Deconstruction of debut film

In my short film I have used Mise-en-scene to describe the design aspects of the film. The props in the film include magical objects such as the wand and the staffs. This is used to create a magical quality and aspect to the film. This builds a sense of adventure and excitement. The main focuses of objects used in the film are the hero and villain’s enchanted staffs. They use these in their fight scene mainly as weapons like in a sword fight, but the magical power of the villain’s staff is able to zap and harm the hero’s sidekick. The setting of the film was meant to be interpreted as being located in an abandoned field where the fight scene takes place. We came across difficulties of trying to uphold this concept, as we found the schools buildings and pupils to get in the way.

The costumes and props have an important role in any film, as it is a visual aid as to what people are perceived as being like. The princess in my film has long, blonde hair which is a common stereotype among women in thriller films, as they are seen as being helpless and unintelligent. She wears a tiara to signify that she apart of royalty. This shows her social class to the audience, that she is powerful, rich and well respected. The sidekick wears a cloak and carries a magical wand, this signifies her magical abilities, as wizards are commonly known to wear long cloaks and hats, and to have magical qualities. The villain wears a white mask to cover his face, and a black hood to cover the rest of his head and neck. This creates the illusion of mystery to the audience, and that this particular character is not to be trusted.

I edited the film into black and white to create the effect of a thriller and to build the tension of the film to make it appear more chilling. The magical objects in the film help create the verisimilitude that the film is going to include action and adventure.

The main target audience for this film is the teenage genre. As we have used teenage actors as characters, this will appeal to teenagers. The adventurous quality to the film that includes action shots and scenes would be more suited to a teenage audience as the music and content of the film is modern and youthful. The film appeals to both genders, but mainly addresses males as the content includes lots of fight and death scenes. The film could also attract a female audience as they could be interested in the concept of the princess and how she seeks her vengeance on her dead brother.

There could be a secondary audience to this film that involves a younger audience of 7-12 years. As this is an action film this also suits this age range as it is not too violent and has a simple story line, and is easy to understand. As the Harry Potter films have also been popular with this age group.

I cut the speech in the film and replaced the audio with subtitles to make the audience pay more attention to the film. This makes the film more thrilling and tense without the words, with just a tense playing music as audio. I edited the camera to shake and the music to become suddenly shocking when a character died, this created suspense. When the hero and sidekick are running to seek the villain I added agitated music to imply that something bad is going to happen. The tense music being played throughout the play adds to the audiences concern and their worry for the hero and sidekick.

The binary opposites in the film are of that of the hero and villain. The hero is seen as being the courageous, strong man who has no fear and is content of doing everything for the greater good. Whilst the villain is stereotyped as being cowardly, deceitful and evil, and is doing everything for the wrong reasons. The hero in my film is seen as courageous as he is not scared to fight and seems unfazed by killing the villain. This also shows that he is very strong willed. This binary opposition is an example of Levi-Strauss binary opposition concept.

I have included Propp’s character archetypes idea, by including a hero, a villain a victim a princess and a helper. These characters all have importance to the film and are just five of the basic character types.