Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film is centred around the protagonist, Lola, a 17 year old girl from London. It follows her struggle with drug abuse and her downward spiral in her mental and physical health. Although the storyline is focused on Lola it also follows the lives of her friendship group and her deteriorating relationship with them as well as the breakdown in her relationship with her boyfriend, Marlon.

With our opening sequence we attempted to explore the forms and conventions of real media products and either develop or challenge there form, genre, narrative structure and style.

Form

Genre

Our film fits into the Teen Drama Genre.

Style

As our film is a British Indie Film we wanted its style to fit its genre. The main way we wanted to connote this was through camerawork and this played an important role in pre- production, production and post production. With our opening sequence we wanted to create a distorted feel with lots of movement to reflect the emotions of confusion that the protagonist was feeling. We found the best way to present this was in a fast paced montage sequence which would introduce all the characters and their lifestyles whilst giving us creative licence to explore different shot framings and camera movement.

We introduced our filming style with the big opening tracking shot which introduces the audience to the friendship group as well as introducing some of the dynamics in the group.

We also experimented with interesting camera angles to give the sequence a more artsy feel that is often seen in British Indie films.

We tried to adhere to the forms and conventions of real media products as closely as possible as the reason why these forms and conventions are created is because they are effective. However, we did try and put our own spin on our project as it is important to somewhat challenge the norm to suit your project and the purpose of it.