Gemma Thomas- Evaluation

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

A- The Main Task
i) Short films that you have watched

The most obvious characteristic used in short films is that the length of the film is short, this means that the director must tell the story quickly so that there is a beginning middle and an end to the film otherwise it is more of just an opening rather than the entire film, also the director would not be able to use mystery and enigma in the film like you would in a full length film to build a sense of unknown due to the fact that there is not enough time. By the length being so limited in time it is common that few locations will be used throughout the film so that it is easy for the audience to stay interested in.  this is the same for the use of characters as in a short film if you had lots of characters making an appearance they would lose track of who was who as they wouldn’t have seen each character for a substantial amount of time to know them and also to like or dislike a character. In most films the audience will make an opinion on whether they like a character whereas if there are too many they wouldn’t be able to know the characters.

Another characteristic used is stereotypes, it’s easier with limited time to use stereotypes to allow the audience to understand who is who in the film, for example in the film ‘A Favour’ the director has used a Muslim man who is thought to be a terrorist but in actual fact a middle class white man was the one who implemented the terrorist attack. This plot twist challenges conventions of media as the white man is truly the antagonist and goes against stereotypical conventions of religion. In ‘Silent Things’ we see a man who is socially awkward and timid within himself, this supports stereotypical views of people with a disability and follows the conventions used in media products.

Actors used in short films are not often well known stars as I have found that most short film directors make their short films on low budgets so don’t have the funds to have large Hollywood stars in the film. The directors also tend to be new so are using their short films as a gateway into the larger film world.

ii) Your own short film

In my own short film I have used typical conventions. Firstly we used a small amount of locations for our piece which allowed our audience to understand and follow the story with ease.

We also followed a linear narrative structure which allowed us to start at the beginning of the story and progress to the middle and finishing at the end. This is the most common form of narrative structure although circular can be also be used.  Todorovs Theory 1977 is a simple classic form of narrative.

We only used 2 characters in our short film which again allowed the audience to follow the story simply and also build a small connection with the characters as they see the characters for a longer period of time than if we had used 6 characters, this may have become confusing and hard to follow.

In most short films there is a hybrid of genres. In our short film we do not have  a hybrid present as we have only used one genre of film which is comedy. This challenges typical conventions due to short films having at least 2 genres.

 B-Film Poster

i) Film Poster that you have analysed 

When looking at short film posters I noticed conventions which were on each poster in a similar way

• Text  justification on the left/right or bottom/top
•  Names of actors/ directors
• References to other films
• Website
• Age certification
• Credit Block – Legal Requirement
• Title size is larger than all other text
• Rating System
• Source of comment
• Main image- usually of characters
•  Release date often advertised.

Looking at the films I researched they all follow the majority of the conventions of a short film poster although they don’t follow them all.

 ii) Your own film Poster

When designing my own film poster we tried to incorporate every convention onto the poster so that it followed traditional aspects. The nature of our film made creating our short film poster difficult as it was overly colourful and due to the target audience looks childish in the finished product. Although this would normally be a negative for our piece it works well and creates a sense of naivety. We didn’t put an age certification on our short film poster although followed the other conventions which are expected.  

C- LWL Review

Little white lies is a high end magazine based on films and aimed at film junkies.  Little white lies includes film reviews of the latest film releases, interviews and adverts for similar styled films being released. For our task set we had to make a film review for our short film following the conventions of little white lies in both its layout and its language.

Firstly looking at the language of LWL I noticed that

•  The language is very in depth
•  It uses media language terms which the general public would not understand ( so focuses on a selective audience)
• Uses roughly 450 words in the review containing lots of adjectives and verbs
• Doesn’t give away much about the film which is good in case someone reads the reviews before watching the film.  

We then looked at the conventions of the layout of little white lies we then copied the style to make our own _ Click Here to see Conventions of LWL Layout

This is our final film review which follows the conventions of a Little White Lies film review. 

2.How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary product tasks?

3. What have your learned from your audience feedback?

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

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