A2 Media Evaluation Question: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- 1. A L E X W A T S O N In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- 2. For my video, the media platform that I used to present my video was DailyMotion and for my Ancillary Tasks, one was a JPEG image that I created using Adobe Photoshop and the other one was created using Microsoft Word. In my short film despite it starting out as a Crime Thriller idea, it turned into a drama so during this evaluation I am going to be talking about how the film fit into the conventions of a drama instead of it being a Crime Thriller.
- 3. Considering my short film became mostly a drama, some of the codes and conventions of that genre are: They tend to take place in real life situations and have realistic settings and characters. Based purely around social interaction. Audience can usually relate to the characters included.
- 4. One of the main conventions that made my short film a drama was that drama films tend to have just dialogue and storyline as their main focal point. After realising that my short film was going down this route I decided to use this but I also challenged by having some action, the smashing the keyboard on the desk, this would catch the audience by surprise.
- 5. Another way that I conformed to a drama code and convention was that in drama film posters they tend to have the main characters in the picture and this was something that I followed. The reason that I decided to conform to this code is because I think the audience are more drawn to a film when they can people that are going to be in the film. This is why that the drama genre has had so much success.
- 6. After working out that my film wasn’t going to be a crime drama and I embraced the fact that it was going to be a drama film, I wanted to make sure that it didn’t follow all the codes and conventions. One way I challenged the codes and conventions of the drama genre was by having the main characters all be teens. During most drama’s, the characters are mostly adults. For example, Downtown Abbey and Law and Order. The characters in these TV shows are adults
- 7. The reason that I decided to challenge this code and convention was that the drama genre has an aging audience and Teens and Young Adults don’t tend to watch dramas due to their lack of action and also a lack of relateable characters. So in my short films, the characters are all teens so the audience will be able to relate to them.
- 8. I feel that even though it’s quite a big change to have all the character a different age but despite that I believe it worked successfully. This is because despite the age change, the storyline was not uncommon of a drama film with it being based around a real life situation.
- 9. After conducting some research, I looked up to see other dramas that feature teens and I found that not many have been widely successful however one that has been successful was the UK TV drama Skins. Some similarities between my short film and Skins are that they are both set in and around a school. I believe that this is the main reason for the success. This is because before Skins there was no real drama based around school and there hasn’t been one released after. That’s the reason I decided to use it because the code hasn’t become too saturated and this was also the reason that it worked well in my short film.