In what ways does your media

product use, develop or

challenge forms and convention

of real media products?

By Charlie Goodman

Intr

oduct

ion

The best way for me to

answer this question is

to start off by looking at

all of my final media

products; Short film,

Poster and Magazine.

And to compare them to

real media products to

see how mine has developed and challenged their conventions.

“FO

KU

S”

Short

Fi

lm

In order to get to where

we are now with a final

product we had to go

through certain stages

of planning to get the

outcome we have achieved. Which is exactly what happens

and is conventional with

any media product.

“FO

KU

S”

Short

Fi

lm

Stage 1: Obviously the

first thing that needed to

be done was to come up

with an initial idea, this

meant sitting down as a

group and discussing

what kind of genre to

follow as well as what

ideas we liked for a storyline.

“FO

KU

S”

Short

Fi

lm

Stage 2: After coming up

with an idea that we all

liked and agreed on we

began to start coming

up with a script, screenplay and a storyboard. Again following the course for

making any film.

“FO

KU

S”

Short

Fi

lm

Stage 3: The next step now, was to

start thinking about mise en scene.

Since we had chosen the genre

“War” there arecertain aspects ofit that are compulsory to its

conventions, for example; uniforms andprops. We also had

to look at actors, setting,diegetic and non

diegetic sound and thebasic plot(good vs evil) Saving Private

Ryan (1998)

“FO

KU

S”

Short

Fi

lm

Stage 4: Now we had a solid

idea, planned out the script

and storyboard as well as

the mise en scene we could

begin filming. To do this we

had to create a shot list with

the aid of the storyboard to

effectively plan out each

day of filming. Once filming

was completed we would

then move onto editing and

the final product would be

complete.

Post

er

When I created my poster I wanted to

represent my short film, also taking

into account what looks visually

pleasing in orderto sell my film, to make people want to go and see it. At the same time

following the conventions of posters, eg; it featuring a photograph of

main characters, the names of the main actors as well as the title being in large letters.

Post

er

I created my poster using

Photoshop. After creating two

drafts I then asked people what

they thought of them and which

they preferred, leaving me with

my final poster.It fits in well with my media

products, as it features the main

character on the front, on

location, in full costume and

with props. It gives the audience

an idea what the film will be

about, without giving the plot

away, which is something that is

conventional of a film poster.

Magazi

ne

When creating my magazine I had a certain

style in mind. After completing research on

“Little White Lies” magazine, an independent British movie

magazine, I got an idea of

what sort of approach to

take to mine. As I thought

this style would fit in with

my short film.

Magazi

ne

To compare my magazine

to Little White Lies, you

can see that it is conventional to have the

title in a much larger font

than the rest of the text.

Also, you can see that it is conventional to feature a largeimage, so theaudience havean idea what the piece

may be about.

Concl

usi

on

I feel that I have both challenged and

developed the conventions of real media

products. However, I have still worked

within certain areas of these conventions

as they are there for a reason. For

instance you have to follow a certain

structure to get to a finished product.

Also in terms of genre there are certain

aspects that have to remain the same so

that it can be recognisable, eg; Horror,

Sci-Fi, Thriller or Western etc. all have

genre specific conventions.

My media products have to be

recognisable to the audience which is

why the costume in our short, on the

front cover of my poster and my

magazine is so important in those things,

and is one of the main things that make

it identifiable to the genre.

Concl

usi

on

However, I have also developed and

challenged these conventions. The

majority of war films by nature

feature each sides military, so this is

already a lot of people to portray in

the film. It is not usual to only have

two characters each representing

their side in a war film. In this way I

have challenged the forms of

conventions.Most conventional war films contain

conflict or death of certain characters

or main characters. Although our

short follows the convention of

conflict between the two sides, we

developed this convention of war

films as nobody dies in our short.