My brief was to create a short film between 3 and 5 minutes long and I must include meaning and using film stylistics and theory. The stories protagonist is George Jones, a teenager living in contemporary Hull who is obsessed with superheroes and the superhero genre. This is shown as the camera pans around his bedroom and comic books and comic book movies are shown scattered around his room. One day he decided he will live out his dream and become a superhero himself and fight crime in the city. He decides to make a costume and he goes out walking through alleyways looking for a crime to prevent but it is harder to find crime than he thinks. These thoughts are shown through voiceovers throughout the film. Suddenly he stumbles upon a girl being mugged down an alley by a criminal and he steps up to stop it. He starts a fight with the mugger but accidentally hits the girl instead and knocks her out. The mugger sees what he has done and runs away. George stands in the alley looking at her and decides to run away too. The resolution is that he still believes that he is keeping the city safe when the irony is he has done more harm than good.
The aim of my film is to create humour through the audience recognising the conventions of the superhero genre in the film and seeing how the protagonist fails to meet them. I started my creative process by looking at the conventions of the superhero genre and the parody genre. Superheroes are seen as physically strong, they have special powers or weapons to fight criminals and have a strong moral code. So for my film my aim was invert the expectations of what a superhero is.
This was done in various ways throughout the film most noticeably in the mise-en-scene with his costume. His costume is poorly handmade and look roughly sewn together which connotates that he is a poor superhero. Superheroes are also conventionally strong and this convention is broken when the audience see him lifting weights, after two he gives up which shows he is weak. This is also shown through his general build as he is visibly skinny and has no muscles. However it does follow the convention that the hero wears glasses in his day to day life which mine does. But in comic book films such as Spiderman and Kick-Ass they lose their glasses when in costume. Mine breaks this convention as he still needs to wear them over his costume. This creates physical humour as his glasses fit uncomfortably over his mask, it also addresses the flaw in these superhero films as they suddenly do not need their glasses and can see without explanation.
The narrative follows the conventions of the superhero narrative until the end, which are the hero finds a criminal which needs to be stopped to save a girl. However, again my film breaks this convention when he hits the girl instead of the criminal. The criminal gets away and the girl is left unconscious on the floor. This provides humour as the audience know that he has made a mistake and broken the superhero conventions. The sudden ending also breaks conventions as nothing is resolved, and closes with him doing a superhero pose, still believing he has saved the girl.
Parody films create humour through exaggerating the conventions and characters of the genre. My film uses the narration style of the Spiderman films, were Peter Parker narrates directly to the audience at the beginning as mine does. However were he talks about saving people and swinging around the city, George Jones talks about how he cannot find crime and is scared to face any real criminals. Another convention is copying specific scenes from known films and I did this through the use of non-deigetic music. Throughout the film the Superman theme tune is used and George Jones uses this as his own theme tune. I also used the fight scene music from the 1960 Batman movie. I took this further by using the ‘Pow’ onscreen effects as each punch makes contact.
When developing my narrative and character I focused on how he is delusional and believes he is a good superhero. The music used also highlights this. The fight scene plays out as it does in his head with the comic book effects appearing onscreen. His voice also echoes every time he says ‘Nightwalker’ which is again in his head, this connotates how he believes he is a truly good superhero and his name has or will have meaning. I also used cinematography to show how he perceives himself, when he poses I used low angles to show him looking more powerful and dominant.
After establishing the conventions I could start to write my synopsis, screenplay and storyboard. I found the storyboarding the most useful as I could plan out the film shot for shot and I used it whilst filming. It also gave me a good idea of the length of the film. Before this I drew a rough storyboard and character profiles to establish what the narrative of my story is and who the main characters will be.
When I was ready to film I began to gather my costume and props. The main props were just comic books and comic book DVDs from around my house. I made the costume myself with two cheap plain t-shirts, and as I am no textiles expert myself the costume looks authentically homemade which was important. I also took pictures of various tenfoots and alleys around my street which I could film the fight scene down. I had a lot of choice here and I decided to use the one behind my house as this would be easiest when carrying the camera.
I filmed using a Sony HD camera so that it was filmed at the highest quality. However it was a very big camera so wasn’t very portable. But it was easy to use and easy to transfer onto the editing suite. When editing I used Adobe Premier Pro so I could use non-linear editing. This allowed me to take different clips and paste them easily on a timeline wherever I wanted and could simply crop them down. The ‘Pow’ and ‘Bang’ effects were made by inserting titles and using different text effect options. I also did this for the opening titles but placed them over the top of my footage. Premier Pro also lets me use transitions such as fade for my footage and the music so it all flows together and looks professional.
The target audience for my film is teenagers and young students aged between 14-20. This is because they will be the most familiar with the superhero genre and its conventions so will find the humour in the short film. They will understand how the protagonist breaks the traditional stereotype of what a superhero is.
For my audience research I gave my short questionnaire to twenty different people who are in my target audience, this is so I can see how they will respond to the film. They all responded very well to the short film. They all said they found it funny and could all identify the genre. They all said they liked the soundtrack for reasons such as ‘it established the superhero genre’ and ‘it adds more comedy as they are recognisable superhero music’. There were only a few answers for the question what did you find not effective, which said they found it too short and the acting could have been better. On the 1 to 5 scale on the last question 45% gave it 5 out of 5, 40% rated it 4 and 15% rated it 3. Overall I am very happy with this feedback as it shows my short film appeals to my target audience and they did not find any real problems with the film. Overall I believe my film met its aims as it appealed to my target audience and I established the story and characters using the stylistics. I believe I successfully used the conventions of the superhero genre but instead of following them my character failed to meet any. By doing this I also used the conventions of the parody genre.
