In what ways does your media product use, develop or challe

Narrative

The Radio Host From My Film Opening talking about 'The Incident'

Opening of I Am Legend explaining how people were turned into zombies

The narrative of my film opening is very conforming of the post apocalyptic genre. May films of this genre have a voice over or introductory video at the beginning which briefly explains the reasons behind the 'apocalypse'. Similarly, RDO does this with the radio host as he explains about "the incident". This not only conforms to the post-apocalyptic genres, but to sci-fi and fantasy epics too (The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars). On the other hand, this also challenges the conventions as this information ties in with the rest of the dialogue going on throughout and is part of the immediate story. The dialogue does explain the back story as well of course, with just enough information to get viewers hooked.

Captions seen at the beginning of Monsters

Prologue shot from 12 Monkeys

The Characters

The two main characters from The Road

Behind the scenes shot of RDO's two main characters

Themes from films I studied play large roles in the characterization of RDO. The idea of one man and a young kid comes from The Road and the film opening explains how these two characters meet. The character of the radio host is influenced by parts of I Am Legend, namely the parts in which the protagonist is calling out for other survivors via radio. Therefor, RDO conforms to the ideology of Post Apocalyptic movies where the story and characters are involved.

Robert Neville's radio broadcast, I Am Legend

The Radio Host

Mise en Scene

The Book of Eli

RDO

The mise en scene is influenced by many media products of the post apocalyptic genre. For example, the forest setting was influenced by The Book of Eli and the costumes and props by I Am Legend. Elements of the genre can be seen in the settings and were influenced by Wall-e. The contrast between the abandoned world of the forest setting and the dark technology of the radio setting are similar to the earth and the spaceship in Wall-e. Though the spaceship is cleaner and seems nicer than the earth, it is actually the more sinister setting, which in RDO, is connoted by the darkness. Therefore, aspects of the mise en scene conform to the ideology of the genre.

Sounds

The sounds of RDO are conforming to the post apocalyptic genre. I mainly used diegetic sounds to try and capture the bare ruins of earth and the realism needed to make it believable. This is used in real media products such as Monsters. The use of diegetic sounds convey the real and down to earth situations of the characters and denote the lack of entertainment or other elements of modern society.

PS - sorry that this bit messed up the colour coding of the prezi, but I guess its more important for you to read this than think it's pretty.

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

RDO

I Am Legend

Titles

12 Monkeys

RDO

Camera Shots

Special Effects

The Book of Eli extreme long shot

RDO's longest shot

RDO Gunshot effect

Terminator: Salvation Gunshot effect

My titles go in order of; Production Company, other production company, director, actors, film name. This order comes from my research; 12 Monkeys uses this title order too. However, I am also challenging the convention as many student videos I have looked at, from previous media students, include a title for costume designer and music person too. However, I have never seen the costume designer in a title of any real film and my film has little non-diegetic music. I also decided that too many titles, of too long a length could distract the viewer from the narrative, which is important to concentrate on due to the... armature quality of acting. In my research I found that many films are made by more than one production company, so Doorknob Studios was not enough. I decided to make 'A-Grade Films' my other company (Just a subtle hint, y'know) so that my film conformed with those I researched, which were all part of the post apocalyptic genre. Therefor I am using a convention of a real media product.

Special effects are often a part of post apocalyptic genres in order to make them believable. RDO goes against this conformity as it includes little special effects. Due to our limited resources, we could not create an artificial landscape (as in; The Book of Eli, I Am Legend, Wall-e,) or CGI enemies (I Am Legend, Terminator: Salvation). However, this principle effectively challenges the genre as the lack og CGI also makes for a believable and down to earth film. The little special effects I did use was the gunshot flash effect which also adds to the believability. Our 'bad-guys' were made up with make-up, which also challenges the convention.

One main convention to be expected in post apocalyptic movies is the use of extreme long shots and slow, panning shots to show the state of the earths landscape. These generally show the protagonist(s) trudging along over a hill etc. and conveniently infer how said character(s) are lone wolves or survivors as well as their isolation and therefor the state of humanity and the world. This is used to great effect at the beginning of The Book of Eli. However, my team had a very limited landscape which we could not use these shots on effectively for fear of including anything non conforming to the genre in them. Though this therefore does not use the conventions of a post apocalyptic genre, I believe I tackled this effectively by opening with the confined shots of the Radio setting which create a sense of foreboding and mystery.

How successful was my film opening in the way it challenged and developed conventions?

I believe that the ideas and principles that I tried to use and convey in my film worked greatly, though the film opening itself was rough around the edges. I took ideas from other post apocalyptic films and developed them and successfully worked around the difficulties created due to my limited resources. Overall, I think the film opening could have been more obviously Post Apocalyptic, but that the way I have structured it both creates mystery and hooks the audience in, as well as conveys the genre.