Continuity is extremely important when
creating a film due to the negative impacts a lack of it could bring, such as
confusion to the storyline. Due to this, as a group we tried our best to make
our short film lack any continuity problems and make it flow. To do this, we stuck to the conventions of
the 180 degree rule, planning and shooting our shots around this. We also did
the typical shot reverse shot when filming conversations between characters as
it allows you to see the person who is talking and their reactions. As our film
consisted of many different locations, we often broke continuity when creating
a passage of time. We did this by making characters walk in and out of the
camera or putting an editing effect on such as a fade. Despite trying to stick
to continuity conventions, we often found in editing we had obvious problems
such as a characters nails being different colours or being in a different
position. This meant we had to go and reshoot the scene again to make it
perfect. We also had the problem of an actor changing the colour of their hair
halfway through filming, meaning we had to change half of the script so that
she didn’t appear in it otherwise the whole film would lack continuity.
However, we manage to fix these problems through clever editing, reshooting or
changing the script so our film had continuity.
The genre we originally choose was drama as
it opposes the horror genre we did last year. After more discussion around the
script, we decided on it being a supernatural drama as the main character is a
ghost. We stuck to the conventions of this by setting the scene in the hospital
and family home as this is typically where drama films take place, eg ‘My
Sisters Keeper’. The music used consisted of a soft piano at sad parts and an
emotional guitar at points which had more tension and drama. This is something
that is used in drama films to create an atmosphere for the audience. The
protagonist character Lola, sticks to the conventions of a typical main
character as the audience often feels sorrier for young
girls. However, the storyline consists of her waking up in hospital and
visiting her friends and family to see they are taking no interest in her. The
audience finds out with her that she is actually dead towards the end. This
subverts the conventions of a supernatural drama due to the twist ending. In
films with this genre, the audience usually knows from the start the
protagonist character is a ghost, however this short film only gives clues. The
storyline subverts the typical drama films mood in which they visit many highs
and low throughout the film. Our film apposes this by going from a high (when
she wakes up in the hospital with her friend) to a low (when she discovers she
is dead at the end of the film) to create a more emotional ending.
There are no elements of deliberate
pastiche or parody, neither do we ‘play’ with genre’s codes and history due to
having a serious storyline. Our film genre had no comedy values in it,
therefore we did neither of these to keep the audience feeling emotional
towards it. We didn’t hint at a reference to any other films as we wanted it
all to be our original own work.
Richard Dyer’s theory of entertainment and
utopia explained that ‘intensity’ is one of the satisfactions that an audience
will receive whilst watching our film. The film starts at a high, Lola waking
in hospital with her friend and going to visit her family, to gradually an
ultimate low, her thinking her boyfriend is cheating on her then realizing she
is dead at the very end of the film. The twist ending brings realization to the
audience as they realise the boyfriend was having counselling sessions due to
her death and also realizing she is dead. This will make the audience feel
closure as everything that may have not made much sense at the start of the
film is all coming together to a conclusion. We are confidence we achieved this
due to feedback we received from audiences – they all said they understood the
film and rated the storyline a 5/5. As our film was drama, we wanted the audience
to feel elements of sadness throughout. We did this by giving an emotional
twist ending, which would have had a shocking impact, paired with sad piano
music to hopefully make the audience tear up. As storyline involved many
different drama aspects, such as family arguing, cheating boyfriend and death
we felt the audience would be able to relate to the film in some way.
We wanted to create an original film,
however when researching into others with the same genre we discovered many had
similar aspects to ours. A film that we took inspiration from was ‘The Sixth
Sense’ in which the protagonist character here speaks to ‘ghosts’. Similarly,
our main character was a ghost. Another similar film was ‘The Lovely Bones’ in
which the protagonist character is a young dead girl who is coming to terms
with her death. This was very much like our idea, even including a dead friend
helping her along the way to realization. We knew from watching the film that
the main character, Susie Salmon, had the audience feeling sorry for her and we
wanted to create this same feeling so based our character, Lola around Susie.
We knew we achieved this as in our video questionnaire, many people said the
main character reminded them of Susie Salmon and that they found the film
emotional.
Trailers to The Sixth Sense and The Lovely Bones
Overall, I feel our film stuck to the main
conventions of the film genre supernatural drama, such as keeping it emotional
with highs and lows. However, I do feel we subverted this genre with the twist
ending – the protagonist character actually being dead.
