evaluation part 4

Part 4
‘Graduation Day’ subverts the linear narrative, as our title sequence starts at the end of our film. However, it still includes the conventions of a rom-com. We looked at films that are similar to the kind of film that we wanted to produce. '10 Things I Hate About You’ is a perfect example. The location of this film is clearly shown in an American city but most importantly a high school, which then connotes the film for a teen audience. It is shown by an establishing shot capturing many students in the school. The whacky typography suggests the genres of a comedy and a teen film. Only one main character is shown by standing out and being different by the song she plays being different to the one on the soundtrack. The themes of the film are shown by the hatred of the main character and also school life and about the prom. This film was very useful to research as it is so similar to what we wanted to produce. The establishing shots are very common to use in rom-coms. We also researched the rom-com Love Actually, which has a slightly different target audience to us, but is of the same genre. As soon as the title sequence of Love Actually begins, we immediately we know the genre of the film. It introduces love in all forms not just romantic love. Only digetic sound of Hugh Grant and the non-digetic sound of a soundtrack which sets the tone of soothing love and romance. It sets the location of Britain with Heathrow airport with an establishing shot. It uses mid-tracking shots to show people running up to loved ones but also close-ups to show emotions of the people. The codes and conventions are clearly shown through Hugh Grant being a British, Rom-com actor and being in London Heathrow airport for location. The themes of love, family, friends, relationships are clearly shown also with the cinematography of mid-shots and close-ups of people in an airport running up to each other with love and such happiness. In our film we decided to have a voice-over to show that it is a British film. However, we did not feel that it was effective, so we decided to use a British song instead, which improved our title sequence. When deciding on our narrative, we liked the idea of a graduation, and we thought that moving into a dorm room would be a great way to show this. This idea stemmed from out research into rom-coms, and looked closely at '10 Things I Hate About You', as it has a similar setting. We looked at the typography of rom-com films and we chose an appropriate typography for our title sequence that we thought would be very effective. We had to film our title sequence more than once, as the first time the mise-en-scene was not carefully thought about. The lighting had to be bright daylight, as dark lighting may confuse our audience about the genre of our title sequence.