Conventions & Representations

Creative Critical Reflection

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Through research, I've found out that the conventions involved within fantasy genre films consists of many specifications. Films that fit in this certain convention include; Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Chronicles of Narnia, etc. As an avid fan, I've watched most of them, each franchise having almost the same plot element as the last. These conventions vary from attracting younger target audience, although it does also have some significant appeal towards an older audience. They're also quite emotive in terms of expressing certain feelings in a scene, thus often romanticizing their narrations. Usually, they have high-key lighting to match along with the light-hearted genre, although at times these can change as the lighting tend to slowly move into a darker element of the plot, thus progressively reducing the tone of lighting to a much darker one. Following on, their primary colours are usually saturated to emphasize on certain emotions that could very well set the scene.

Conventions

Furthermore, there is a significant use of CGI effects and other special effects that differentiate the differing worlds of real and fantasy worlds. This is done so that the audience can enter and see a whole new world that was once just a part of their imagination, now coming to life.

As for the characters, they tend to be aspirational, that being they are strong in terms of getting what they want, and they will not stop until they get it. What they want is usually the resolution to equate the equilibrium via vanquishing the evil and helping the good succeed. These characters tend to be escapists at first, thus they often undertake a quest to escape from their banal aspects of daily life, much like Harry Potter who was maltreated by his family, thus he went on to enter the world of Hogwarts to get away from them.

Occasionally, they've also got political narrative themes that only an older target audience can understand as it contains significant cultural capital that sometimes focuses on minority groups. These films are also often set  in the past, or within an imagined timeline. These usually lead to hybridisation of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, in which a dystopian timeline is what's used as a setting for the film. Most importantly, the iconography includes the use of magic, as well as mystical creatures, and locations are used to emphasize on the idea of 'New World'.

So, the question stands, how does my product use or challenge conventions? To begin with, let's discuss the target audience. From what I've originally planned, it was meant to simply be a children's film, one that will appeal to them the most. However, as it shows, there has been a major change within the target audience, as it could possibly be PG-13 due to the involvement of drug abuse and hallucinations within Alice's sight. The idea of drug abuse was brought up by my colleague and camera-person Cheena whom believed that Alice In Wonderland was indeed somewhat involved with drugs, whereas I thought however that it may have involved with hallucinations as one cannot simply call Alice as being a...stable-minded girl. Thus, we've decided to implement both ideas, and now I've come to a decision that whilst Alice does have a drug abuse problem, she's also got schizophrenia, which is a mental disorder that's often characterized as an abnormal social behavior, and a failure upon recognition of what is real and what is unreal. Through the use of the echo effect, I was able to somewhat express this, though I feel that it wasn't enough.

In terms of expected 'emotional' narratives within fantasy genres, I believe that my opening sequence has definitely challenged this norm as my opening focused more on the lack of emotions, but what makes it quite effective is that due to the intentional blandness, it becomes a lot more mysterious as there is no facial expression which reveals the personality of these characters, nor their motives or characteristics. Furthermore, through the use of non-diegetic sounds such as the mood music, and the sound effects, they assist in creating the mood and setting the tension thus making the audience confused and curious as to what the film will focus on. My intention was that although it is indeed an adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, it will take on a whole new plot, and a whole new storyline that will challenge its audience with the secret messages it contains and the hidden implications implanted.

As for the key-lighting, I immediately began with a low-key lighting so to set the scene and immediately give a straight-forward idea to the audience that this film will be of a darker tone and will stay that way. As originally planned, characters will indeed pass away, but endings must always have a happy end right? Well, this film...not so much as a happy ending, but more like something that will content the audience, and an uncertain assurance, much like the ending of The Truman Show. Anyways, focusing back on the key-lighting, through the use of darker tone, it will set the scene for the audience to become ready as blood and gore may be involved with the film, much like Alice Madness Returns, however the difference is that although that game started out as being light-hearted transitioning to a much darker tone, Wonderland will continue its dark tone till the end.

Speaking of colours, I’ve also done some saturation within the opening scene, but mostly through the use of contrast between the scenes, in which on some scenes I’ve used warm colours and saturated this to emphasize on the focus of the tones of red, whilst to contrast this I implanted a large amount of blue on the other scenes and emphasized on this through the use of blue tones. There are some areas where saturation of colours wasn’t used, but only to keep those scenes on neutral ground such as the ‘Wonderland World’ scenes, with a CGI three dimensional over world used to differentiate it in real-life scenes that I shot. As we know, CGI is always used in fantasy films, thus it shows that I do use the conventions of fantasy films rather than always challenging them.

