Exploring our genre...

With our Preliminary Task, we set out from the beginning to create something that was definitely based around the Action genre. We stuck to conventions, added over emphasised references and generally made sure we were rather cliché! Contrastingly, when it came to our main task, we began thinking of narrative and the shots that would come from the this before considering genre. For that reason, our film turned out as more of a mix of genres; Action, Drama and Thriller. I think that this allowed for us to create a more believable piece that captured the story rather then just conventions. We used the convention from these multiple genres to both enrich our opening and make it a little different.

We looked at a range of films, not only from our genre, but from those we thought would help us represent character, plot and cinematic style the best. These were some of the films that influenced us the most...

Inception (2010) 

This films opening was very influential to us in the idea of playing around with Propp's Theory of Narrative. The penultimate scene of the film is echoed in the start, instantly building enigma and a riddle that wants the audience to solve it. Here, we also see the idea of not initially introducing the main character and leaving many narrative aspects open ended. Inception has the same kind of cinematic feel that we wanted to capture and therefore, we also looked at a lot of the shots used, such as the extreme close ups, slow motion shots and the use of contrasting the still camera with shaky cam effects.

The Hunger Games (2012)

We first looked at The Hunger Games because it shared a simlar narrative convention as ours. Or rather, it was simlar in the way it went against convention - by casting a female lead in a male dominated genre. In the opening of the film, not shown here, the camera follows Katniss on her journey through District 12, a similar style we used to track Ari's journey through the station. They also used shaky, but we decided to use this more subtly to create the same idea of being followed.

 

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

When we first came up with the idea of having our film set on the London Underground, we realised that we had certainly been inspired by this particular scene set in Waterloo. The crowds and expansive setting make for a far more cinematic style and we thought this would be a good way to represent Ariadne's sense of isolation. The chase scene is also a noted convention of the Action genre, and whilst we went against that in our opening, we still took elements from it, such as the over the shoulder shot following our character and the establishing wide shot. Also, we once again went against the theme shown in this film of having a male lead.

An Inspiring Shot...

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Despite not being from our main genres, this shot specifically form the film Good Will Hunting inspired us to use a similar shot in our own piece, in which Ari looks down at her blank map. We thought this was very good at drawing the audience into Ariadne's view and also makes her seem small in comparison to her surroundings.

Forrest Gump (1994)

Once again returning to both Forrest Gump and Love Actually, we turned to these films as excellent examples of how to handle voice overs in an effective and interesting way. Forrest Gump see's the main character introducing himself, and in some ways this is what we wanted for our film, yet with a little more anonymity surrounding the narrator. Love Actually provides more of a sentimental outlook on the voice over, providing a description of what the film is about, rather than a character narration. It acts as an addition to the visuals and music and doesn't provide a specific focus point. It is relaxing. We wanted to use some of the same features, yet when I recorded the voice over, we tried to invert some of them to provide a more unsettling tone.

Love Actually (2003)