In what ways does your media product, use develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products ?

By Saima Uddin

Conventions of comedy films

• Bright places like towns and cities, in populated places mostly and filmed during the day.

• Locations are usually schools for teen comedies, for social comedies locations would be shot most likely in bars and homes.

• Mostly natural camera work and medium shots to show facial expressions.

• Funny dialogue, edited sounds to create humour.• High key lighting.• Socially awkward characters/smart people and

quite ‘idiotic’ characters (accident prone). • Subgenres e.g. Romance• Exaggerated acting, lots of props that are used to

create the humour.• Comedy themes – slap stick, parody, rom-coms,

screw ball comedy and anarchic comedy.

Our film In order to pursue the comedy conventions we set the main locations in a house and a high school. All scenes were filmed during the day time and we used comical theme music in order to create humour. The teacher (George Donnelly) portrayed quite ‘idiotic’ gestures e.g. when he trips and all his papers blow away.

Our short film’s subgenre is social realism which makes it not the typical subgenre most comedies are which is romance.

Our filmWe put the credits as part of the film by finding a creative way to present the cast and crew. Putting modern upbeat background music made the scene become light hearted and fun.

We did not follow the typical convention of film titles fitting with the film and giving hints as to what the film might be about. We used a bold and simple title.

We filmed during the day to achieve the comedy conventions of bright populated locations. Here shows a simple pavement near the school.

Our film In our film we didn’t depend on the dialogue in order to create humour instead we used comedic gestures. This screen shot shows when George trips on the pavement making it look clumsy and silly.

Medium shots and close ups to show their facial expressions. Teen comedies are well known for being located in schools, because we wanted to follow through these conventions, we set the film in school in most of the scenes. Other scenes were located in a home

Our film In order to portray the comical ‘idiotic’ and silly character, in this scene George tries to kick the ball but misses, which creates humour for the audience because of the know fact kicking a ball isn’t really that hard.

In contrast we harry played a more serious character compared to be silly and ‘idiotic’ characters which are typically portrayed. Harry played the moody teenager and this screen shot shows harry getting told off.

Our film We edited in speech bubbles to the birthday scenes. The speech bubbles helped to give a comical effect and also informed the audience what the characters wish is.

We included a twist for the audience. When George realises he no longer feels himself anymore after the wish he begins to look nervous and starts to panic it creates enigma for the audience and makes the audience curious to find out what happens next.