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.

Film poster My film poster conveys the typical conventions of a film poster because it has a title, a tag line, credit block, release date and company logos. Like any other film poster, mine includes the main characters to show audiences who is starring in it. The purpose of the tag line is to give audiences hints to what the film could be about. One of my tag lines is a rhetorical question, this gets the audience to think about what the film could be about. This makes them want to go to see the film.

My film poster relates to the comedy genre because its bright and the title follows the theme of the film which is

based around birthdays.

Poster examples

All these posters follow the key conventions which is portrayed in my film poster.

e.g. main characters, tag lines, credit blocks and the release date.

Film review My film review follows with the typical conventions of the Little White Lie film magazine because of the unique rating system they use which I have adapted on my review, a picture from the film so the reader is informed who the main characters are, and also the release date, directed by and starring all put underneath the title which is below the image.I also used pink for the font to show that my review is based on the style of Little White Lies as they use pink font throughout the magazine

In my film review I used a lot of adjectives and metaphors to give the text more enthusiasm as the reader reads the review. I also used film language to stick with the convention of it being a film review.

Examples of film reviews