Evaluation Activity Number 1

Evaluation Activity Number 1: In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life media products?
For the unit G324 my group and I were tasked with producing a 5 minute short film that lasts
5 minutes. We also had to create three separate posters for our film and also 3 separate film
reviews.
During the brainstorming portion of our task we considered different genres which our film
could be such as horror, thriller, action and drama. We decided not to go for the comedic
route as we thought that this genre would be the hardest to execute as it requires a lot of
planning and well thought out story telling. Another genre which we totally went against was
the fantasy genre as films that fall into this genre usually need a lot of CGI to pull of an
unrealistic world and imagery. Our short film fell under the action, drama genre and it was
about a college student called Ifaz who was on his way home from college when he sits on a
park bench and his bag gets accidently swapped. He goes home and finds a brick of cocaine
in the bag which he had taken home.
What are codes and conventions?
Codes: codes are signs that appear in a film which symbolises a meaning to the audience
which hints at what genre the film is.
Things which could be used for codes are things such as the cinematography in a film which
could be implemented to help the narrative of the film. An example of this is how the
different camera shots in a film could help tell the story telling of the film. Sound could also
be another thing which could be used to represent the codes of a film. For example the score
music in a film could tell the audience how the character in the film feels. Props can help
connote different meanings to the audience. Finally the different styles of editing can be used
to infer meaning but the audience may have to read in between the lines to find the meaning.
Conventions: conventions of a film are things which commonly appear in films that can help
the audience identify the genre of the film. The way this is done is through the use of the four
technical aspects.
Forms and conventions of the Action, drama genre:
Binary opposites Bad vs Evil
Upbeat music
Things going wrong
Police
Chase scenes
Fight scenes
Weapons
Real life situations
Drama
Setting/ Location: genre
There were only two locations which we used in our short film they were; Newbury Park
Park and Ifaz Chowdhurys (Director) house. We used these location as we needed a location
where the protagonists bag gets taken and we also needed a location which represented the
protagonists house. We used high key lighting in both these locations as this conforms to the
common conventions of an action film. If we used low key lighting in our film the audience
could gather connotations of a thriller film. As the cinematographer I had to make sure that
the shots that I was using wasnt dark so that the film could easily be identified as an action
film. We also had to make sure that for the final scene we changed the living room up, which
was used in the second scene, to look like an interrogation room. We think we pulled this of
well as in the final production the audience was not able to see that the interrogation room
was actually just the living room without the mirrors and the sofas.
Costume and props:

The costume didnt really have any drastic importance to our film but the props which we
used did. We had to make sure that the fake cocaine brick looked realistic enough to be seen
as a real one. The director sat down and used flour, tape and saran wrap to make the cocaine
brick look realistic. The creation of the brick took 15 minutes and it looked very realistic and
believable. The costumes which we used in our film werent really planned but we thought
that the clothes that were naturally worn by the actors suited the production so we decided to
use it as the costume for our film. The use of a cocaine bricks help conforms towards the
action genre. In current action films, the use of drugs is a subject that is touched on a lot. We
decided to follow this trend and base our film around drugs.
Editing:
Editing didnt really have too much of an important role in our production however we had to
make sure that the cuts which were used were fast and that the editor used fast paced editing
as these are the common editing techniques that are used in action films. Our production has
a lot of jump cuts to make sure we followed the typical cuts in action films. The editor also
used a montage of shots to add more tension during a scene.
Another thing that the editor did was create duplicates of our character in one scene to create
the representation of the protagonists conscious.
Characters:
The representation of our protagonist was stereotypical of normal eighteen year old boys
trendy, tall and holding a bag full of books. We used our director to play the actor of the film
as we decided that he best suits the role of the protagonist in our film. Ifaz appearance
perfectly suited the protagonist so we changed our previous actor and decided to use Ifaz. The
representation of the interrogator, who appeared in the last scene, was a slight countertype as
we made him very sarcastic. The actor which we used, Daniel Akinwunmi, was very
compatible with this role as he has previous experience in acting due to the reason that he
owns his personal YouTube channel which he acts in skits.
Titles and Credits:
The title of our film is the first thing that appeared in the film. They were very simple and not
animated a lot as we wanted to get straight to the point of our film and we wanted the title to
conform to the action genre. If the title was very animated and colourful then the audience
would get an idea that the film is not an action film but more like a fantasy film. The credits
which appear at the end of the film is very simple due to the reason that we unfortunately
didnt use time management effectively and ran out of time to create a more advanced credit.
However we made sure that the title and credits were similar if not the same style, due to
continuity.
Music and Voiceover:

We had tense action music that started to play through the second scene to the end. The music
changes discreetly at certain times to make sure that the score music is not repetitive. We
found an un copyrighted mp3 snippet of the Netflix series Daredevil, which suited our
production perfectly. We also added chase music through the chase scene to add more tension
in this scene. However the transition of the score music to the chase scene music wasnt as
smooth as we wouldve liked. We have a voiceover in our film which is used as a person
speaking through the phone. This person was played by myself, Shahil Islam, and the editor
was able to make it sound like I was speaking through the phone by adjusting the sound
through Final Cut Pro. He also made my voice deeper and more robotic so it sounds
anonymous.
Cinematography:

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Evaluation Activity Number 1: In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life media products?

Costume and props:

Music and Voiceover:

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