Hannah Wakely's A2 Coursework
Evaluations
Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The codes and conventions for magical realism are varied. These films are usually set in real-world locale, small towns and rural areas, with ordinary characters. Time tends to be fluid, it doesn’t have to be linear or set in a particular time at all. Usually characters don’t know what is happening any more than the viewer so they are discovering the truth of their reality as they go along. Key events have no logical explanation but the events have a deeper meaning than what is simply on the surface.
In my film:
The title of my film is "Words Never Hurt" which is a play on words as the whole story is about words -written or spoken- and the impact that they have on the two characters. I chose this title as it is quite intriguing and would confuse people even before watching the film, as they would be aware that words do hurt. This is the first step for making the audience want to watch my film, as they would be curious about the story’s narrative.
The boss uses words to give orders to the writer, who then writes a story that influences the young boy, who in turn at the end, erases written words and deletes the writer’s existence. The title it placed centre frame on a shot of the writer's hand writing. The font is Night Wind Sent, very curvy as if handwritten, to fit with the conventions of my film, as everything revolves around writing. When it appears, a faint sound of bells is heard in the background, which is a recurring sound motif that will be hear every time something magical happens in the film. I chose this sound because bells are very conventionally used in magical film as we associate this sound with magic.
Both characters have quite specific locations and both very different. The writer is seen in a small room, showing that he is not very wealthy, with red as a predominant colour. Light is coming into the room through the window, like a halo, representing his ego and the way he considers himself superior. The young boy, on the other side, appears for most of the film outside, in the rain, with main colours of grey and green and other cold colours. This shows how unlucky he is and also reflects his emotions. The only time that the boy is seen in the house, is at the end, when he comes home, which is the moment where he really starts gaining power and affecting the writer with his actions. This can give the message that having a roof over your head is all you need but also that the two characters are now in an equal situations as they are both sitting at a desk in a room. This shows that the young boy is already re gaining power and is only very slightly being manipulated at that moment.
For costumes and props, the writer is dressed in quite old fashion clothes, showing his lack of fashion and the fact that he works from home. This is relative to the audience, as it influences the way that they feel about this character. If he had been wearing a suit, the audience would have found him more professional and have more respect for him. This choice of costumes results in the audience siding straight away with the young boy.
His hair is too long which shows his lack of care. The young boy is wearing slightly ripped jeans and a coat that is a bit too big for him. This shows that he doesn’t really have anyone to care for him and is very lonely. Once again this means that the audience will automatically feel sorry for him and side with him.
Throughout my film, I used parallel editing to link the two characters together and show that the events were happening simultaneously. I also used flashbacks of the boss' voice to create a non-linear story and make it overall more interesting. However towards the end, these mix into the story, to add a magical twist and a slight sense of confusion and thrill as the audience can’t tell anymore whether these shots are flashbacks or happening at the same time as the story. I was able to do this near the end of my film, by taking out the flash transitions between the former flashback scenes and the shots of the writer. As well as that, we don't see any close ups of the writer's face until more than half way through the film, as the audience doesn't know if they can trust him, or if he's a good character. For the young boy, it's the opposite, as the first shot of him is a close up. This shows the audience straight away, which character is the protagonist; which character they should feel more attached to.
For the writing in my film, I used 3 different types of fonts: Night wind sent, apple chancery and Angelface which were three fonts linked to the theme of writing but slightly different from one another to avoid confusion.
Towards the end, I accentuated the colour red in the close ups of the writer, the whiteness in the shots of the young boy and took out all colours from the boss’ scenes. This was to empathise and fit with my chosen genre as one of the conventions of magical realism films is that all the colours are more pronounced than in a realistic film.
In my Magazine:
In my poster:
I chose to place the title of my film at the bottom of my picture as this is quite conventional for a thriller. I used the same font to link to my film and create a sense of branding but chose to write it in black this time to make it slightly more sinister and attract a slightly different audience.
I placed the actor's names at the top, in white letters and with the "hanging letters" font so that it linked to my picture of the "hanging" little boy. I also placed them either side of the big hand which shows that they are separated by the writing, that they aren't in the same world, and is also the way I positioned them in my film, one on the left side and one on the right side. At another point in my film, when the writing comes on the screen, I made it go either side of the writer's head, so the poster links to that as well.
The setting in the poster isn't precise, I chose a black gradient background from top to bottom to portray the darkness and badness coming from the top (the writer) and the innocence and youth coming from the young boy, trying to fight back the manipulation of the writer.
I hesitated in deciding what picture to use, all I knew was that I wanted one where the action was happening on the left side of the screen, so that I could use the right side to put the writing. I ended up choosing the one of his upside down reflection in the puddle as I felt it represented a lot of things from the film without really giving anything away: The water showed the misery and sadness that he feels at the beginning, the reflection is mysterious as we can’t see who it is, it also shows that the audience doesn’t give him much importance and only looks at his shadow and most of all there’s a sense of magical and confusion, which would make the audience want to read the article to find out what it’s about. I used Photoshop to make my background colour grey rather than purple after some audience feedback who thought it didn’t really fit the rest of the magazine.
In my poster, I portrayed what was happening in the film, with a more graphic image, as the young boy is hanging from the writer's hand like a puppet, having to obey to everything that the pen dictates. The boy is dressed in very light colours, once again showing the innocence and purity and his head is dropped facing down; lifeless. They are both centre frame, but although the writer’s hand is much bigger than it should proportionally, the young boy still occupies about the double of the picture, showing that actually he isn't as manipulated and controlled as we might first think. This whole image fits with the magical realism genre as it is a picture that wouldn't have a realistic explanation, however it is constituted of only realistic images, coming from the film. Lastly, the saying "What if your fate was in someone else's hand?" written with the chalkboard font, empathises on the manipulation side of the film, and the theme of being controlled by the words.
When I was researching into the codes and conventions of magazine reviews, I looked at a lot of existing ones, from Sight and Sound, Empire etc and even though they all had things in common, the layouts were quite different. I chose to go with quite a simple layout, I didn’t want to cram my review with information as that usually tends to put off people from reading it. My main inspiration was a review in the Empire on the BFG, Spielberg’s latest film as I loved the idea of one picture occupying the background for the double page and it really made me want to read the article. I then ended up mixing that a bit with another review on Caroline as I found the titles in that one really good. I used the same design as the Empire in the corners of my double page, making my review very conventional, looking like it could have been published in the Empire.
I followed the conventions of a film magazine for most elements, like the layout and the page numbers and the brief summary of the film at the beginning of the article. It was important to have these elements included, to distinguish my magazine review from a poster, which is what it looked like in my first edit. I also needed my information to be clear, as there are a lot of film reviews in every magazine, so they need to be clear, eye catching and attract the audience by making them curious to want to read more.
