Evaluation

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

I chose to do a period drama film, based on a book i'd already read. Period dramas tend to start off quite slow, introducing each character one by one and really setting the time and scene of the drama. I've watched a lot of period dramas in my time as they're my personal favourite type of films. I prefer slow, moving films to fast paced horrors or thrillers etc. I chose this book, because I know it very well, I can relate to the target audience and I felt I could interpret it and give it my own slant, which in a sense is what a lot of directors do when they want to make a film based on a novel, however I really wanted to stay as true to the novel as I could. As I often find after reading a book and then watching a film version of it, the directors change and dramatise the novel somewhat and although this makes for a more gripping film, it wasn't really what I wanted to do for my film opening. I did struggle, however to pull together a decent film opening that was true to the novel, but would be interesting enough to grip the audience when they first saw it. I had to intertwine the prologue, a bit of the ending and the start of the novel together, some bits as the narration, some as the speech and some as the scene and acting. I think this challenged me the most, because it was unlike anything I had ever had to do before, and it really required independant thought and a chance to think outside the box and we had no set guidelines for the topic or the way in which we presented our film. Sure there were rules, deadlines and guideline to HOW we do what we do, but when working individually to create something to be viewed and judged by others took a lot of thought and time. I chose to use narration, because the book first of all is somewhat a diary in the way it follows her her life through the course of two or so years and includes many of her thoughts. It is a journey essentially and I felt I couldn't show that with speech and acting alone. Also because I was using the prologue as the starting point for my opening I based the narration on the main things she says in the prologue looking back. In the end this added real effect to the opening and really made people relate to the character and made them want to know what had happened to her previously. Not many period dramas have narration in them, but one I can think of in particular was 'Lark rise to candleford' the tv series which used the main character 'Laura's' diary to describe the events of each programme. The narration is infrequent and adds emotion and thought to each programme rather than to tell the story, which is what my narration does. I used it to make the audience linger and think.