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

real media products?

• Camera shots, angles and edits: Having learned and researched different shots, angles and edits, I was made aware of when different shots, angles and edits were going to be appropriate.

• For example, an establishing shot will be used at the start of a scene for the audience to understand the setting. This is common film convention which Joe and I used at the beginning of our short film; an establishing shot of the outdoor setting which the scene is set in. Then, when the setting changes to the protagonist’s home, an establishing shot is used from the outside of the house.

• In terms of angles, we had learned that a point-of-view shot can be very effective in portraying what the character is seeing (the character will be the most reliable medium for this) and with a point-of-view shot being used to show the character looking at the knife which he has pressed up against his skin, you can see the unsteadiness of him as he trembles and the camera jolts suddenly to show his heart beating. ‘Gladiator’ (2000) uses this shot at the end of the film when Maximus is dying; a point-of-view shot shows his happiness; and the way in which we used this shot to portray the protagonists’ uneasiness and anguish.

• For edits, naturally, our short film is dominated by cuts like any other film, but since ours is a drama, we felt that fades could be used to great effect to accentuate the emotional tone of the film. A clear example of this being used to the same effect is in ‘Rocky II’ when Adrian is in hospital due to the seriousness and emotion of the scene. We have also used fades, particularly at the end when the protagonist is at the graveyard to achieve the same effect.

• Certain shots have been influenced by director Terrence Malick. He takes shots of things such as the sky and trees for emotive effect which Joe and I have done to create emotion.

• In terms of film score, we somewhat challenged media convention because we felt it would be much more effective to have one piano playing the music rather than an ensemble, which is more common in films.

• Our piece of media challenges Todorov’s Narrative Theory as our film doesn’t begin with equilibrium, it has ‘skipped’ it, if you will, and is already at the complication and the film will be revolved around the protagonist finding equilibrium.

• Films similar to ours such as ‘P.S. I Love You’ (2007) and ‘Ghost’ (1990) always have a comical character in order to lighten the emotional mood. This character is played by Lisa Kudrow in ‘P.S. I Love You’ and Whoopi Goldberg in ‘Ghost’, but we wanted our film to be all out emotion and drama, so we challenged this convention by leaving this character out.

• Nearly every film will have a romance or love interest involved – particularly dramas. Any drama from ‘Titanic’ (1997) to ‘Atonement’ (2007) have this, so we have used this also.

• We have used conventions such as a certificate screen, film ident and credits.

• For my film poster, I kept it conventional: the main character(s) in the frame, the title being made obvious, the release date, names of the actors, a slogan and the film’s details.

• Moreover, the review was also kept conventional. These conventions are that they always come across as somewhat informal and lighthearted with a touch of humor; so when writing it I tried to achieve this as best as I could with the ending summing everything up in a witty way.

Furthermore, it is set out conventionally with common review elements such as a ‘did you know’ and a picture from the film.

• It is a conventional short film as it simply revolves around one key event like ‘Paper Hearts’ which is a short film I studied at the beginning of the year.