An evaluation of... Straight Edge ..by Jade Kotowski.

First…take a look at the film for yourself to see what you think… Click on the picture above which will take you to our completed film on youtube. We hope you like it!

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

We tried to avoid using stereotypical representations of homosexuality in our film and I think (and hope) that we achieved this. The costumes represent typical teenage clothing which puts across our idea that homosexuals don’t stick out according to how they dress. It was difficult to combat stereotypes as in order to create a subversive representation we had to first compose our own stereotypical view in order to go against it. However I think that doing this was worthwhile as our end product is subversive. Look at our main character Stef for example, who wears a pink dress, make-up and has an overall girly, vulnerable appearance. According to stereotypes she looks far from gay and so shocks the audience as she falls in love with Emily. This sends out our message that homosexuals are not the stereotypical butch/camp characters that many people think they are. I think this sends out a positive and supportive message to the gay community and also educates the ignorant of society. Stereotypes…

Young people…a media reflection… “Drug spotter CCTV camera destroyed by yobs” “The innocent lives destroyed by drunken yobs” Young people…a media reflection… “Heston and Delia brought down by yobs” Click on the picture (directly left) to look for yourself how many newspaper articles use terms like ‘yobs’ to describe young people.

We experimented with stereotypical representations of young people throughout our film. During the first party we wanted to show the stereotypical and often true portrayal of the party-going, drug-taking, binge-drinking youth. However the reason for this was to show that not all young people behave like this. Stef leaves the party, sad and fed up with that lifestyle and goes in search of something better. There she finds Emily who leads her to a world of social drinking, strong friendships and creativity which Stef falls in love with. This shows that not all young people are the ‘yobs’ plastered all over Britain’s newspapers, that most of us are looking for sensible, honest lifestyles.

A plot-progressing Score Montage Like in the short films we analysed as part of our research task we used the following conventions:- A Low Budget Script A plot-progressing Score Montage

The Conventions we chose not to use were:- Limited dialogue Small Cast

So why did we choose to include some of these conventions over others and were our choices effective in our end product?

Low budget Script. Obviously, as students we had very little funds to finance our production. However in a professional production the most expensive outgoing is the cost of time. Luckily we were able to rope in all of our actor friends without cost and so we obliterated most of our costs from the outset. The settings and locations all had to be free and so when writing our script we had to make sure only inexpensive venues were included. I don’t think the end product lacked anything by using free settings as our plot centres around typical young people who, because they are under the legal age to go out in bars or clubs, or don’t have enough money if they are old enough to do so, spend a lot of time at friends’ houses. Our plot was therefore represented very well as our settings; in conjunction with the mise-en-scene we created portrayed a realistic representation of the characters and their lifestyles.

A plot-progressing score We used 5 pieces of music in total throughout our film. I think our pieces are plot-progressing and work well as they reflect the mood of the scene giving the viewer a deeper insight and understanding into the storyline. In the first scene for example, the club-inspired music carries a sad undertone which reflects the chaos of the party around Stef but also the sadness her character feels. Then the piece of music used later in our film, for the final scene, the kiss, is joyful and builds harmoniously with the level of passion in the kiss. This again shows the characters emotions and helps the audience interpret the happy mood of the scene. Therefore our music choices were a success.

Montage We used montage to enable us to keep our film short but show a lot of footage. To pass time but show what the characters were doing montage was an effective tool which we used in two places. We used it to show the time passing as the characters dance at the 2nd party and also for the concluding kiss. During the party scene we shot dancing over the period of the evening and then overlapped the shots when we were editing to the sound of dance music. This used montage successfully but didn’t appear disjointed because of the overlapping and fading of focus. I was really happy with this as nit only did we use the convention effectively but we also gave our film its own individual style. Above are images of some of the montage shots used in the film ‘Right Place’ which we used as inspiration when experimenting with montage. Click on the bottom left image to see the short film ‘Right Place’ for yourself.

Limited dialogue We were advised at an early stage of our production that we should avoid dialogue as it can be difficult to shoot, particularly with an amateur cast. However, as we re-scripted ‘Straight Edge’ and replaced the amount of dialogue each time it felt that we were loosing the essence of our love story. We considered using the conventional convention of a voice over to express Stef’s feelings but felt that this would distract from the visual elements and give the storyline away too soon. Also, as the writer of ‘Straight Edge’ I found it difficult compromising my ‘vision’. For this reason we decided as a group to take a risk and add some of the dialogue we had previously taken out. Although it was a risk to do this I am really happy with the way it worked out. I think the dialogue shows the awkwardness between the two characters at first compared to their ease at the end of the film. I also think that the dialogue on the bench scene was an intrinsic element of the meeting and so if it had been lost the understanding of the scene would have been compromised. I am therefore incredibly happy that as a group we were brave, we went against the conventional grain and in doing so produced a new style of short film. This I am very proud of.

Small cast Below is our promo shot for Straight Edge which highlights clearly the large cast we used purely for one scene. This was only half of our full cast. This was another convention that we were advised to use but as risk-takers we decided to give it a go. In honesty it was a difficult task managing such a large cast, however again I feel it was the right decision to go against tradition. For our plot, in order to create the atmospheres for not one but two separate parties it was crucial that we had a big team on board. I think we achieved the atmosphere’s we wished to convey visually with the number of cast we used and again it makes me more proud to have successfully produced a film that goes against conventions than one that does and does not take any risks. We can be proud that we managed a cast of around 20 people between the 4, (and later only 3) of us, and achieved the end product that we had visualised on paper.

A conclusion. In what ways does our media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Overall…

…I think that we used a combination of complying with the conventions of short film and also challenging it. Where we felt it worked in our film we took inspiration form previous productions such as montage in ‘Right Place’ although we used our own style of montage which complimented our concept. However, our script and our concept was our main inspiration for our film and so if we were forced to break the typical conventions of short film to convey our story then we weren’t afraid to challenge the conventions and create our own rules. I think this is why I love our film so much, because it stands out as an individual and speaks for itself. It has a poignant message and it is visually effective. I am incredibly proud of our work. Above: Me, clearly ecstatic about the success of our film.