Meanwhile, for the characters, although not shown, it was originally intended that Alice is an aspirational character as she aims to return to the twisted world of Wonderland. Through the opening, it was shown within their scenes that life has been a bit too normal, thus the silence and the awkwardness between the two, which is something that Alice is trying to get away from as she is not used to it. Although she does have schizophrenia, even that’s not enough to feed her hunger for imagination, thus she wants to return to Wonderland, but the hallucinations prevents her from doing so, thus she undergoes a quest to end it all and return to the latter world once and for all. As for the use of occasional political narrative themes, I have actually somewhat made it so that adults do understand the meaning being implied, in which drug abuse amongst the minority these days have become far too common and far too dangerous. 

Moreover, in terms of iconography, I made it so that there is barely any within the scene. The lack of use of magic and mystical creatures will hopefully confuse the audience as to why there is none, for generally and stereotypically these icons are used to establish the idea of fantasy. What I did was through the use of CGI effects, recreate some of the areas that has been memorable in Wonderland, but with some of my own twists.

In terms of representation of fantasy films, the Medieval era is typically used as a setting, especially after the long success of the ‘Lord of The Rings’ trilogy. I believe the most recent one is ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’, placing the beloved children’s film into a much darker tone. Due to this, there are less fantasy films set on the modern day era, probably due to the lack of authenticity of the modern era’s clothing as they are now considered norm, whilst the costume in the past are quite authentic and shows a huge difference in the norm.

Representations

Furthermore, in many fantasy films there tends to be a hero/heroine who embarks on a journey to save the world they’ve only just discovered. They also usually go against villainous characters to succeed, such as Harry defeating Voldemort as an example. It should be noted that typically the heroic role is taken by a male lead; however, nowadays more films are beginning to use female roles as the lead.

The representations of fantasy characters tend to have characters of mythical or magical origins, such as dwarves, centaurs, ogres, fairies, elves, etc. A common feature in fantasy films is weapons, but these weapons are different from the norm as they tend to be swords, bows and arrows, a medieval type of weapon that is. It could also be a wand, a staff, or a broomstick, depending on the character. An example is Alice Kingsleigh’s Vorpal Sword in Tim Burton’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’ adaptation. Meanwhile, in the musical ‘Wicked’, the character Elphaba’s main weapon is a broomstick as she is a witch. Some props help form a reality to the film. An example would be in the film ‘The Borrowers’ where the props are larger than what they normally to help the audience enforce the idea that all characters are exceedingly small.

Costumes in fantasy films tend to focus on the colouring, whereas the heroes would wearing something light, the evil characters tend to wear dark clothing, usually consisting of black or red as these colours emphasize danger, which is what directors are trying to aim to express to their audience. Fantasy films also involve the use of magical items that float about, or have at times show significance in the film. These things include spell books, enchanted swords, etc. In some fantasy films, there is a quest that solely focuses on the object of typically magical origin.

Within my opening film, I do believe I’ve challenged the stereotypical representation in terms of the era the film has been set in. As it shows, my film is set within a modern era, but this is later contrasted by Alice entering Wonderland as the place isn’t set on an era but more like a whole different world compared to Earthland. Due to the modern day’s lack of authenticity, it’s made me attracted to the whole idea of simplistic clothing of the modern era, as it does not completely reveal the character’s personality. In Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, by the end we can see Alice’s genuineness in character as her outfit had clearly shown this through the amount of dirt, and the fact that it stands out from all the other clothing worn by other partygoers.

Through my Alice’s costume in modern day era, the use of black and white stripes focuses on confusing the audience whether she’s a good or bad character, but her Wonderland costume makes a statement that she’s mysterious through the use of colour blue. Meanwhile, she is contrasted by Daniel through the yellow in his clothing, which immediately reveals his character to be good and focuses on the good side which challenges the norm as male characters tend to waver off from good and evil every now and then. Furthermore, the use of a female lead is what yet again challenges the representation of media as female characters tend to be secondary protagonists, but within my film the primary is a female. Additionally, female characters tend to be less aggressive than male characters, but as it will be shown and as mentioned earlier and within the script, Alice will become aggressive and psychotic as the film progresses on, thus leading her to become a killer of some kind towards the end, which isn’t usually how women are portrayed.