Codes and Conventions:
Female:Carley - Carley follows the conventions for a teenage girl quite closely. She dresses quite casually and wears quite heavy eye make-up. Although she is a teenage girl, she goes against conventions by dressing quite scruffily and not really bothering with her appearance. She is very caring and is extremely worried about the relationship between her and her mother which is a typical trait for a female to have. She is very quiet but does exhibit some anger when she gets frustrated which isn't very typical of a female.
Mother - we tried to make the mother as unconventional as possible meaning the audience will be able to relate and feel sorry for Carley. The mother is shown as uncaring and selfish which is the exact opposite of the usual maternal role of a older female. She is more interested in her own problems than
trying to help her daughter with hers. She pays no attention to her daughter and also has a messy house which is very untraditonal of a mother figure. The mother is also uninterested with how her appearance is.
Girls - We tried to follow the usual conventions of teenage girls for the group. They are all quite intimidating and bitchy. They also exclude Carley by the positions they are sat in, making them seem even more intimidating. They talk in very short sharp sentences and one of them is extremely made-up making it obvious that she takes pride in her appearance which is a traditional convention to follow. By making Carley so different from the other females, it will hopefully make the audience feel sorry for her. Also by exaggerating the other characters it makes Carley seem the most relateable.
Teacher- We decided to challenge the conventions on our portrayal of the female teacher. She is seen as very strict and hard. Considering she is a young female teacher this is quite unexpected as you expect her to attempt to help her or at least reason with her. As a female teacher, you also assume that she will take on quite a maternal role. We decided to challenge these to convey to the audience just how much problems Carley has.
Drug UsersIn our film we decided to challenge the usual conventions of a heroin user. Carley still attempts to carry on as normal even though she is battling with drugs. The perception of most drug users, especially users of heroin, is that they are dirty and don't do anything with their day. By challenging this, it made Carley seem more 'reachable' by the audience as she is still carrying on with her usual day-to-day routine even though she is suffering from such demons. She is still trying to preogressw ith her life and not just succumb to her problems even though they have got quite bad. The fact that she has constant problems (her and her mum argue, her teacher snipes at her, etc) also makes it easier for the audience to see why she does give in to her temptations.
General:The mis-en-scene we used was very important as we only have a short amount of time to contextualise the piece. By dressing our main character in very scruffy clothes we were able to show the audience that she is quite sad and that is slightly depressed. The fact that she is sad instantly draws the audience in as thye want to know why she is upset and what the cause of this is.
Our short film is around five minutes long which is around the average length of a short film. It contains a minimal amount of characters and deal with a life issue. It also has a twist at the end (the main character is a drug user) which is consistent with short films.
