Question One.

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

I originally wanted to create a drama, however throughout production other themes have interlinked that you would usually find within a thriller and a narrative that would revolve around romance.  Being such a simple narrative in terms of it being based around a relationship between a mother and son, I believe the other themes give it depth.

My original idea for the project related highly too a short film, ‘Lovefield’. This film was a sensational piece of cinema, I originally loved to whole outlook on the film. The setting, acting and just general cinematography was truly sensational. The whole out look of the film inspired me and I believe if it was not for that inspiration my film wouldn’t have been as successful as it was. I enjoyed this film because it lacked narrative, it was short and just beautifully worked, and I really believed that is what I wanted to incorporate into my own project. As far as themes I wanted to create something with meaning. So I began research into something with a lot of emotion connected to it, such as murder, death and suicide. However after researching such a dark subject I realised I wanted to break the stereotypes of my narrative idea and almost have an extremely bright, high key lit project that would allow me to break boundaries and move away from a dark subject. I wanted to focus on death, as everyone can relate to such a project, attracting a mass audience.

Feature length films that helped me create my project where of completely different themes and genres, as I focused on doing something different to those of the same genres. I mainly looked at fantastic scenes within all-time classic films to see how the camera was used effectively to make a great piece. I looked at such films as ‘The Godfather’, ‘Once upon a time in America’, ‘Deer Hunter’, ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Shutter Island’, ‘Inception’, ‘Training Day’ etc. I looked at these films, as within them there are characters that dislike each other however have to be around each other the majority of the time, also they have fantastic cinematography and that is what I wanted to focus on.

The narrative from the project is not inspired from any other project. The narrative was originally from previous experience from the cast. We did this so we could put our emotions into the project to show our passion for the subject and it is a subject people then could relate too.  It was clear to me and the rest of the crew that it was incredible important that we experimented with how the story was shown rather than portrayed that’s why when it came to research we didn’t look into films that relate to ours, as we wanted to break down those stereotypical codes and conventions of that genre. I wanted to create this film in such a way people would stand up and listen and believe in the ideas we had and respect us as film makers, and incorporate a simple narrative, but show our talent through the way we draw an audience in, how we show this narrative through mese on scene, camera, lighting and sound.   

Technique aspects such as the opening credits along with the music link to television series, ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘Casualty’, as they revolve and heart break pain but also interlink love and several other contrasting themes. We do this with the light up beat soft music; however we are located within a cemetery. We used several fades, allow us to speed up shots with movements that where unnecessary for the narrative.

In terms of sound and camera, there were a few additional inspirations. We wanted to use music that could make the audience understand the emotions being presented to them; however not mislead them through the narrative. So we decided to create some of our own. We created a remix of the typical happy birthday song, slowed down, with a more ‘emotional’ feel. We did this to fit with the ending, which it did very well. However the majority of music throughout was inspired from funeral music and soaps. The soaps, such as ‘Heartbeat’ where they use music beautifully to show death, but with music that is more upbeat, and I believe the contrast works extremely well. It was extremely hard to talk about the research process as we was so focussed on breaking stereotypical themes within this genre, by wanting to, in the words of Tessa Ross, “Shock and surprise our audiences”, we didn’t focus mainly on research but on our passion for cinema and talent within film making.

The transitions between the two scenes, cemetery and house scene was inspired in terms of music relate to a comedic film, ‘Bad Teacher’. The is a scene within this comedy feature length film in which actor Justin Timberlake’s character, sings a song on an acoustic guitar to his love interest. The concept I took from this was that the two actors where attempting to have an intimate moment through contrasting music, however other supporting characters surrounding them where shocked and their facial expression represented that they disagreed with their actions. I took a twist on this with Lost For Words. I used acoustic music within a scene located within a contrasting environment, I also adapted certain aspects to Bad Teacher, such as instead of the supporting characters feeling strange about the contrasting music, I had the audience. I used this technique to gain a closer relationship between the characters on screen, and the audience watching it. This proved to me how powerful film can be, and how experience and inspiration can come from any situation of life. I believe that this technique was powerful, especially though the use of a character attempting to have that key, intimate moment, in which the son, Max, tries to grab his mother’s hand, and she, overcome with grief, decides to reject her son and walk away, which is a perfect representation of the relationship between the characters.

As a whole, I believe that through the use of such techniques and aspects such as narrative, sound, mise en scene and characterisation this film allows me to feel extremely happy as I believe we have broken the boundaries of a stereotypical short film of this genre and altered the codes and conventions suitable to create a fantastic piece of film. However I believe we have followed the real media products, allowing us to create a film with a beginning, middle and end.



"Cinema is a form of storytelling and this film is one of the greatest stories ever told. One of the things that make this story so great is that it's loaded with irony and hypocrisy. No one is all good in this film and no one is all bad. It's a great example of how money and power can corrupt us all. All the frailties of human nature have never been so eloquently presented than in this classic motion picture. One of the 10 best screenplays ever written."