EVALUATION 1

Q1) In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The typical conventions of a short film consist of having a small crew and running of bare minimal/little funds for the movie. Short films are normally filmed in very small spaces of time and rely upon actors and story idea to generate recognition.

Light through Darkness is a film that’s classed under a drama/ emotional genre. After creating the story of Kieran, the film was based on the theme of blindness and disability.

I developed the idea into someone who loses his eye sight due to a car accident-my intention was to show the repercussion of losing the ability to see and the effect it will have on ones life.  Because of this story line, I knew the conventions I needed to successfully portray from other films of the same genre and story. Studying films/documentries of the same genre I understood the narrative conventions that seemed to follow in most films about blindness and disability such as ‘Ray and Blindness’ both films are about sight disabilities and the life these people face-we followed the conventions of both films to re create the same understanding and narrative progressions. The change in his life was easy to show; the hard part was coming up with an effective way to show movie goers how and what he has overcome, which was something I didn’t originally have in the idea for the story. In my first treatments Kieran did not find a way to overcome his disability. However I changed his plot point after feedback and further research into the genre, feeling we needed an event that would have a larger impact on both the character and th audience. A film we referred to for this idea was ‘The blind side’.

Following the conventions of a short film, my film group knew it was essential to keep all characteristics as realistic and as close to the real thing as possible. We did this by ensuring our film was very compact, smooth and straight to the point; given the max time period of 5minutes it was a struggle at first to squeeze 72 shots into the time bracket. We operated within a small group of 3 and split the job roles evenly and thought about whose personal strengths best matched their jobs.

We researched numerous disability/emotional films to help gain a deeper insight into what and how we intend to create a similar film. There were many Aspects from other films which we wanted to use such as incorporating a terrible tragedy which shows some sort of positive ending- throughout the short the team aimed to keep audiences on the edge of their seats by not revealing too much in scene; we wanted to build up a lot of tension in order to keep the audiences locked into what the moral of the film was. We achieved creating some form of tragedy, but with a twist. We showed Kieran (main actor) saving someone else from a car accident; here we challenge other blindness films by showing our main character being positive by saving someone who could of ended up like him or worst (on the road, near miss scene saving the girl).

 Similar to ‘Ray’ we aimed to keep our film based around one character, this was to ensure no confusion could come up about who to focus on, during pre-production peers told me my film incorporated too many characters which lead off course. ‘Ray’ has the spotlight constantly on the main actor; we gathered at the end of the film that we never felt confused as to what’s going on or who the main focus was on. Within ‘Light through Darkness’ Kieran is always the focus-we made sure every shot he was in was clear and well shown on screen. We had to make certain continuity ran smoothly in terms of (costume and props). Kieran can clearly be portrayed to the likes of ‘Ray’, we mimicked props such as sunglasses and a walking stick/body language to show the difficulties he will face on a day to day basis due to lack of confidence and low self trust/facial expressions on camera show struggle and disbelief and lastly the positioning of the camera-we made certain a high angle shot was used to show us looking down on Kieran as people in the real world look down as also demonstrated within ‘Ray’.

For sound we followed the stereotypical conventions of an emotional drama, slow compelling music to help sway the audience’s feelings towards our main characters situation. Our film closely mimics ‘The Blind Side’ as 17-year-old Michael Oher has been in foster care with different families throughout Memphis, Tennessee. Every time he is placed in a new home, he runs away. the coach of Wingate Christian school,. Impressed by Mike's size and athleticism, Cotton gets him admitted despite his abysmal academic record. We tried to portray kieran as the same sort of character as Michael; anyone who watches ‘The Blind Side’ will almost take pitty for him simplyt because of his poor speech along with the background music. The slow starting compelling music begins as Kieran gets angry at his mum about the fact he doesn’t feel he has to be mothered all the time because of his disability. After the music ends it soon fades back in where his mum urges him to go out with his friends-the cycle is now progression as we highlight his confidence is back.

Leading me onto my next point sound, we challenged the convention of slow compelling music to fit the situation. Instead I used the soundtrack in a cycle affect, as the film draws near the end we see similar shots and scenes to show the comparison between before (the progression of his confidence), and now that Kieran is more independent. Using the mise en scene to show the clean, plain bedroom before, and the slightly more filled room after, reflecting his sense of self-belief. We see the difference between the beginning and the end. This music cycle emphasizes that-we begin the film with really slowly slow poignant and compelling music. We gained great inspiration from heartbreak films for the mise en scene, films like ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ really influenced our music choices, the music within this film was so very arousing it could bring tears to your eyes along with the onscreen acting; this is exactly what we wanted to happen, we wanted to touch people about the Kieran’s disabilities the same as Will Smiths struggle to make ends meet. 

 

The of use warm lighting, typical of the blunt lighting helped match the mood of dark, grey and cloudy; it linked well with the heartbreak genre. Also the links of grey and black emphasize the lack of clarity, which highlights Kieran’s blindness and difficulties- we wanted to involve the audience as much as possible to keep them engaged, the idea was to let them witness what the lack of sight would feel like-this again helps them make links with what Kieran is really thinking and the can put themselves in Kieran’s shoes and view the world. Again ‘Ray’ incorporates warm lighting as he performs on stage to show his regeneration of confidence and ina-spirit, we did this where Kieran speaks to his mum in the bedroom; the idea was to show the new life/mentality after hearing how proud of him she was.