Critical Reflection A level Media Studies
How do your products represent social groups or issues?
My short film, Shattered Bonds, represents the major issue of mental health struggles that follow being left out in relationships and friendships, that so many people suffer from in the real world. The film highlights the idea that when you feel a sense of hurt in a relationship/friendship it can cause a mental trigger for coping mechanisms such as violence or self harm. Shattered bonds brings awareness to this through the plot. Throughout the film, there are scenes showing one of the teenage girls being left out of the group and feeling a sense of hurt in the fact that nobody is including her in their conversation or activities. These feelings of hurt then revolve into resentment in the film as they do in the real world. These feelings can lead to violence against others as well as self harm. In the film, the girl being left out resorts to killing the girl that is almost taking her friend away from her. This is something that is highlighted from the real world because many situations like this do happen. This also represents social groups of student friend groups that are any age. There is the constant struggle for some students to not be able to fit in or feel left out from certain friend groups and activities in schools or in general. This can cause real mental issues and feelings of low self worth. Shattered Bonds shows the actions that are caused by feelings of being left out of a friend group. It is a scary but real problem in the world and Shattered Bonds brings the issue to be seen and heard. Shattered bonds can represent many different issues in friendships, another one being jealousy. Jealousy is something that is very consuming throughout my film and is a big problem that is highlighted in some friendships that have more than just two people in. Shattered Bonds is able to highlight so many different issues and struggles throughout the entirety of the film and I am glad so many different issues can be addressed in just one film.
How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of “branding”?
For my film, “Shattered Bonds”, there were many things that were done to create a sense of branding. I was able to create many different social media accounts such as Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter all to promote and market the film. Being able to promote the film on so many different social media platforms that are able to reach and connect with a big audience really helps marketing and allows the movie to create a sense of branding. Along with social media promotion, creating a website as well as a postcard allowed for my group and I to spread more information and awareness for our story as well as our journey and what we endured to create the film. The website and postcard shared different details about when the film would be released in order to further promote the film as well as create a sense of branding that shows the film has a lot of outreach to different platforms to create the sense that it is a movie that you must watch. Another branding tactic that was used for Shattered Bonds was the design chosen for the website and post card that was made to promote the movie. On the postcard, I created a bloody, shattered glass backdrop. The website also has a very eerie and bloody backdrop which is a big branding tactic that me and my group came up with. When you see a blood shattered background, viewers will think of the film Shattered Bonds. Furthermore, on all of the social media accounts that were created for the film, there is the same picture that advertises the film. The profile picture of the Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube accounts are the same. I chose a photo of a killer who can not be seen, holding a knife in which the photo gives a sense of what genre the film is in being mystery and horror.
How do your products engage with the audience?
My film was created to engage with its audience and have viewers at the edge of their seat at all times. Throughout the movie, there is so much suspense as well as buildup in order to really engage the audience and have them guessing what is to come next. In the movie, I inserted eerie music as well as scary sounds like screaming and slicing in order to keep the audience scared and full of suspense throughout watching the film. There is also other happy and joyful music that was inserted during fun and happy scenes in order to have viewers skeptical and really questioning in their mind throughout these scenes what is going on and what is about to happen next. A tactic that I used in order to engage the audience was many flashbacks towards the end of the film. The flashbacks show the final murder scene, which was the final plot to all that was built up throughout the film. The flashbacks were put at the end of the film so that the audience would gain knowledge and build a sense of comfort in the characters of the film and this would further create horror and engage the audience in the way that the character is killed in the end. The audience would now be sad and shocked at the fact the character has died and also how the character was killed. Through social media as well as marketing strategies for the film, it created a way to also engage the audience by having them be able to follow along with the journey of creating and filming the movie as well as gaining a sense of desire to want to watch the movie.
How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
There was a lot of research done for the production of my film. A big part of my research was trying to find what genre movie I wanted to create as well as real world struggles I wanted the movie to highlight. Shattered bonds truly challenges conventions of the usual mystery/horror genre through the way that there is not so much gore and blood. Through a lot of research it is found that most mystery genres do contain gore and have aspects to them that my film Shattered Bonds does not. Another big convention of the mystery genre is there are so many plot twists and it is hard to depict what is going to happen next and who is going to be the killer or the reason for the plot in the film, in Shattered Bonds, those conventions are challenged in the way that hints are given with who is going to commit the murder and how the character acquired those feelings to want to kill the person. Scenes that give hints as to what character is feeling left out and jealous are given which allows for the audience to be able to have a feeling on what might happen next. Some conventions of the Mystery genre are used in Shattered Bonds like sound effects and music. There is a lot of eerie music in the film as well as uplifting and joyful scenes in the movie which uses conventions of a lot of mystery and horror films which have happy as well as scary and mysterious parts of the film. Another convention of the mystery genre that was used in my film was black and white scenes, which were used to show flashbacks of things that occurred before the current time in the film. These flashbacks in my film would add to the level of eeriness as well as suspense in the movie. These conventions are major in the Mystery genre and following and challenging some of them really created a fun and suspenseful film being ‘Shattered Bonds’.
Comments
Post a Comment