Evaluation Question 1

1
GENRE

• By Jayden Malabre

2
Generic Conventions of my Film

• We have placed the genre of our short film
  Destiny into the psychological thriller
  category.
• We followed the generic conventions of a
  psychological thriller by incorporating the
  typical plot twist of the main character actually
  turning out to be the cause of events that have
  occurred, this is usually done by revealing the
  main character has some sort of psychological
  problem themselves throughout the whole story, by
  setting the main character as a false protagonist
  it sets a recognisable link to other
  psychological thrillers such as the secret
  window.
• Generic conventions that we didnt use would be
  the establishment of a main hero/heroine of the
  story, there are no specific good characters
  the film focuses more on the negativity of the
  situations that have happened.

3
Compare and Contrast

• Our short film were influenced by the following 3
  films
• Shutter island
• The secret window
• The butterfly effect
• Narrative structure
• Our short film follows a similar narrative
  structure to shutter island and the secret
  window, but it leans more towards the secret
  window as we didnt fully resolve the story and
  left it open to interpretation on what happened
  to one of the main characters, we established
  jacks mental state but still left enough lose
  ends for the audience to try and figure out the
  whereabouts of Myra and her condition leaving
  them to interpret the ending in their own way,
  just like the ending of the secret window where
  its left on a cliff hanger making the audience
  question if the main character got away with the
  crimes and murders he had committed.
• Plot
• The plot of Destiny is similar to the secret
  window, our short film was highly influenced by
  this film,
• Themes
• The themes of our short film are based around the
  mentality of a young boy who was neglected as a
  child, causing a negative effect to his mental
  state, this links closely to the butterfly effect
  as they both portray the psychological abuse that
  the characters have been introduced to at a young
  age.
• Characters
• Shutter island and the secret window both include
  false protagonists, meaning they are both the
  person trying to solve the problem but also the
  ones who are creating the them, we have included
  the same to our main character Jack, he is made
  out to be the victim of a very hard upbringing so
  it leaves the audience sympathising him, but at
  the same time he is destructive and causes
  trouble, we then start too see that he is only
  the victim of his own mind.
• Setting/mise-en-scene
• The majority of the short film was filmed in a
  white room, this was to represent sterile
  surroundings, the visual appearance of this gave
  the scenes a hospital kind of vibe, which is
  similar to where shutter island is set, However
  we havent used the same lighting, we have used
  mostly natural lighting and high key lighting
  which contrasts with other typical psychological
  thrillers as they usually use low key lighting.
• Cinematography/Editing
• Our short film uses flashbacks quite frequently
  to establish whats happened previously that has
  helped the plot move along, this is exactly what
  is included in the secret window, they use
  flashbacks to previous events to help the
  storyline flow and make sense, the butterfly
  effect also used flashbacks as a way for the main
  character to reinvent his own story.
• The transitions we have used in our short film
  are mostly fades so the scenes move fluently into
  one another, this contrasts to how films such as
  the secret window and the butterfly effect would
  do it as their transitions into flashbacks are
  quite abrupt and sharp as if it were an actual
  flash.

4
Barthes Codes

• The Hermeneutic Code has been applied to my short
  film to create enigma for the audience, by having
  elements of the story unexplained/unanswered,
  such as the whereabouts of Myra Summers our the
  outcome of jacks actions, the Proairetic Code
  works alongside the Hermeneutic code to create
  tension within the film, it leaves the audience
  engaged with anticipation as to what happens to
  Jack next.

5
Genre as a Concept

• Genre is an extremely useful concept to apply to
  a short film, it sets out guidelines of specific
  film categories, meaning you can apply any of the
  generic conventions of that specific genre.
  Without applying genre to this project we
  couldnt we establish what's suitable for out
  audience? Or what conventions to use.
• During the production of our short film we relied
  on the psychological thriller genre so that we
  could apply a certain narrative structure, plot,
  and camera techniques that work well together and
  would be effective in the overall outcome.
• Its important to know which audience your film
  is targeted towards, we made a psychological
  thriller therefore the recognition of that is
  important to apply to the short film.