Challenged
During filming there were a few common conventions that we ended up straying from.
Voice Over
A very common convention of coming-of-age films that we decided to avoid adding into our opening was a voice over. Voice overs are very common and they have been used in films such as "Stand By Me" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". These voice overs usually reveal the plots or interact with the audience in a 4th wall break. We decided to challenge this convention by not doing it because a voice over seems slightly too cliché as it is such a common feature in films. Also, we believe that a voice over would not suit our film too well as the lack of dialogue adds suspect and tension to our film opening.
Characters:
In most coming of age films, the main protagonist is usually portrayed as a hero and a very likeable character. However, in our opening we have portrayed our protagonist, Olive, as a low-key villain - as she is doing the wrong thing. This is because if the film was a whole film, it would show how Olive changes as a person to become a likeable protagonist, matching the coming of age genre as she learns something about herself. In most coming-of-age films, the main protagonist is male. We have challenged this by having a female protagonist. Although some coming of age films do feature female leads, the female lead is usually portrayed as overly girly and very weak, for example "Clueless" - the main protagonist is shown to be a girly fashionista who is more concerned about boys than school.
Production:
For most films, not just coming of age, the production team is very large and has a lots of very advanced equipment and a large budget. Unfortunately, I am not part of a large production team so we had to made do with the equipment that was available. Luckily we had a decent video camera available to us so we could film, Final Cut, a amazing video editing software, and a hardworking - two person team behind the scenes. Since our team was small we had to work extra hard to put the whole thing together which is unusual as there as groups of people in the production team who handle different sectors of the films production.