Evaluation

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

Film Synopsis

Our film PLEAD is a courtroom drama. It is based on a true story and follows a young woman, aged 19, called Lizzy, who has been convicted of murdering her long-term boyfriend of 5 years. The film immediately opens with disruption, beginning with the murder, and we see her just after she has committed the act. The film then moves forward in time to her court case. We follow her trial, and how her lawyer tries to dig out the truth behind the murder and find the real motive. This will be shown through a series of flashbacks, both before and after the murder took place, showing what built up to the final kill.

As the film progresses we come to learn that her boyfriend had been abusing her for years, and her parents and his refused to believe, deemed her a liar, and disowned her. She became so traumatized by everything that the only way out was to kill him. This is all revealed in a final climactic moment before the final judgement is made, and as a result, equilibrium is restored as she is released, free to go, and proven to be nothing but a good person under horrible circumstance.


The opening sequence takes place just after the murder and follows her emotion and reaction to what she has done. 

The conventions of film opening sequences can be categorised into four groups:

• Film Genre
• Narrative structure
• Form (typical opening sequence format)
• Style

Film genre

Plead is intended for the courtroom drama genre. One signifier of this genre comes in the form of emotion as any drama should contain. The Shawshank Redemption is a prison drama which has very similar conventions to the courtroom drama, The film contains a lot of emotion and powerful scenes which are made so, not with special effects, but the emotion conveyed by the well established and audience sympathised characters. This short sequence is an example of the drama that should be conveyed in our film genre:

Dramatic sequences that convey emotion generally contain slow cuts to show facial expression and make the audience think or even feel sympathetic or unsympathetic for a specific character. Dialogue construction and delivery must also be treated in a similar fashion.


The opening sequence for Plead attempts to show this sort of drama to follow the genre conventions through slow cuts and a strong focus on facial expression and emotion, especially conveyed in the bedroom part of the sequence. Characteristics of Lizzy shows tension and shock through her behaviour of heavy breathing, gagging and her changes of pace from being still one minuet and then frantically trying to clean herself up in front of the mirror to answer the door. The series of emotions she goes through in the sequence vary a lot and help to develop her character.  
 

The events that take place in our opening sequence are also typical of a courtroom drama. For example in the film Dead Man Walking the actual events of the crime are revealed in small parts at different points in the film with a reveal of what actually happened near the end.

Also another film which uses this effect is the Green Mile, like Plead, the film begins after the crime has happened and keeps the audience asking questions of what actually happened, once again being revealed at the end.

This links to narrative structure.

In terms of the theme of our film opening we broke conventions slightly creating an atmosphere not too common of a courtroom drama with contrasting grading of the red and blue which make up the bedroom half and downstairs half.

Also the blood use was quite graphic which develops on the crime side of courtroom dramas where there is some use of blood but not so much as to shock the audience with it. We can see that this image was intended to shock the audience after the build up of enigma:

Narrative Structure

We included Levi Strauss'  theory of binary opposites with the following:

Dead – Undead

Red – Blue

Inside – Outside
Silence -- Noise
Killer -- Killed

Todorov's theory of equilibrium disruption and back to equilibrium could be applied to our film but we have challenged the theory so that we can create enigma. The theory is challenged as there is no equilibrium at the beginning of the sequence at all. We do however see the equilibrium that was present between Josh and Lizzie in flashbacks throughout the full film. However there is a solution to the disequilibrium at the solving of the court case.

Equilibrium before murder (of no court case) à Court case (flash backs), Lawyer discussion, development of character à Resolution of courtroom, Lizzy set free.

The sequence gives us a sense of flash back real time as the viewer when watching the rest of the film cannot tell whether the opening sequence was at the present moment or part of a flash back in court.

The following continuity techniques were used during planning, production and editing to create a believable flowing sequence:  

• 30 degree rule
• 180 degree rule
• Cross cutting
• Sound bridges

Application of Propp's theory of Character Roles to our sequence: 

As we can see there are substantially less characters than in Propp's theory, but there may be more character roles made present in the development of the film. However the focus on three central roles means there is more focus on Lizzie our main character and we wouldn't want to draw away from the fact that she is the focus of the film. 

Form

In our opening sequence we attempted to follow the conventions of an opening sequence in terms of format and function as well as we could. One of those conventions that we included were titles, introducing the story (which is done in some films and creates enigma), displaying the people responsible for the films production and of course the main title.

Our opening sequence aims to set up location, characters and thier relationships well. This is done through a series of key shots for example:

This shot introduced the location as in a suburban street.  

This shot shows the suns position showing that the time of day is morning.

This shot introduces two main characters and thier relationship.

Style


We aimed for an original look to our film, however inspiration for this style came from a number of other films. For example the shaky and disorientating camera work in the film ‘Collateral’    to give a sinister hand-held effect which has been made popular by films like 'Coverfield' and 'The Blair Witch Project'.

Another method we used to give the film a distinct style was to do do an effect on grading inspired by 'Sin City' (Robert Rodriguez). In 'Sin City' the saturation is brought down on all other colours except for one colour where saturation is boosted in different sections of the film. We attempted to mimic this effect, but not completely, by making the the room setting look redder and the downstairs shots bluer by brining down saturation and then using a colour corrector to bring out the specific colours.    

Finally we took inspiration from the popular 'Paranormal Activity' films by using drones and sound effects to create tension. Just like in the Paranormal Activity films we aimed to use them to create tension and build suspense subtly buy build up of volume and giving a 'hair on neck' effect which is what made the paranormal activity films so popular.