IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?TIA HARDING

Through researching into similar products prior to creating our film, poster and review, we had begun to understand and familiarise ourselves with the key codes and conventions with films that would fit into our chosen genre. I personally decided to briefly analyse a thriller short film, “Knowing too much”, where as a group we had looked and analysed media products such as “About a girl” and “Two cars, one night”. This was so that we would know exactly what we were looking for in regards to conventions and also allowed us to understand & plan out which exact codes and conventions we would want to be using for our own work.

Genre conventions

By having social realism as one of our main genres, it enabled us to have a better understanding & outlook on how actual British social realism is being portrayed in society. We had used the convention of having the locations we used to look as urbanised as possible, this is evident through the exposed brickwork that was shown in the background of scenes that we had created for our film. This links us back to social realism as it enabled us the possibility of being more relatable to those who are aware of social realism films.

Another convention that we agreed on using was by looking at a particularly touching issue that is frequently shown on the news more, yet less authentic coverage. The issue we had represented was kidnapping as we based it on the ongoing case of Madeleine McCann who has been missing for nearly nine years. We had used this convention through making the person who was being kidnapped to be a young girl. This was because they are seen as one of the most vulnerable individuals in society, as they are represented as very feeble and defenceless against anything else. This can therefore strike a chord with our target audience and resonate within them as it is not something that anyone would want to happen to anyone who they care about.

One film that does show an issue that should be tackled in society is “About a girl” which looks at the issue of teenage pregnancy, allowing the audience to really think about how serious of an issue this actually is in today’s society.

Media language conventions

With media language, my group and I took many paths in regards to what we would be having as our conventions. One convention that we did end up challenging was the fact that we used non-diegetic sounds in our short film, where many don’t do so. This is because we wanted to have specific sounds and music that would heighten the tension & intensity levels in our short film, which wouldn’t have been possible with the diegetic sound from our scenes.

A short film that also uses non-diegetic sound is “Knowing too much” where different sound and music effects were used to create a variety of moods. In regards to the cinematography that we used, it is very similar to media products that relating to ours e.g. the film “Knowing too much” has a lot of POV shots, tracking shots and close ups which our film continuously shows throughout. I believe that these are used most as they are the most engaging shots where the watcher has the opportunity to feel as if they could become the character, but also still has that voyeuristic feel where we are still ‘sitting on the fence’ watching someone’s life unravel in front of you.

Technological conventions

This moves me onto the more technical side of things where we had used the convention of using a DSLR camera in comparison to using large, heavy hi-def cameras which we could not afford. This is a convention that is used in most short films as, most of the time, they are not given a high budget so they are forced to prioritise with every aspect in production.

This links to Dogme 95 which is a list of rules (vows of chastity) which give strict guidelines of how to film. We reject, use, develop and challenge each different one in order to fit the true purpose of what we needed. A ‘Vow of Chastity’ that we had challenged was one which states that no props should be used in scenes unless it is in the location you are in. We had to challenge this as there were many different items that we needed in order to make our work as relatable as possible.