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

Narrative

Our film sees a young boy who starts out innocent in his colourful existence where everything is laid out for him. On his 18th birthday however, he is given a ‘present’; a light switch. He flicks it on. Everything turns to black and white and the front door of his house swings open. He explores the outside adult world. It is bleak, seemingly without hope. At the end of the film he discovers a flower in the middle of the pavement, which is the only thing in colour.

The most important aspect of this narrative is that there is hope at the end. Happy endings are not always seen in coming of age films. The Virgin Suicides, The 400 Blows and Rebel Without A Cause do not opt for this approach. Whereas, Submarine and Say Anything… do.

I would not say we are breaking conventions when making the best out of a bleak situation. People find comfort in film, but they also enjoy feeling deep emotion when it doesn’t end happily for the protagonist.

However, generally happier endings are often chosen for coming of age films because main stream film-makers don’t want to put their viewer off of life.

Style

Blossom is an extremely stylised film, focusing on the change of colour from child to adulthood. The protagonist walks slowly and the shots linger, this hopes to produce a dream-like quality to the film.

This is a common convention in coming of age dramas - Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides has many shots where characters look up into the trees to see the sunlight peaking through. And Richard Ayoade’s Submarine has a prominent feature of music, fireworks and terrific cinematography.

This dream-like quality allows a sense of romantic reminiscence to be incorporated within the work. Time also seems to slow down and it allows the audience to admire every frame. This was essential to include in Blossom because the main selling point of the film is the way it is shot. The film needs to make an impression visually.

Themes

The themes we wished to explore in our film were maturing, hope, loneliness and happiness.

These too are common conventions. Stand By Me is about the tale of the boys maturing through their very adult situation. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist in essence is their search for happiness. Dead Poet’s Society tackles the loneliness of Ethan Hawke’s character and the classic 1980s spectacle of Big shows the downsides of overwhelming hope to be an adult.

There is a limited amount of themes that can be tackled in coming of age dramas, but the way film-makers tackle them can put a completely different spin on them. Everybody’s childhood is different and so film-makers will always have something different to say about common themes.

Music

In the first half of our film we use a piece of piano which is upbeat, but with a sense of melancholy, thus keeping with the feel of looming bleakness for the young protagonist.

In the second half we use a piece of alternative music with long drones. David Lynch’s scores became prolific for this. It created a sense of uncertainty, mystery and a dream-like quality.

At the end of the film when the protagonist finds the flower we merge the two pieces of music together, thus symbolising the best of both worlds. This breaks typical conventions of using music because one piece is usually used at any one time otherwise the film feels disjointed. However, our film changes music dramatically half way through and merges the two.

The most popular example of when this action of dramatically switching music is in the opening credits of Pulp Fiction. Tarantino uses this as a humorous quality because when the music changes the name of the music supervisor pops up.

Film Example – The 400 Blows

François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows sees a troubled young boy struggle with the relationship between himself and parents. He is disobedient in school and soon turns to lying and stealing. He is caught and his parents make him face the consequences; he is sent to a juvenile detention facility. He escapes in the end and runs on the beach, into the sea.

This French New Wave classic shows also shows a bleak outlook on growing up. It is difficult for the main character Antoine Doinel.

This is slightly different in my film because the main protagonist is well looked after and so the outside world is more of a shock for him. Doinel on the other hand, is bombarded by the terrible world from the very beginning. This is a common theme in coming of age films because it allows the audience to build an early bond with the character. Saying this, they always have a predominant weakness. Doniel turns to crime, Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye) is selfish and Max Fischer (Rushmore) is blind (metaphorically).

The weakness of my protagonist is that he was ignorant to the outside world and didn’t fully realise it until he turned 18. If he were to be more adventurous the overwhelming adult world wouldn’t have been a problem.

Film Example – Rushmore

The second feature film by Wes Anderson sees the life of Max Fischer (mentioned in the previous slide) unfold for a few months. In these months he falls in love with a teacher almost double his age, is expelled from private school and creates two hit plays.

Wes Anderson tackles the themes of love, family and friendship in this masterpiece of film-making. These are common themes, told in a totally new and refreshing way. Anderson was inspired by French New Wave cinema, thus the constant references and homages to classics like The 400 Blows.

Music is also an extremely important feature for Anderson with a score from Mark Mothersbaugh and Creation, Unit Four Plus Two, The Kinks and Cat Stevens (to name just a few) on the soundtrack. The music gives the film a masterful style. Anderson’s music predominantly comes from the 1960s. This breaks the typical conventions of films in the modern day, because audiences tend to like dramatic scores like Hans Zimmer’s work on Inception and Interstellar.

Film Posters

A typical poster includes: a title, an image of the main characters, tag line, date of release and credits.

My poster only includes a title and the release date; this obviously breaks conventions of the typical poster. I chose to break these conventions because I wanted to keep the text on the poster to a minimum. The poster was clustered with images anyway and was fairly colourful. So adding credits and a tag line would be too distracting and distasteful.

Film Review – Typical Conventions

A bold film title is used with information about the film below or next to the title. Sometimes the information comes at the end of the review (like in Sight & Sound). Depending on the importance of the review still images of the film vary in size.

Little White Lies Review

Typical Conventions: If it is a review that fills the page a still image would take up a quarter of the page at the top. The title would be underneath all in capital letters, and underneath that there would be the director, release date and who stars in the film. The review itself is split up into three columns with the person who wrote the review’s name in capitals after the final sentence. Finally, at the bottom right hand corner of the page there would be the summary box where it talks about anticipation, enjoyment and in retrospect. It then marks the film three times out of five. Their language is sophisticated and sometimes replicates the style of the film they are reviewing.

My Review: I followed all of the conventions of the review, so that if it were in the magazine it wouldn’t look out of place.