Conventions Used

Characters

We noticed that in the coming of age genre that the main characters tend to be from an age range of 13-18 years old, who often still live with their parents. Being within this teenage threshold, they are still attending school, or another form of education/occupation. We decided to base our main character,Chris around this information. His appearance and mannerisms available to be seen by the outside world give the impression of a regular teenager going about his everyday life. This is a popular convention, because it means that the targeted audience can perhaps relate to the character.

Narrative

In the coming of age genre, a common role in the narrative is the main character having some problems to overcome throughout their journey. The overcoming of this problem then is often the major focus of the film, which draws the audience's attention. Our opening sequence directly portrays one of our characters major problems and how he prepares to deal with it. Another coming of age convention is the characters path to adulthood - in our film we decided to follow the concept of taking his weaknesses and then turning them into his strengths, in order so that he appears a strong-willed person.

Location

The opening sequence of our film is located within two places, a suburban neighborhood as well as a house within it. Our beginning shot is one of a small shop, of which our main character can be seen walking out of moments later. We did this to set the scene, which we learned from popular coming of age film Breakfast Club. We also wanted to include our character waking up inside of his house as the protagonist's house is almost always a key location within the narrative of the film. We took inspiration from Ferris Bueller's Day Off where the house is introduced instantly (although in ours it features a minute or two from the start).