In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our genre isn’t easy to define; this was a design choice to encourage our audience to think about what they were watching. There are certainly illustrations of certain genres like ‘feel good’ films and drama. The film definitely contains elements of comedy as well as moments of deep emotion and with neither of the elements outweighing each other, made the genre hard to decipher.

Genre

Film could be classed as British comedy, which start with tragedy and then they uplift the atmosphere with comical moments. It is comparable with Billy Elliot and The Full Monty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOGBTFFxOpY

The editing in this film does help to show progression making the narrative seem linear. All events which occur in this film occur in the right order and earlier scenes prepare the audience for scenes witness later on. There was a scene when we inserted a text indicator to show how much time has passed, and this is a common convention (especially in a film which contains a death).

Conventions

Todorov’s 3 act structureThe story told here fits in to the todorov 3 act structure being that it has an

equilibrium, a disruption and a new equilibrium. Equilibrium – Sasha has died, Matthew’s sister, and he and his family are

grieving over the death of her. Disruption - Matthew is given the iPod and discovers what the iPod does

to him; transports him to different eras. New equilibrium – Matthew has realised what made Sasha so happy, and

that it has made him happy. He discovers a boy looking disheartened and passes the iPod on to him.

It is arguable that this is a circular narrative because although the lead doesn’t end up in the same position he started, the iPod is passed on to someone else, in the hopes it will transform them. The audience are left wondering whether he will pass the iPod on to someone else, after he has been transformed.

Circular Narrative?

Patrick Bateman, after his confession has not achieved anything, and is still stuck with his job which he hates, his moronic friends and his unstable mind.

We used voiceovers when needed like in a windy shots where you can’t hear the actor. We decided to do this so that our audience can still clearly understand what is happening in the scene; that everything is audible and visible, as intended when scenes were first shot.

Voiceovers

As the most common age for people watching short films is roughly 15-25 year olds we decided to get a young cast, or a cast in that age range so that the audience can familiarise and relate to the character more.

Target Audience aim

As I’ve stated before in a previous post, a good short film has some kind of event which happens – in our case being Sasha dying and the iPod getting passed on – and that also the film may contain more than one genre. Our film has element of drama, comedy and ’feel-good’ in. We also stated that they have twists on leave the audience wondering, which is exactly what happens when Harley is handed the iPod and the film finishes.

What makes a good short film?

Mise en scene was a main part of our short, with a variety of clothes, props and locations to keep the audience interested and focused. As our film consisted of time travel through the eras costume, in particular, was a main focus and most of time and effort was actually trying to find outfits which would represent the decade.

Mise en scene

Our lead, played my Matthew used most of his own clothing after taking a closer look at what people used to wear realising he had some similar items. However, for the scene where we replicated the 80s, Matthew actually purposely ripped his t shirt to make it appear like the 80s, and we also made the red sweatband out of a red fabric.

Costumes

Music being a pivotal point in our film, we decided to make or find our own as we were rejected when trying to use copyright music – this involved emailing various different people such as record companies and managers. We were always redirected to somewhere else so we though to save time we would try to make our own versions of the songs we were initially going to use. We chose a multiplicity of different types of music to depict the era in which the scene took place.

Music

We had a clear cut idea of what we wanted with our film and how to achieve this through our planning and research. We followed the guide lines of our planning as building blocks for the shooting and execution of filming.

Research

How does my poster follow conventions?For my poster, you can clearly identify conventions included in actual existing products. During our research for our short film, we looked at short film posters for short film that we had watched. One thing which was identifiable in all the posters we studied is the lead character is always dominant or an important part of the poster. Bearing that in mind, I included several different shots of the lead, representing the different eras. These help to entice the audience.

I also included an image of someone holding an iPod which also an essential part of the short film. It is common for posters to glorify the subject. The film poster also contains small print of all the people involved in the making of the film, including director, editor and our own made-up production company. Typically the production company logo is displayed in the bottom left corner of the poster. Beneath the crew involved I have included when the film is coming out, also a very popular convention.

The only thing which possibly challenges a conventional poster is that the poster appears to have a lot of white space around the imagery. However, I did this to truly contrast so that audience are attracted. My poster also contained a logo from the Sundance festival which is very common on independently produced films. If my film did actually win at the Sundance festival it would attract audiences just because of this.

Double Page Spread

My magazine article also contains conventions similar to existing products. My first year of media helped me produce this as we also had to produce one for our coursework. There is a clear link between the poster and the magazine article with similar pictures being used. My magazine article contains clear columns, pull quotes, as well as the first paragraph being in capitals. My article contains an interview too, with every question also in capitals, and in red contrasting to the background and also relating to the bright colours used in our short film. I forgot to include a drop capital in my magazine article which is present in almost any article. This could affect the effectiveness of the magazine article. The film’s title and tagline were taken directly from the poster I had created, showing a link between the two.

Double Page Spread