1. In what ways does your media
product use/develop or
challenge forms and
conventions for real media
products?

2. • When the media produces meaning by using conventions the
audiences learn to understand the meaning from the
interaction of the conventional material in the text, and their
understanding of conventions. In media there is a history of the
use of conventions. Conventions are something that had been
learnt naturally but they are cultural not universal.
• Firstly I started to look at the range of film genres to start
constructing our film opening. Our film opening was based in
the Thriller genre but it was also connected to urban drama this
usually includes crime but we had also included paranormal,
because the female character is warned by her dead fiancé that
she is in danger. We don't know this because we don't make
this obvious that it is linked to these genres as our film
opening went over the time limit to have a hold on one certain
genre, so we felt that this will add to the mysterious air.

3. My media product constructs reality. Our Film opening follows the tradition
conventions of the female being weak as she is crying over her fiancé. Women
are often presented to be fragile and victim-like. This caused Bryan to ask if
she wanted him to come in (to comfort her.) This suggests that a female may
not handle being alone.

4. • The technical codes, which include camera techniques, framing to help develop
forms and conventions. Our filming was done often by handheld camera, this
makes our film relate more to our genre, social realism.
• The actors we used were not professional similar to how films in this genre are
found is that they look urban and act well. Also because our film had no budget
this had not put us at a disadvantage because the location we needed wasn’t hard
to get and neither were the actors.
•
• Also semi- improvised scripts are often used in Social realism films because it
sounds much more natural therefore it flows better and overall the film is more
realistic.

5. • We challenged forms and conventions is our film by using a point of view
shot is when Josh gets attacked because we wanted the audience to see
the events through the (attacking) actor's eyes, as if they were
experiencing the events themselves. and also to focuses on Josh and his
wound, by using the handheld camera this relates to our social realism
genre.
Often films in the thriller genre use
high angle shots because it conveys
the significance of certain
characters, and who empowers who
so when the attacker stabbed Josh
we made sure that Josh had looked
smaller then the attacker by using
the camera to film a low angle shot.

6. We filmed in the style of social realism also hybridized with thriller,
how we done this is by focussing on the backgrounds and characters.
We filmed in a estate, this helped our media product use forms and
conventions to imply that our film will be relating to social realism at
first. This is similar to Eddy Murphy’s film ‘Trading places’ because
you can't tell what genre it is from because of the montage shots, a
montage shot is numerous short shots with special optical effects
such as (fades). This is also what we used in our film opening in the
grave yard scene. We used a montage shot because it delivers a
sense of mood, the grave yard scene is a iconography for thriller.

7. Our first symbolic shot consists of both male characters in the shot, the
attacker is looking at Josh from a distant but Josh is more dominant in
this shot because it signifies that he is the more important character.
The attacker shouts out 'Oi' to josh and this is symbolic because its
British slang. Stairs are a convention of thriller movies , so we had our
character run away from the attacker on a few flights of stairs.
Other props of importance is the
characters clothing. Both male
characters are dressed in black to
forewarn what is going to happen, also
wearing a black big jacket or hoodies
with jeans while being a male teenager
is rather intimidating. Our female
character wears a cream jacket with a
black dress and a brown side bag and a
black scarf. Her boyfriends bag is in the
background of the shot to show how
she wants to feel close to him still.
Clothes are important because they are
often used to express the feelings of the
character. The boys are the typical bad-
boys whereas the black female is rather
respectable and quiet.

8. The sound started as the black screen had showed up and it stopped while the couple
were saying bye to each other and we added dialogue in our film because we wanted
to show a relationship, this is showing reality and that is what social realism includes.
The other sound we had was through the attacking scene, we had tension building
music to slowly make the audience realise that something bad is going to happen and
lastly when the female is crying at the grave yard and then when she enters her house
slow sad music is played to portray her feelings.