My silent comedy film

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EVALUATION In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ? My silent comedy film "Patty Take" develops forms and conventions of real products slightly more than it challenges them. There is a range of forms and conventions of classic 1920s silent comedy films which I have included in my film. I realised that my silent comedy wouldn't have been anywhere near successful if I did not develop certain conventions which are used in real media products. I had to develop the use of intertiles showing the audience what is happening on screen in a text which is legible. Intertiles had to be used otherwise the audience will have to try and distinguish what the characters are doing, as there is no sound being heard apart from the piano being played. I challenged the main forms and conventions of a real silent comedy by adding an Afro-Caribbean twist. There are not many, if not, no silent films which are focused on the Black community since during the 1920s there wasn’t a multiethnic society in the USA or the UK for this to happen. However, I and my partner Tesfah made this happen especially through the dialect spoken and the characters we included in the film. The intertiles included a West Indian dialect which was a slight challenge in conventions because most silent comedies use Standard English words on the intertiles whereas I changed that so that a West Indian audience could understand it better. The intertiles were made relevant to the Afro-Caribbean audience by including words they understand. In this example, I over exaggerated an adaptation of Red Riding Hood’s name by including “Redineisha,

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Transcript of My silent comedy film

Page 1: My silent comedy film

EVALUATION

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My silent comedy film "Patty Take" develops forms and conventions of real products slightly more than it challenges them. There is a range of forms and conventions of classic 1920s silent comedy films which I have included in my film.I realised that my silent comedy wouldn't have been anywhere near successful if I did not develop certain conventions which are used in real media products. I had to develop the use of intertiles showing the audience what is happening on screen in a text which is legible. Intertiles had to be used otherwise the audience will have to try and distinguish what the characters are doing, as there is no sound being heard apart from the piano being played.

I challenged the main forms and conventions of a real silent comedy by adding an Afro-Caribbean twist. There are not many, if not, no silent films which are focused on the Black community since during the 1920s there wasn’t a multiethnic society in the USA or the UK for this to happen. However, I and my partner Tesfah made this happen especially through the dialect spoken and the characters we included in the film. The intertiles included a West Indian dialect which was a slight challenge in conventions because most silent comedies use Standard English words on the intertiles whereas I changed that so that a West Indian audience could understand it better.

Another way in which I developed forms and conventions of a silent comedy is by making the film in black and white with grains in order for it to have the 1920s theme.

This was a key convention I developed, making the film have a 1920s theme by including the aged film and black and white effects. In my opinion, if my film was not in black and white it wouldn’t have a silent comedy feel.

The intertiles were made relevant to the Afro-Caribbean audience by including words they understand. In this example, I over exaggerated an adaptation of Red Riding Hood’s name by including “Redineisha, Keisha, Taneisha, Shaniqua” which are names that are commonly used in the Black British community.

Page 2: My silent comedy film

Films that were made in the silent era didn’t have any colour, which made the film look more classical because it had the 1920s effect so the audience would know that "Patty Take" is a silent film. I also developed the convention of making the film run at a fast pace to relate to the fact that during the 1920s film were made in the rate of 24 frames per second. I also did this to make the action on screen speed up which made the visuals seem funnier and made the duration of the film itself more than within the space of 5 minutes which allowed us the time to add more intertiles.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think that my ancillary texts supported my main product (the film) quite well to make the whole combination effective. The main product was in black and white so I thought that I should conform to the main product and make the ancillary texts also in black and white making the 1920s theme appear throughout the film, the film poster and the double page spread.

What helped to make the combination so effective was the way that I used images from the actual film and incorporated them into my poster and double page spread. This showed a still image of the actor’s expressions in the film so the audience could understand what those expressions represents.

I made the heading of the double page spread “It’s going to be a black and white winter!!!” relevant to the effect used in the film playing it on with the traditional white setting of winter.

The poster and the double page spread both continue to uses the black and white effect which is from the actual film itself. Wherever the reader tries to find information on Patty Take, the black and white effect will always be there which means that they will know that the film is meant to have a 1920s theme.

The subheading of the double page spread is relevant to the poster because I’m trying to promote a film with a Black British twist. The text on the poster which reads “Ah remake of likkle red riding hood” is written in a dialect which shows that there is a Black British twist.

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The subheading of the double page spread is relevant to the poster because I’m trying to promote a film with a Black British twist. The text on the poster that reads “Ah remake of likkle red riding hood” is written in a dialect which shows that there is a Black British twist.

The poster and the double page spread both continue to uses the black and white effect which is from the actual film itself. Wherever the reader tries to find information on Patty Take, the black and white effect will always be there which means that they will know that the film is meant to have a 1920s theme.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used a range of media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages to create my media product. Whilst planning to make “Patty Take” we had to plan the way that the shots were going to be implemented so that we could film smoothly without having to think of our head. We had to take pictures to plan the shots so we used Tesfah’s iPhone to take these pictures. We then had to borrow a camera from the media department in college to shoot the footage and alongside that borrow the tripod for the camera to stand on.

This is the Canon XM2 which will be using to record our silent comedy with.

After we finished recording all the footage, we needed to upload everything on to Final Cut which is software I used for the first time. We used Final Cut to manipulate the film by cropping, editing the pace and changing the effect of shots. We also got to add music to the film and add intertiles for dialogue.

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Last year during AS level, I used software such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign (which I used for the first time) to create my media product. I first started off as a novice in using these pieces of software, but then became more of an intermediate as I started using it more regularly. I used certain features and functions of Photoshop to manipulate the images which were incorporated which I then placed into the double page spread which was designed on InDesign. I designed the whole poster on Photoshop which I felt was the easiest task to do.

Another piece of online technology I used effectively was blogger and slideshare. I posted each session of my project on to blogger via slideshare which was where I had to upload my work onto before copying the html and pasting to my posts. I found blogger useful because it allowed me to order my work in chronological order which meant that I could be retrospective and look at how far I progressed with my project.

This screenshot is of the Final Cut interface which we used to edit our silent comedy