Morgan CloughMEDIA EVALUATION

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real

media products?

The title of the fi lm “Finding Mrs Simon” develops on the idea of stereotypical rom-com fi lms, it has a comical eff ect which automatically tells the audience that it is going to have a humorous side to the fi lm whilst also a possible

I have used conventions of a romance comedy in my fi lm through the use of the characters. Both females and males are used as potential male characters that are typical of a romance-comedy such as the fi lm ‘Love Actual ly’ as throughout this fi lm male and female characters are used as the main characters showing diff erent stories throughout the fi lm. Also the narrative style chal lenges the stereotype of a romance-comedy as in a typical romance comedy such as Love Actual ly again the story is told in order so in a l inear narrative. Whereas in my fi lm it uses jump cuts and goes back in t ime and forward in t ime from him talking to himself to him on a date.

The setting and location challenges forms of conventions of other real media products following the same genre because a huge number of Romance Comedy fi lms are based around a female character as the fi lm is seen from her point of view, whereas in this fi lm the main character is a male character looking for love. This challenges the stereotype also of the male character because a male character is stereotypically seen as masculine and superior to the female characters, in ‘Finding Mrs Simon’ Simon is represented as a ‘joke’ to the audience. This challenges the conventions because a typical fi lm audience would expect the male character to be masculine. I think this makes the fi lm diff erent to the audience and would persuade them to watch the fi lm because it is a ‘new genre’.

The costumes and props used within the fi lm also represent the genre throughout the fi lm. The opening scene starts off with Simon in his kitchen using gym equipment, because this isn’t a realistic place to be using gym equipment it makes the audience will find it funny, this uses the Hypodermic Needle Eff ect, me as the producer has meant for the audience to feel an intended way after watching that scene, and the audience will automatically feel that way without fully taking in the situation or what is going on.

The narrative of our fi lm is a fragmented and also a stream of consciousness narrative, this is because throughout the fi lm, the thoughts and feelings of Simon are shown throughout with him speaking directly to the camera as if it was his best friend, or a person he can trust to tell his feelings too. I think this challenges the conventions of romance comedy fi lms because they don’t normally include the feelings and attitudes of the audience from a personal point of view; this seems to be a new era of romance comedy. Unlike other popular rom-com fi lms such as ‘Hitch’ and ‘Love Actually’ our media production of ‘Finding Mrs Simon’ uses diff erent stereotypes of characters and a diff erent narrative.

The genre of the fi lm is a Romance-comedy which is a hybrid genre within the fi lm the storyline uses Steve Neale’s theory of repetition and diff erence, it uses repetition in the thought that there is elements of comedy throughout the fi lm it uses both a male and female as the main characters. Although the diff erence with this fi lm is that the stereotypes of the characters are diff erent than what they would be in a typical Romance comedy fi lm, the main character is a geeky male character who likes to see himself as masculine and superior but in fact he isn’t and is made to be the joke of the fi lm, whereas in a stereotypical rom-com the female character is usually portrayed as the main character so this is where Steve Neale’s theory is applied to my fi lm.

The genre of the fi lm is based on what a stereotypical audience of a romance-comedy fi lm would enjoy, our fi lm Hall’s encoding and decoding theory. Hall’s theory is basically that the producer of a media text (me) will look at previous work or other media texts and get inspiration for their own media piece purposely adding details and conventions of a media text into their product, this is the text being encoded. It is then decoded by the mainstream audience because they will automatically like the fi lm if it has similar conventions to other media products they have watched. I encoded stereotypical conventions of a romance-comedy into my fi lm, the use of the humour within between the male and female characters, the happy ending. These are stereotypical in a romance comedy so the text is encoded positively by the audience.

The main character in the fi lm, Simon is introduced in the fi lm in a conventional way of a romance-comedy fi lm. He is introduced in a comical way so the audience will see the opening scene and be able to laugh straight away, making it obvious to the audience that it is a rom-com fi lm. He is seen to be wearing a tight vest with a headband around his head, although he thinks he is a masculine character he is made to be almost laughed at by the audience and not taken too seriously.

Our fi lm also uses Neale’s Mental Machinery theory. He describes genre as part of a process of mental machinery between industry, text and subject. This is where the media text will be successful in its genre if it follows certain conventions which meet the expectations of the audience. In my fi lm I see that my fi lm uses both conventional and unconventional aspects of a romance comedy to keep the audience interested. It uses recognizable characters so it meets the audience’s expectations of a romance comedy fi lm. The unconventional aspect of the fi lm is that it uses characters in a diff erent way than other romance comedy fi lms, by putting them in unusual circumstances to what they would be in stereotypical rom-coms.