The Evaluation Question 1 (Part 5)- Emma Robertson

Characterisation/Camera work



I believe the characters within our narrative were believable and portrayed a distant romance transferred on-screen. My role as a storyboard artist allowed me to experiment with different camera frames, angles and movement whilst representing the two genders. For example, eye line matches of the park’s landscape combined with Rich’s off-screen dialogue and the hand-held movement whilst Amie is running away caused a subjective and objective audience positioning. There were debates of choosing an appropriate shot to introduce Amie’s character into the narrative as the storyboard’s shot 5 was a tilting up movement on Amie walking over to the bench. We wanted to avoid any suggestion of Laura Mulvey’s theory on male gaze. Being a social realism film, we didn’t want to position the audience as a heterosexual male (doesn’t fulfill our target audience criteria!) which Hollywood is famous for. On location, we changed the sequences to a close up of Amie’s face as we wanted our target audience to identify with her character.Amie represents a modern teenage girl, fighting for independence. Her empowerment is symbolised through the ending sequence of Amie ‘moving on’ in slow motion combined with ‘All my love’s’ motif soundtrack. Also, the slow fading in of the bright green colour represents this celebration of ignoring the stereotypical view of girls being dependent on boys in everyday life (Brief Encounter!) Personally, the ending sequence is very inspirational as female independence is heightened in the final shot. Our target audience suggested this final sequence represents ‘Girl Power!’ However, traditional norms of femininity are represented within the narrative as it’s based on a heterosexual relationship and there is only mentioning of ‘love, not sex’ whereas social realism films can tend to be controversial. On the other hand, I didn’t feel it was appropriate to mention these themes due to our 12A certificate, but one member of our target audience said it needed ‘a bit of passion, naughtiness and extreme loving possibly shown in flashbacks.’Rich’s character being a male caused a lot of research from the types of masculinity portrayed within the media. We believe his character represents the modern ubersexual male (very much not your traditional male) as his dialogue displays all the good qualities such as emotive language, expressing his emotions towards Amie and being committed towards the relationship. For example, the slightly high angled shot of Amie and Rich on the bench, Rich decides to move along the bench to comfort Amie. Also, there is a close-up of Amie’s and Rich’s hands on the bench as Rich tries to touch her hand, but fails. This male representation would attract the female audience as they would view these features as their ideal boyfriend.

Conclusion

Our production follows the conventions of social realism, but has an underlining fantasy/romance element due to the narrative’s plot. We decided to introduce an element of fantasy as our target audience, 16-24 year old females, enjoy mainstream films, which feature romantic relationships within the fantasy genre such as Twilight, Harry Potter and The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Here are some figures that support this:

Twilight: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=twilight08.htm

Harry Potter: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=harrypotter6.htm

Emma Robertson