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

My media product is a short film, with a basic genre of romance. It is set in black and white and uses most generic conventions of a typical romance. We have used conventions that are used within many good romance films, such as the love triangle and the element of a forbidden love, as seen in Titanic. We have used typical characters, such as the wealthy girl who falls in love with a poor man. As well as this, we have the use of a situation which causes a breakup between the couple, and finally the use of a generic happily ever after ending.

We have also developed the story to make it more interesting; by using old fashioned ideas we have made it into a black and white, silent film, with the use of orchestral music to set the mood and placards to show speech that is crucial in understanding the film. We feel that by adding these changes to our film we have made it more appealing to other age groups beyond whom it was aimed for, including women of most ages from around 16-80. As well as this we have chosen to vary the choice of shots in our film to give it more movement, as old films rarely took different shots, especially the use of panning and zooming, this could be perceived as challenging the conventions but, I feel that it just improves what was possible and therefore making it more customary for a modern audience who are not really used to seeing basic filming skills. Other effects we have used include changing the speed of our footage. We chose to do this because in the older films we watched the footage was always faster, due to the quality of filming, and as we wanted it to look old fashioned we decided that it looked really good and original. There was also an element where we slowed the action down, this was when the man hands the woman the rose, she leans in and touches his face before kissing him on the cheek. We felt it was important to slow it down because it was a really romantic and special moment and it looked so much nicer in slow motion, again this was a small thing we did in order to make our film look unique. The final effect we used was a separate layer we put over our work on the computer, the layer consisted of the lines and ink marks normally seen in an old black and white film. We were really pleased to have the ability of using this layer because it helped to make our film look old and original, by using modern techniques we developed our modern film to make it look old fashioned.

I would also say that some of the things we have done to develop our film could also challenge the way a silent film should be produced. One of the main elements of our film consists of a single rose given to the main female character by her poor lover. It is a symbol of his love for her, in order to make it stand out we have chosen to use a technique used in the film Schindler’s List. There is a part in the film where there is a crowd scene and there is one young girl in a red coat. The film is entirely in black and white except for the red coat. This is important because it made her the main focus in the scene, she was crucial in telling the story as we see the coat again later on in the film in a pile with other coats, showing that the girl had been taken to a concentration camp and been stripped and gassed. Although our symbolism is not as grim as this, we felt that by making the single rose in red it would give it more impact as a symbol of their love. Also we chose to challenge the conventions of a romance slightly at the ending. Although it ends in a happily ever after style ending, as far as we are concerned the father does not know where his daughter has gone and the couple leave together to live their life, leaving behind their families, I think this however has little effect over the genre as the couple are still ‘happy’. This is challenging because in a typical romance the father would finally agree and accept their love, ours does not. It would how ever leave us the ability to have the chance to create a sequel, if it were a professional film it would give us more opportunities to continue what we had already created.

In conclusion, we have used many techniques to create our short film, some of which challenge what has been done before, but all of it benefitting our final product. So that we have began to create something we are very proud of.