In what ways does In what ways does your media product your media product

use, develop or use, develop or challenge forms and challenge forms and conventions of real conventions of real media products?media products?

Our Media Our Media ProductProductOur Media Product is a 5 minute short film. We decided to stick to the genre ‘Social Realism’ as we believe it was the easiest for our actors, as the acting should be true to their every day life. With inspiration from the film ‘Mud Boy’ we wanted our social realism film to have a big twist. We began with lots of different ideas however none of them seemed very realistic. Therefore we resulted in making our ending of our film have a twist of thriller/horror.

Our film follows the lives of two best friends aged 12. The film follows constant bullying to one of the friends for kissing the others ex, until this eventually results in suicide.

Social Realism Social Realism PlotPlotAll Social Realism films stick to storylines that will happen on a daily basis. This could

include fighting, domestic violence, bullying, gang crime etc. Although often positive life aspects typically occur more than negatives, these are not usually seen in a social realism film. The main focus is usually a negative issue.

Examples of this include:

SoftA Short film about the impact of

bullying on everyone's lives. Not just the victim but friends and family too,

and consequences bullying can have if you target the wrong person.

KidulthoodA film about the impact of suicide on

family and friends lives. It shows gang crime and murders due to getting

involved with the wrong type of people.

Our Social Realism PlotOur Social Realism PlotOur Social Realism film followed the life of 2 best friends. It shows the impact of children being insensitive and immature can have. As one of the girls is dared to kiss the other girls ex boyfriend, she does it out of peer pressure. Jodie is the fuming and continuously makes digs to Karla to ‘kill herself’. When Jodie realises she should not of been that harsh, she is too late.

Our Film:

Similarly to soft our film shows the impacts bullying can have on both the victim and bully. We have shown this

by Jodie seeing Karla’s death was caused by her, and Karla killing herself

as a result of being bullied.

Alike kidulthood our film also contains suicide. However our suicide takes place at the end showing why it has happened. Whereas Kidulthood’s

suicide is at the beginning showing the after effects of it.

Camera ShotsCamera ShotsSocial Realism Films typically have a large variety of shots to express different emotions.

Close UpWe used this shot to see the anger and disappointment in our protagonists face. It is clear she is upset/angry from this picture. The screen shot is from Kes, where the shot has been used for a similar purpose.

Mid ShotBoth our film, and the screen shot from FishTank have used this mid shot so we can see from the characters body language their emotions. They appear angry and upset.

Point Of ViewOur shot, and a shot from Soft has been used to express the point of view of another person. This can help to emphasise their emotions.

EditingEditing

We experimented with an editing type that we are not familiar. In order to create the sense of a news report we felt we needed to add effects and a background. We used the green screen to do this. Although most social realism films do not include this we felt our news report was similar to a usual TV news.

We also edited the ending of Karla hanging with a blurred effect. This is because our aim was to change the theme to horror at the end of the film. We found many horrors make an ending jumpy by quick cutting from something that can not be seen to a clear scary image. We also used this effect to make it look more realistic that she is hanging in the tree as this shot was difficult to film.

Most Social Realism films have very little editing. They are supposed to look true to real life therefore minimize the editing. The cuts and transitions run smooth. We decided to have most shots roughly 3 seconds before cutting it. This is typical in most social realism films. We also used ‘fade to black’ throughout a lot of our film to show a change in time in the day.

LengthLengthMost short films can range between 1-20 minutes. This includes from start to finish. In order to make sure we stuck to this convention we made our film 5 minutes, including the opening titles and credits. If we had of gone over this time limit our film would not be seen as a ‘Short Film’.

SoundSoundOur short film lacks non-diegetic sound. This is because most short films do not edit non-diegetic sounds into them. Similarly to editing this is to make it look more realistic. Instead we have lots of dialogue between our characters. There is diegetic sound at the end of the film. This is when the film has a sense of horror. Therefore we added the creepy noise over the top to emphasise the horror in the film. In the scary part at the end we had noticed the sound of birds throughout a lot of our filming. This non-diegetic sound adds to the sense of fear. Although it is a nice sound, it is typically used in a forest at night creating fear. It highlights no-one else is around as the sound of birds are so evident.

IdentIdentOUR FILM

OTHER SHORT FILMS

When creating our Ident we wanted to ensure we kept it simple. We wanted a correlation between the name ‘Shine’ and the way the ident looked. We found most short films do not have a big and bold ident. This could be because it is so short, and important to stick to the short timing that

I found it extremely difficult to find Short Films with idents. Almost every short film I came across just began with a film title on a black screen and no ident. The films I did find idents for are just plain white writing on a black background. They are very basic and typically have present after the name. They are quite small on the screen and only appear for a second or two. I feel that these idents are similar to the one we have created for our film. Ours is basic, white writing on a black screen for a short duration.

they choose to go straight into the film. To ensure our film looked like the beginning of a film we chose to add one, however kept it very simple.

How does it challenge How does it challenge other media products?other media products?The The PlotPlotMost Social Realism Films have a clear storyline throughout. The ending does not typically surprise you it is a very basic and expected narrative. This is because they are supposed to reflect reality. An extremely common ending to a social realism film is a girl falling pregnant, or turning to drug crime. We feel we went against the conventions of this. Although suicide is a convention of a social realism film it is not often used. We chose to have a dramatic and unexpected ending of Karla hanging herself. We thought this would shock the audience and alert them of the dangers of bullying.

Our film also has a slow approach of introducing the storyline. We take a large amount of the time to introduce the characters, which would be more common in a longer film, not a 5 minute short film. However, we decided this way would be the most successful in showing the 2 best friends on their way to school, clearly introducing them to the audience before the main problems happen.