar and The Great Gatsby and distributed films like the Hobbit.

-Even now WB’s are producing big Hollywood films. For example, Godzilla (2018), The Jungle Book Origins (2016) and Mad Max: fury Road (2015).

G321 - Preliminary Task - Final Film

Here is our finished G321 preliminary task film. As a hole i think it came our as a well shot film that uses investing edits and shots. However, because this task was just to practice creating films, it because a bit of fun rather than a serious film.

Preliminary Task-Creating the Story Board

A small group of three and I had to make a short dialog scene about a fish. We decided to take a more violent/ humorous rout for our film. We started our film by first making a story board. We did this so that we were more organised when shooting the film, although at some points we didn't follow the storyboard accurately and to have a format to follow. When making the storyboard we it helped us to realise that some of the shot we wanted to create like arial shots where too hard, for we did not have the right equipment. Overall I think our storyboard was successful, this is because the our drawings were simple and easy to interoperate when shooting.

Once we had finished creating the storyboard we moved on to shooting our film. We decided to shoot our film in order of the storyboard to make it easier when editing. I like the first couple of shots in our film because of how we framed them. A problem that we had when shooting was, because we were shooting in school it was very hard to find a room that was not occupied so we ended up having to use our media room. This was bad because the lighting in tis room was very dark and there were also other people working in this room. This meant random voices could sometimes be heard in the background. Overall I enjoyed shooting the film and I think that we shot everything in an exciting way and were successful when shooting. However, we found when editing our film we had to reshoot a cupel of our shots to keep continuity. 

Finally we had to edit our film. A problem that we had when editing was that we realised that some of the shots we needed we missing so we were delayed due to the fact we had to reshoot. We wanted to make sure that our film was not slow and boring so we edited between shots regularly to make scenes flow in a more existing way. There were a few continuity errors in our clip but we think they are not easy to spot, like shadows moving, etc. Overall, I am happy with how our film was edited and the sound effects that we put in gave the film more, humour and interesting to watch. I also like the change in editing speeds thought out the film; it made the scenes more exciting and gave it a level of suspense.