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AS FILM OPENING: EXCEPTIONAL

Preliminary Task: I've Been Expecting You

31 Mar 2011

2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The two social catergories that are most clearly represented in our clip are Age and Gender. 


Age


All characters featured in the opening sequenced are aged 17; the lack of adult presence suggesting that these are independent individuals who are not dependent on any authority figure.


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The cast of Exceptional's opening clip
 In the establishing wide shot we can see that some stereotypical social groups are already emerging - to the right are the two conventional 'jocks', wearing varsity hoodies, which indicates their inclination towards sport. Angus (at the front) is sitting alone, suggesting that he is the outcast figure. His dark clothes connote that he wants to be unnoticed and his hunched over body language suggests a lack of confidence. To the right is Jessica who fills the traditional role of the love interest. We challenged the cliched idea of using a blonde actress for this part, but the flowery dress suggests she is a traditionally feminine character. The extras are of a range of nationalities, connoting that their are no racial barriers in this age-group in the film's setting.


Other action that represents age.
- Sitting quietly during class = a level of maturity
- Laughing at the Paper Throw = Not much empathy, the extras reaction shows the significance of  group mentality
- Bored Expressions = Stereotypical idea of teenagers disliking school.




Gender




Male


PhotobucketOur protagonist is a classic underdog. He is a teenager who doesn't feel accepted by the world around him, and to present this insecurity we represented him as being isolated and unconfident. He would be placed at the bottom of the male social scale because he is quiet - shown by the stronger use of voice-over than actual dialogue. We wanted to show this aspect of insecurity by showing him interacting with girls. The dialogue with Jessica is scripted to be stilted and uncomfortable to show that he is at the stage where he is unable to properly communicate with the opposite gender.


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The binary opposite to Angus's unconfident, unpopular male is presented through the use of stereotypical 'jock' figures who are portrayed as the alpha-males of the school community. The high five pictured in the screen shot above connotes that they behave in a laddish manner. They are more athletic than Angus, signifying that physical strength is an important feature of being on top of the social structure. The exaggerated movements of both characters also suggest that they perform for the benefit of the group in order to gain attention.

Female
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In our opening sequence the female characters are deliberatly not explained too clearly - this helps the audience view Jessica from Angus's perspective, where he doesn't know or understand too much about her, which in part is the reason for his inability to act normally around her. The Lichtenstein Freeze frame is used to show how Angus idolises her, and views her as separate from other people. The heart graphics that accompany this signify her role as a romantic interest within the film. Her clothes are used to suggest that she is a typical feminine character who becomes more submissive in the presence of a male character, but we challenged this assumption by having her confront the jocks about their bullying. When the boy she talks to stops provoking Angus as a result of her comment, this indicates that she has influence in the school and other people respect her.

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

Our opening film sequence, EXCEPTIONAL, was of the action adventure genre, although it would be more commonly identified as the 'Superhero' sub-genre.

Our main inspirations for our film were Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaughn, 2010) and the Spider man trilogy (Sam Raimi, 2002, 2004, 2007), as we shared several features with these specific movies, such as the male teenage underdog dealing with a hostile social environment. The trailer for Kick-Ass is below.



Below, the trailer for Spider-man 2



The  traditional superhero conventions that we followed were:


question one table




Narrative Structure


We included some recognisable 'superhero movie' stereotypes within our opening clip in order to help the audience identify the genre.


The Hero - Angus
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The Love Interest - Jessica
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The secondary antagonists - The Bullies

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If we were to make a feature film of this, the primary antagonist would be a news reporter who becomes fixated on Angus's story. However, we felt including him in our opening sequence would push the plot along too quickly.


Todorov's Theory of Equilibrium


According to the film theorist Todorov, within all successful plots there is:
1) An Initial Equilibrium
2) A Disruption to the Equilibrium
3) A solution, that either resumes the original Equilibrium or creates a new Equilibrium.

For example in Spiderman, the equilibruim is that Peter Parker is an unpopular nerd. The disruption to this is when he is bitten and becomes Spiderman. The solution to this change is when Peter learns to accept his new identity as a Superhero. We applied this theory when deciding on a plot for the full length film, with the following results:


1) An Initial Equilibrium - Angus appears to be unpopular, unnoticed and unexceptional. He is telekinetic but chooses to keep this power secret.


