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

Turning Pages is a film of the coming-of-age genre. I have chosen to explore how our film opening follows and challenges genre, narrative and form and style conventions.

GENRE
Our film focuses around the journey taken by Lila and her two friends, following the death of her brother. The genre for our film is therefore coming-of-age. Here are some conventions of the genre:

• quirky teenage characters who don't really fit in
• triggered by a significant change, the character goes on a journey (mental and/or physical) and learns about themselves on the way
• themes of education, youth, culture and adventure
• typical mise-en-scene; bikes, backpacks, schools - all of which help to heighten the key themes of the genre

George from 'The Art of Getting By', sitting in a school canteen,
reading a book, and Lila from 'Turning Pages' with a
notebook and backpack (typical coming-of-age mise-en-scene)

Patrick, Sam and Charlie from Perks of Being a
Wallflower compared to our quirky characters,
Noah, Lila and Jess

Lily and Ali from 'Little Birds' go in search of Lily's father (left) and Lila and her two friends set out to complete everything on Lila's brother's bucket list following his death in our film 'Turning Pages' (right)

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

Todorov's Narrative Theory

The conventional structure for films follows Todorov's narrative theory (pictured on the left). The journey taken by the protagonist in most coming-of-age films is often triggered by a change or disruption, which in our case is the death of Lila's brother. Our structure is therefore:

- Attempts to resolve

- Restored order

- New equilibrium

The disruption in our film actually happens before the film starts, but there would be flashbacks to it throughout the film. There would also be a few smaller disruptions throughout the film, such as one of the three not being able to complete something on the bucket list that Lila's brother bequeaths her. This is similar to the narrative structure of 'Now is Good', where a girl finds out she has cancer before the film has begun, but her condition deteriorates throughout the film. 

Our opening sequence will also create enigma, setting up questions like:

• Who is the boy in the photo?
• Why does Lila have a bucket list?
• What is the relationship between Lila and Noah?

We also set up the following binary opposites, adding a little drama to the sequence:

• Female vs male
• Boring everyday life vs adventure
• Young vs old

We also followed Propp's character theory during the pre-production and production stage:

• The Hero = Lila
• The Villain = her parents (although they're not actually evil, they try to stop Lila going on her journey)
• The Donor = Lila's dead brother who left her the bucket list
• The Helper = Lila's two friends, Jess and Noah
• The Princess/Prize = completing the list, and gaining independence (and possibly Noah)

FORM and STYLE

We wanted our film to have an indie style, and so we analysed a variety of indie opening sequences and coming-of-age opening sequences, like 'The Art of Getting By', 'Little Birds', 'Submarine' and 'Brick', and found that they often include...

CU of Lily in 'Little Birds'                                                    CU of Lila in 'Turning Pages'

• Lots of different shot types (CUs of significant props and characters, which help to heighten the genre, LSs to establish the typical coming-of-age setting, etc.)
• Silence and/or a mellow soundtrack - helps to create a hopeful mood, an idea of new beginnings, whilst still not drawing attention away from the visuals
• Diagetic sound effects - birds, wind, distant city sounds
• Natural exterior lighting (gives an opening sequence a real indie feel)
• Few titles in an indie-style font

A LS establishing city setting in 'The Art of Getting By', and a VLS establishing the London skyline in 'Turning Pages'

This is a video we took from the top of Primrose Hill when we were location scouting, and the thoughtful mood conveyed in this video (created by the natural lighting, the mise-en-scene and the mellow soundtrack) is what we wanted to convey in our opening sequence as a whole.

Music:
From our research, we found that coming-of-age opening sequences feature a backing track with lyrics about new beginnings. We also found that Indie opening sequences include mellow-sounding music to connote that the protagonists are thoughtful. After looking through freeplaymusic.com, we couldn't really find anything that worked with our opening. We therefore decided to use one of my original songs, 'Train to Anywhere', which is about escaping a girl's everyday, mundane life - this was a similar message to the one we wanted to portray in our opening as a whole.

Titles:
From our research, we found that British film openings do not include many titles. We also got a feel for the style of titles in Indie films after watching a variety of Indie film openings - typically, the fonts for Indie titles are very simplistic, so as not to distract from the visuals and the usually slightly confusing narrative.

This collage features screen shots of titles from 'Little Birds', 'Brick', and 'Submarine', all of which are Indie films targeted at the 16-24 year old, arty market (our core audience).

Here are some screen shots of the titles in our film, and when comparing them with the screen shots in the previous collage, you can see how we tried to use a simplistic, but playful and quirky font which doesn't distract from the visuals, like the films we were inspired by.