In a broad sense, films follow forms and conventions that give the audience a sense of familiarity and allow them to connect with the characters and the storyline of a film. 'Michael', in general, follows these conventions and is a fairly typical film. There are 4 main categories or ways in which a film can follow conventions and I am going to analyse these conventions and how our film follows or breaks them. They are genre, narrative, style and form.
Genre
There is a lot of variation within the genre of coming-of-age rom-coms but in general, there are conventions that are followed. Our film is fairly typical of the genre and, while it breaks some of the conventions, it follows many of them.
These are some of the characters that influenced the characters in our film
Michael
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| Tom - 500 Days of Summer |
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| Charlie - The Perks of Being a Wallflower |
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| Scott - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World |
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| Oliver - Submarine |
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| Regina - Mean Girl |
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| Lindsay - Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging |
Our film follows the journey of an awkward, male, teenaged protagonist as he attempts to attain the love interest of the film. The love interest has disrupted the equilibrium at the beginning of the film is currently with a popular partner - the protagonist's rival. The male protagonist has a close, quirky, female friend who helps him attain the love interest but unintentionally becomes the new love interest as the protagonist matures throughout the film. These are all conventions, typical of films of our genre such as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Juno, Mean Girls, Youth in Revolt, Submarine and many more.
We did challenge some conventions of the genre. For example, the humour of the sequence comes from the fact that he completely overreacts to being dumped. Normally in films of this genre, the protagonist is going through a hard time in their lives and struggling to cope with changes. Our protagonist is dumped and acts like his life is over, crying and writing love letters to get the love interest back. This is the main convention of the genre that we challenged and it adds a light-hearted feel-good sense of humour to the film.
Narrative
Todorov's narrative theory:
As is the case with most films, we took inspiration for our narrative from Todorov's narrative theory. While our film's storyline doesn't completely follow the framework set out by Todorov, it is very similar. Starting with disequilibrium as opposed to an equilibrium is a very common structure for films to follow and we felt that the audience would be interested right from the start if we did it.
Propp's character theory:
Our main characters all conform to the character roles described by Propp.
- Hero - Michael
- Princess - Lara
- Villain - Brad
- Helper - Tris
Levi Strauss' Binary opposites theory:
We also set up some binary opposites in our film opening
- Good (Michael) vs. Evil (Brad)
- Single vs. In a Relationship
- Happy vs. Sad
Action codes:
We decided to make the opening more interesting by challenging action codes and making our protagonist do something unexpected. We did this to create a feeling of awkwardness and discomfort that reflects the mood of the conversation.
Enigma codes:
To make the audience want to watch the rest of the film, we decided to set up a few enigmas. Our opening raises questions like
- Will Michael get Lara back?
- How will he get her back?
- Who is Brad?
- Why has Lara left him for Brad?
Symbolic codes:
We tried to subtly introduce the awkwardness in the relationship between Michael and Lara right from the first shots. Lara moving her hand away when Michael tries to hold it introduces the tension in the relationship right away. This leaves the audience expecting something to happen between them.
After the dolly montage, we know that Michael is sad about the breakup. Michael is then shown eating a cornetto and looking at his laptop The next shots are of the laptop screen and we can assume that we are now looking through the eyes of Michael. The camera darts around the screen, implying Michael is shocked as he takes in each detail.
The crushing of the ice cream then shows his anger. We now know that he wants revenge and that he is going to try and get Lara back.
Cultural codes:
Michael's room is full of cultural references. The posters on his walls in particular give a sense of culture and identity to the character:
- Jimi Hendrix poster - American - classic rock
- My Chemical Romance poster - American - punk rock
- One Direction cutout - British - pop
- Radiohead poster (very briefly) - British - alternative rock
Semiotic codes:
Although it is not explicitly shown, we know that time passes during the montage. This is because it has become a convention of films that when there is a montage, time is passing.
The montage also contains lots of semiotic codes. Michael ripping up the paper, crying and crushing the ice cream show his sadness and frustration with the situation. This links back to the themes of romance and of loneliness.
Form
Our film's opening does what a good film opening needs to do. We establish a strong sense of genre, introduce the characters and the storyline and have institutional logos.
This is the soundtrack that I recorded using a Blue Yeti microphone. It is fairly typical of the genre as it is very simple.
Style
The way that a film looks is vital in defining the genre and feel of the film. It can be influenced by the grading (and therefore the colour scheme) and the titles.
Colours/Grading:
Our film is an indie rom-com. We wanted the grading to be warm, as is typical of films of this genre. For the majority of our clips, we increased the contrast slightly and brought out the reds to give the opening a warmer feel. This is similar to the grading of other films in the genre like Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Easy A, Juno, etc.
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| A typical shot from our opening sequence |
Titles:
Films of our genre generally have simple titles using sans serif fonts. We decided to conform to this convention.
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| Our film's Title |
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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
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| Scott Pilgrim vs. The World |
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| Submarine |
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| Youth In Revolt |
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| Juno |
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| 500 Days of Summer |
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| The Perks of Being a Wallflower |
We also decided, partly to make the sequence more interesting and partly to challenge ourselves in the post-production stage, that we would integrate our titles into the shots as opposed to having them laid over the clips and not interacting with them in any way. This decision was inspired by films like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Watchmen and Zombieland. While not all of these films are of the indie rom-com genre, they are all popular and we felt that integrating the titles would improve the sequence. I showed the sequence to my friends - people who are members of our core audience. The majority of them noticed and enjoyed the integrated titles.
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| Scott Pilgrim vs. The World |
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| Zombieland |
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