Question 1

In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Troubled Protagonist

What we see is that the protagonists always seems to have something troubling them making them uneasy and distant from their loved ones. They are also portrayed as to being in their own world and not focusing on what is ahead of them. The protagonist in “Black Swan” played by Natalie Portman reinforces the stereotypical portrayal of someone who is determined to be the best and a perfectionist, can get burdened by high expectations and start suffering mentally. However in “Donnie Darko” we know that he (the protagonist played by Jake Gyllenhal) is probably …

Challenged forms

• How we tried to challenge codes of convention was by paying attention to the genre and topic of what we was doing.

• Also what we tried was to not make the opening of the film seem too Hollywood cliché so we challenged this by making it simple and not over-doing things such as making the situation that had taken place too dramatic but easy for the audience to understand and straight to the point.

How were they used or developed?

• How we used similar conventions was by making the protagonist seem as though they were going mad after losing someone close to them.

• This is a very common symptom in most psychological thrillers and usually the protagonist would seem as if they were closed off from the world and weren’t paying attention to things around them.

• However, how we developed them was by giving the protagonist a tough background by making the mother seem inconsiderate and selfish or thinking about and for themselves constantly rather than those around them.

• This seemed an effective technique as it would give the audience more of an insight into how she lives and what problems may be faced at home.