Q1: In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

Our film, Pulled From the Rough is a romantic drama featuring themes of morning, loss and recovery. Our film uses and challenges some forms and conventions such as stereotypical characters, the genre, style and narrative structure. This was because we wanted our film to have enough reality.

Genre

Our genre is Romantic Drama and these are some of the conventions:

This genre tends to have the protagonist in conflict with themselves or another character.

Jess is angry at Alex who is only trying to help her

They usually feature a challenge that must be overcome. In our film the challenge is for Jess to deal with the loss of her boyfriend and be able to move on with life.

The stereotypical romantic drama will explore different forms of love like love at first sight, unrequited love  and tragic love.  Our film deals with the love that Jess has for her dead boyfriend and the love Alex has for her.

Alex is energetic while Jess is apathetic

Claude Levi Strauss was the theorist of binary opposites:

• Optimistic vs Depressed
• Energetic vs Apathetic
• Boy vs Girl
• Life vs Death

 

Narrative Structure

The narrative structure of most films follow Todorov’s narrative theory  

Equilibrium is negative in our film. Jess is withdrawn from society after the death of her boyfriend.In our sequence she is shown to have substance abuse of alcohol.

Alex introduces the disruption as he urgingly encourages Jess to go to university at the start of the new semester.

Through the rest of the film the journey to resolution is a rocky path as Jess gets into further problems like turning to drugs for comfort. Alex has to keep looking out for her so she eventually is on the path to recovery.

Restored order occurs as Jess has fully recovered from her jaded self and dealt with her loss and appreciates her friends for supporting her.

The new equilibrium is when Jess realises that Alex loves her and they start going out.

Some of our inspirations from Struck by Lightning, Now is Good, PS I Love You and One Day.

 

 Barthes - Enigma codes

Why is Jess upset with Alex?

What is the Jess' relationship with Alex?

What is the off screen event that they are talking about?

Form and Style

The music that we used helps convey the emotions of the characters to the audience, since romantic dramas depend a lot on emotions.



The titles we used were simple like many other indie films.

For our main title we chose the font called "Noir-Et Blanc" since the letters are extended  We thought that this represents the theme of reaching out and being helped up. It also fits in with titles that inspired us such as Remember Me and One day. The difference would be that our title is in mixed cases. It still fits in as it has a bold white outline that stands out with the contrasting black fill and black background.