The Coalition

Our short film is post modern, meaning it should challenge traditional film protocols such as genre and conventions to name a couple. Firstly, in the script the role of main protagonist is given to a female murder which goes against nearly every classic horror ever written or filmed, wiping the floor with the common horror ideal of a damsel in distress. Films such as Quintuin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' played it's role in influencing our narrative, editing as well as sound. Quintin Tarantino is the master of postmodern film making, which is why which is why we thought using his pieces to stem from would be such a good idea.

 Similarly to Kill Bill we have suble hints from westerns, through the us of extremeclose ups and by placing a character in the background behind the main subject, constantly switch focus between the two is a technique normally found in a western. This would suggest that a Major shoot out is about to commence and the person whom is closest to the camera is about to win, however we have taken these shots, striped them of their traditional meaning and developed them by giving them a different one.
Also like kill bill we use oriental themed music in the murder scene, reflecting scenes from classic kung fu film, an element Tarantino uses through the placement of random cultural music during fight scenes, for example in 'The Bride vs O-Ren ishii' he places what sounds seems to be  a Mediterranean song over an oriental film set. We found this really dramatic and interesting and thought we could incorporate this in our film, which we strongly believe has made our film very different from the majority that are being produced at A level standard.


We challenge stereotypical genres by blurring them together making, a well known post modern motif make it hard for a typical audience to place their finger on what genre it belongs to. Using ifluences from country westerns, classic horrors, thrillers and dramas our film uses, develops and challenges a wide range of films conventions. The characters placed in front of the cameras also give our film a hint of the urban genre, this is by setting our scene in a typical urban city school, with students who have a London accent which is commonly found in such films as Menhaj Huda's 'Kidulthood'.

Our film successfully uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products from the planning and research stages right up to the filming of it and the post-production stages. In it's self it has been a challenge to get every single creative juice flowing and has hints of alot of films made, which is exactly wat we aimed for to create a successful, enjoyable postmodern piece.

Instantly from their focused initial reaction, we knew our piece had some dramatic impact on our audience. We  kept the viewer wanting more, and never lost the attention at any given point. Already this is the kind of reaction any director/ movie maker would dream of. These are two students who attend our sixth form, the female is a media student, and the male is not, we had decided to go for this variety of audience to get a more typical viewer's opinion and then an opinion of someone who is familiar with the film making process.

 I was completely relived to hear that the non-media student followed the story line, and subconsciously knew what was happening through the shots used and the editing through retelling the plot in a similar way to how we had attempted to portray it. It was clear there was a messy break up which was the trigger for the murder, this a doubt for me, because we tried to tell the story quite subtly, so there was definite scares that your average person may not pick that up straight away. Vivian's struggle to place our film in a genre at first worried me, however our aim was to create a postmodern film, which blurs concepts ideologies, and is also defined as 'the blurring of genres', her reaction to this question built a found confidence in our project.

 Back to Dominic's feedback, he had noticed the use of colour grading and the desired effect, even something as simple as the colour can signifies to the audience the exact ambiance of the story. This taught our group that our fine attention to detail doesn't go unseen, failing to spend time on this may have given us a poor reaction, also that the editing process, is without doubt one of, if not the most important stage of creating a film. One worry which we had was the music transitions, from one genre to another seemed quite daring, however we got a good response and both views seemed content with the desired effect we tried to create with such a sudden change in mood.

Yet again we believe this follows every rule of a postmodern product, which was much to our glee because in a previous project we had made a classic horror, which followed stereotypes and was quite safe however effective, and this year our aim was to create something out of the ordinary, and completely different to your classic style of film, this has proved to everyone in the group that we are capable film makers with a wide range of skills and ability to create something effective and enjoyable to watch.

The 5 minute film works well in collaboration with our ancillary pieces.
The magazine featurette describes key elements from our film very well whilst the Poster compliments the movie through the use of moody lighting and atmospheric colours along with the movie itself, in combination this gives everything to do with our movie a persona, meaning if you see it's poster faintly from a distance, you'd know where it was from.