In the construction of our media product a teaser trailer
for a film called Utopia we aim to conform to and challenge different codes and
conventions typical of media products alike such as the codes and conventions
which co inside with similar genre, target audience and mode of production.
Most films in the social realism genre show the main
character overcoming their situation or commonly so their involvement in crime
and or drugs. The main concept of our trailer is the audience follow the
narrative of a boy who is being bullied but more importantly cyber bullied.
Cyber bulling is not a typical feature in terms of the theme or plot in most
films, however it is a extremely current issue and we saw this as a gap in the
market and decided to represent it in our film. Bulling in general however is a
conventional theme that is covered by lots of films and even more so for British
social realist film genre such as the girl in fishtank and the girl in Kidulthood. A noticeable feature of was when the main narrative focus on
bulling or rejection the victims are usually female where we challenged this
convention, we decided to use a male character who is being bullied as we feel
that this is not addressed enough in other media product and this helped us give
our film a USP and therefore possibly attract a wider target audience. Also in
terms of plots we decided to remove ourselves from the conventions of drug use and
teenagers and hoped to challenge this convention and stereotype which is overly
used by films focused on the teenage audience.
Our location for the teaser trailer conformed to conventions
of a British social realist film as it is set in alley ways, parks and council
estates similar to locations in Kidulthood. This is England one of the most
success British social realist films directored by Shane meadows who is from
our hometown of Nottingham. The house where smell has her birthday party is
located not far from there I live and have walked past it many times before,
with the excess to this house we originally decided to use it as a establishing
shot for one of our characters house as it would of helped us convey similar
codes and conventions. However after our first draft of the trailer we had to
change the narrative and as result the house was no longer needed as one of the
homes for our characters but we were keen to use it in our film was it is used
in the montage it is hard to make out because it being at night but there are
some street light which give it some lighting. Another location we use was an
alley way which connotes the loneliness of our main character and represents
the dark state of mind that the character is going through as he is holding the
gun.
The gun is a typical iconography of teen dramas it is used
in many social realist film trailer such as Kidulthood, Adulthood and My Brother
The Devil and all of the characters that a wielding the guns are unnerved and comfortable
with the gun but at the same time look taken back by the gun which we decided
to use in our own trailer. The gun alerts the audience to danger as the trailer
has been building up to this point where he is in the alley way with not clear outcome
for the character which makes the audience wonder what his outcome will be and therefore
want to find out what happens so they would go out and watch it at the cinema. Our film as a similar scene in kidulthood were
the character its attacked the shot is only a few seconds long be is enough
time for the audience to know what is happening but not too long to give two
much away and keep them guessing why it happen and who did it.
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