In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
At a technical level, the use of final cut was used extensively to make sure we observed the conventions of continuity. For instance we had to make sure when he had his coat unzipped in once scene that it wasn’t zipped in the other. One problem we had was with at the end of the film when she is opening the door. We had shown her opening the door half open, but then for him walking out she was still opening it. We overcame this particular problem by using a jump cut and so missing out a few seconds, and giving an impression of a fast moving action of opening the door. The language of the film stays the same throughout, asdoes the editing, for instance using the same opening and ending title music. We also used the same transitional effects throughout the film.
Our film is a romantic comedy. The conventions of which are a basic boy meets girl, comedy is created by the interaction between each other and other people culminating in a happy ending. Our film reflects this genre, but where the girl usually holds the power, we have subverted this by giving the male role a device that in turn makes him the one that has control of every situation. But at the ending we see that they both go their own separate ways. In this way it could be seen as subverting a stereotypical romantic comedy where in our film it is not a happy ending, even if theaudience might expect there to be one. But mostly it fits a romantic comedy, maybe similar to ‘along came Polly’ or ‘there’s something about Mary’ where some of the situations are cringe worthy and make the audience uncomfortable to watch yet humorous at the same time.
Our film is a comedy, so we have an amount of slapstick and could say it is parodying serious romantic films. Instead of having a charming lead character we have a loveable bumbling fool. And instead of an exciting female counterpart, we have a seemingly uninterested and quite boring one. We have taken a classic romantic genre film and thought about how we could make it as unromantic as possible and what events/actions in a given romantic situation that could achieve that.
We are trying to provide the audience with humour. The film is a comedy and so we obviously want people to laugh at it and find it funny. The goal is to make the audience laugh. There are a few specific parts to our movie, such as the slap in the face that we hope will provide the biggest laughs. We have shown the film to other members of our media class and they have all laughed at it. Overall we are quite confident that we have achieved this. We ourselves find the film funny, and we are confident our sense of humour can transcend ourselves and to our target audience of teenagers and young adults. Overall our film is laugh out loud funny in some places, and awkward humour in others.
When starting our film we studied the genre of films. One romantic comedy I think is similar to ours is ‘Along came Polly’ starring Ben Stiller. There is a scene where he needs the bathroom and goes in, only for him to realise there is no toilet paper. Also he floods the bathroom. It is partly this kind of humour that we were trying to create. Awkward slapstick that makes the audience feels for the character in this situation.
Another example is 50 first dates. This film is similar to ours in that he can rectify any mistakes he made and do over the situation again. They are both romantic comedies and feature the same basic story tool.
In conclusion our film has both developed and challenged forms and conventions of real media products.
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