Comparision to other media products
A media product, which is a film, should establish the narration, characters, settings, genre, style, ideology and visual style in the first few minutes of the film. We have aimed to do all of this in our opening sequence. The narration was developed by using research taken from charities websites such as: ‘The Mood Foundation’, ‘Mind’ for depression. ‘Beat’ for eating disorders and ‘Women’s Aid’ and ‘The Hideout’ for domestic violence, and from this expanded our initial ideas and create a plot for our media product. We didn't really base our idea upon an existing film, but as I am a loyal supporter of 'The Mood Foundation' and have raised money for them in the past and really believe in the cause and so was already quite knowledgeable on the condition, the idea originiated from here.
The title 'Welcome to my World' is a common phrase which me use, usually in a sarcastic way. The 'my' being in itallics helps demonstrate the sarcasm. I think the title of the films conveys the idea that the world they are living is rather sinister and dark. It shows how the character doesn't have anyone to turn to, so tries to invite the audience into experience her life with her.
We have three characters in our opening sequence Sophie and her two parents. I think we quickly establish who the main character of our film is. We open with a shot of Sophie writing in a diary. Then we show who her family are, through the kitchen scene. It shows our film is based on her. Sophie is also the character who does the voiceovers which indicates it is her story. Melodramas often have the good vs. evil side when portraying characters. Sophie is the good, where the Father is the evil as he is some of the reason to why Sophie is so depressed. The ideology of the piece is to show that we are on Sophie’s side, we want the audience to care and connect to her. We want the antagonist to be her Father, who is an evil, cruel man who inflicts misery on Sophie and her Mothers life.
We used decided to have our opening sequence set inside which is to represent the enclosure that our main character feels. Filming indoors also mean lots of our footage appears dark and dimly lit which affects the visual style of the piece. We filmed in two different houses, but ensured we would only include on kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom etc. in the film.
Our film is a melodrama, Sophie is suffering with the mental illness, depression, like characters in melodramas she has difficulty expressing her feelings to others. So we hope the music and the voiceovers represent what she is dealing with. She is unable to deal with what she is going through, showing inner conflict, so turns the frustration and pain upon herself, by self harming, drinking alcohol and crying often.
Despite not basing our idea on an exisiting film, similarities in our film can be seen to the film ‘About a boy’ where the boy’s Mother is suffering with depression and tries to take her own life, by overdosing on pills. Sophie also tries to overdose on pills to kill herself in the opening sequence of our film.
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