Evaluation question 1

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

Firstly the genre of short film does not have defined conventions. A short film that follows a narrative and has a specific genre will either conform to or break conventions. For my short film it does not follow the convention of being a narrative film or music video. It is a tie between the two. It has three short narratives within the film and music through out and a voice over to link the three narratives together.

Firstly, one convention of romantic films are icons of love such as flowers, gifts and love letters. I have used these in my film to represent the love the charaters feel. Here is a still from my short film depicting Kegan giving Gill a bunch of flowers, a conventional gesture in romantic films.

Secondly, body language and character interaction are important. The conventions of a romantic film show characters tobe relaxed around eachother, they have positive bodylanguage and often are touching. In this instance the couple in my short film are holding hands and they also kiss, another icon of love and romance.

Another convention of short film I have followed is using music. I have used music that is appropriet for the mood of the scene. For example, at the begining when the school children are passing note the music is happy and uplifting where as for the narrative of the elderly couple the music is sadder and meloncholoic because the lady is no longer there. I think both pieces of music fit with the theme of love and romance so therefore comply with the convention of short films. An example of a real media text where this is current is..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGZEhbeA8YY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwKWyIYxk2o

Next, I have used the codes and conventions of film posters to create one of my ancillary products. I have created a character poster by using Gill as the main pictures. I used Gill as she is the character that appears most in the film. To do this I have included codes such as credit block, actors names, title, the appropriet fonts (steeltongs for the credit block) and a tag line. Thease have helped my poster to look like a real media text. It also compliments and fits with my film, creating a strong promotional media package.

The narrative as a whole of my short film is unconventional. Usually, a short film or feature film will have a narrative structure that follows a plot continuously. It also usually follows a narrative theory such as Todorov’s theory of equilibrium, where there is a state of equilibrium, an event happens and the equilibrium is unbalanced. There is another event, which then resolves the equilibrium, and usually a different state of equilibrium is restored. This usually happens in romantic films where there is a boy and girl,they meet and are happy, something bad happens to break them up or cause problems, an event happens to resolve this and then they usually end up back together but that is just one general example.

In my short film there is not a continuous narrative. My film follows three separate narratives with a symbolic narrative interspersed. The first narrative in my film is of school students writing love notes. It clearly symbolises their relationship but there is only one event. With in this narrative there a slight truth in Todorov’s theory as the boy writes a note and passes it to his friend to pass to the girl he fancies, some one snatches the note, the equilibrium is disrupted, and then the note finally gets given to the girl and the equilibrium is restored.

The next section of narrative starts with a problem, the girl is annoyed and stood waiting for someone, the boy then runs to meet her and gives her flowers, restoring equilibrium. Finally the last narrative starts with a state of equilibrium, the elderly couple are happily walking together. The equilibrium is disturbed by the fact the woman disappears, representing her dying but then the message of the film shown through the voice over re-establishes the equilibrium by reminding us that even if we lose someone we are not alone and their memory will live on.

For my Magazine review page I have decided not to follow conventions. I decided that I would create pages in the style of Little White Lies magazine. There are no real conventions followed by the magazine, as each issue is different. The do follow some conventions, page numbers at the bottom of the page, title of the article, layout of text in columns and using images of the subject. However the general layout and look of the pages are subjective to the theme of the magazine. For example one of the issues is about the new Star Trek film, so the whole magazine has been given a futuristic theme and the fonts, pictures and layouts reflect this.

For my magazine I wanted to continue the theme of romance. I decided to follow conventional magazines by putting the title of the article at the top of the page and use columns for text. My magazine pagers were a special feature on short films so for the first page I wrote a brief introduction to short film and then for the second page I wrote a review of the short film. On the first page I included a picture of the paper flowers used in the film and movie poster. For the second page I used stills form the film and edited them to be black and white to emphasise the nostalgic feel of the film. I have used notepaper as the background and it is like the note written at the beginning of my film.