2) A Disruption to the Equilibrium - Angus's power is revealed, causing a lot of media interest and villainous opposition.


3) A solution, that either resumes the original Equilibrium or creates a new Equilibrium.- Angus learns to respect himself and have confidence adapting to his new lifestyle, and wins the affections of Jessica.






Narrative Techniques


After researching many narrative techniques, we used some in our sequence in order to develop the forms and conventions of action adventure films.


At the start of the clip, the graphics intertwined with the starring cast and crew names are in the form of a comic-book flashback, which briefly reveals Angus's experiences with his powers.



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In which Angus avoids a gangster by using his powers
 The Codes of Roland Barthes


Roland Barthes believed that in films, especially within opening sequences, a series of codes are commonly used to engage the audience. The two main examples of his codes in our clip are listed below:

Action Codes


 Example from Kick-Ass 
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By having the boy film Kick-Ass, the audience will expect the superhero to now become public knowledge.

Examples from Exceptional

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Screen shot of the Paper Throw. Conventionally, an unprovoked attack on the protagonist this early on would suggest that the bullies will get their comeuppance during the film


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Screenshot of Jessica scolding the bullies. Indicates that she will later break away from her 'popular girl' stereotype.
Enigma Code

Example from The Dark Knight


 
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 When Harvey threatens to toss the coin, the audience is left in suspense as to what will happen next, so continue to watch to find answers.  



Example from Exceptional 


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Telekinesis Screenshot. Makes the audience question how and why Angus can use this power.

We used the opening graphics Spider-man 2 as influence for our project. See the clip below.




We felt that the use of graphics appropriately reflected the comic-book style we were aiming for, but unlike Spider-man 2, where the drawings summarize the events of the previous film, our drawings briefly show Angus's first experience with his power. However, we didn't want to put too much emphasis on this part of his background as the main action of the film begins with his power being a part of the original equilibrium that we've previously mentioned. Other aspects of our film that imitate the conventional format of superhero films include an introductory voiceover, an immediate introduction to the protagonist which clearly shows his low social status, and a suggestion as to what porblems he will have to overcome - in this case winning his love interest and dealing with his power.

Style


To create a comic book effect one of the things that we did was to include several Freezeframes in the style of Roy Lichtenstein, which quickly become tagged as 'Lichtenstein Freezes'. An influence for this aspect was 'Scott Pilgrim vs The World' (Edgar Wright, 2010), however we felt that full moving graphics would be very difficult to produce on non-sppecialised computers. Our pop-art style felt similar to the 80s comic book style, so we used thi, in addition to captions, to include extra information. An example of this can be seen below.


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The dialogue is minimal, allowing for more focus on the action of the piece. We used more CUs of Angus than of any other character in order to establish him as the lead, whilst the bullies were in a two shot, connoting that they were more of a gang than separate individuals.


Binary Opposites

We used binary opposites within our sequence to set up conflict for the film. Some of these can be seen below.

Popular vs Unpopular
Comfortable vs Uncomfortable
Normal vs Abnormal
Public vs Private
Female vs Male


Continuity Techniques





From examining this clip from Spiderman, we can see that many continuity techniques have been enforced. While the couple talk, the camera stays within the 180 degree rule, which we were careful to maintain during the conversation segment of Exceptional.


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180 degree rule: All shots of the conversation are taking from this side of the room.
Between the clip of Mary Jane's CU and the long shot of Peter walking towards camera, she turns around, which is shown through match on action editing. As this significantly improves the fluidity of the film, we ensured that we included this whenever any movement occured. An example of this would be when the bully throws the ball, and we then see the ball hit Angus, as demonstrated below.


match on action

The main way we were able to check continuity across different shoots was through taking photos on a digital camera to keep references of costumes, seating plans and scenery. Some of our shots can be seen below.



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Documenting test shots
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Initial Costume tryouts for the Bully
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Initial Costume Tryouts for Jessica
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Planning seating arrangements