Unit 3 - M3 [Resubmission]

Omniya Tajni

M3: Create production material that follows the codes and conventions of the chosen genre for the media product

Our genres as explicitly stated by the client brief are science fiction and drama; we believe it will also have elements of adventure, as our characters will be travelling on a voyage/going on a mission - this combined with the element of survival will increase the action and drama within the scene. We attempted to portray the genre and conventions as much as we can with our own additions, this is related through the costuming of the characters, the lighting of the control room and design of our spaceship, scale model.

I believe we were able to meet the codes and conventions of a sci-fi film, through our teaser scene and our title sequence. In the control room scene, we were able to change the lighting and added a blue atmosphere, to give that cold blue interior spaceship atmosphere. I believed this had an effect on the whole production, because it was able to give the audience an insight on the fact that Captain Crain is inside the spaceship, and the controls and buttons that were in the control room helped us achieve this even further. I believe that the costume that the characters wore, also shows the conventions of a sci-fi genre. 

This is how one of the shots came out in the control room with the blue gels on the lighting

Captain Crain was told to wear a cargo jackets, we believed that this is the close that we can get to a spacesuit, as they are dark, adjustable and formal. This was done successfully as she is the Captain Crain, the audience would be able to identify that she is wearing a spacesuit and shows that the Captain is the leader by the way she was presented and dressed. The costume we had in the Control room was also very specifically chosen, after researching I believed that when spaceship is out in space there’s always a headquarter location, where the crew members of the spaceship communicate with, or where all the formal decisions are made, outside of the spaceship.  These people are known to be very serious and significant therefore we believe having Heather wear smart clothing (blazer, shirt, formal skirt, formal shoes) would show her significance to the narrative as she explains in her dialogue that she sent out Captain Crain and the crew to space for a mission. 

This is a still shot of Heather and the costume she wore

Although in our teaser scene, it doesn’t show any drama, as it’s a teaser of the first few minutes of the show, later on that episode we would have done a narrative where there would have been an explosion and the Captain will struggle to contact the head of the mission from the headquarters. However, on our title sequence we were able to add an explosion to the spaceship, even though this kind of spoils what will happen, it does give the audience an insight on what’s to come. Regardless of that, audiences expect for there to be drama in Sci-fi audio-visual products as a mission will always not go to plan and crew members will face obstacles before actually achieving their goal. We were able to achieve this as we followed our pre-production document very well, especially the storyboard

This a still shot of the explosion from the title sequence compared with the drawing in the pre-production document (storyboard) 

Although the client have explicitly said that the TV show must be a Sci-fi drama, we decided to add in elements of adventure. This is expected when watching a Sci-fi TV show because it is likely for a group of people to go out into space for a mission or a discovery, so we believed that adding in the narrative that Captain Crain and her crew will be going out of space for a mission, to see whether life outside of Earth would be suitable for humankind, would be ideal as we have a reason for the audience to expect that there is a adventure or a mission that awaits for the crew. We got heather to explain this to her team members in the conference room, and while she was explaining the mission we included cuts of Captain Crain getting ready/setting up.

This a screenshot of the script showing how we added our own element of adventure/narrative

Overall, I believe that my partner and I have done our best to achieve the codes and conventions for a Sci-fi, drama TV show with elements of adventure, and audiences will understand the narrative well and will be able to predict on what will come over the series once the TV show is released.