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

•  Narrative organisation 
• Characterisation
• Mise en scene 
• Use of genre conventions
• Editing/post production 

Narrative organisation

The short films I have decided to look at are "Waving At Cars", David Beauchamp,2008, "The Archivist" James Lees, 2008, "The End Of The Line" Max Pugh, 2005, "Signs" Publicis Mojo, 2009, "Inside" Trevor Sands, 2008. Each film has its own uniqueness and really helped our group decide on what to have in our film. Short films contain some of the most inventive and unconventional work to be found in film making. Each film I have chosen to write about contains their own personal narrative and they way they have been organised really connects with the audience. 


All the films have a beginning, middle and end apart from "Waving at cars" which has an open ended ending. Narrative organisation allows the audience to establish the setting the characters and what situation they have been put into and this is all because of the layout of the beginning, middle and ending. I think having an open ended film sometimes can be quite interesting at time allowing the audience to make there own ending up. "Signs" is the longest short film I looked at and therefore has a completed short film. It also, had many locations and more characters were involved unlike "Waving at Cars" which is very short and has three main characters and the ending is left for the audience to understand.  

Characterisation 

Each short film had only a few main characters in them mainly just two. However, this is depending on how long the film is.  But the way they are presented really allows the audience to understand who they are trying to portray, this could either be stereotypical or they play a character that was meant for them. 


For example in "Waving at cars" the male character physically abuses his wife and the audience can see this by his actions. This is shown through the use of camera work, and sound mainly. There is a close up of his hand upon hers on the trolley showing he has a tight grip over her so she can't escape almost like she is trapped. The dialogue that is used his language and body language as well with it is very aggressive and he is very threatening and the audience can see this. 

It is a lot like "The Archivist", where he is so obsessed with his girlfriend and the audience can see how far this goes. Again, this is shown through mise en scene and sound. Throughout the film there is the sound of the vacuum machine as the film goes on the audience recognise that, that sound is him wrapping something else up that his girlfriend had touched or even looked at. Each prop has a symbol of characterisation in this film because each one is about their relationship and how he as an unusual obsession with her.  


I think the characterisation is very important in a short film because if their stories they are telling make no sense then the short film would have no narrative organisation.  These conventions of short film need to work together to make a good short film. 

Mise en scene 

The props used in "The Archivist" are very good, because each one was thought through and used and had its own relevance to the film. This influenced our film and one of the good things about our film is that the props we used were toys that would have been played with in the 1940s and the location everything to do with the 1940s was thought through properly so that it would work. 


The lighting in this film as well is very interesting, there is very little light when he is in the main room and this fits well with the film because it itself is quite dark and twisted. Also, what I noticed when watching the film I thought that when he was with his girlfriend in the beginning everything seemed brighter almost as if the lighting was fitting with the mood of the film because as it goes on and their relationship gets worse then the lighting gets darker. 


The setting was good for all the films each one was in a different location which showed that short films can have variety and there not all in the same locations. 

Genre Conventions 

The films that I have picked, I have tried to make them all have a diverse and different so that the audience can see the difference between each short film. One is about domestic abuse/drama, mental disability/drama, romance, romantic/drama and a split personality. I think it was good to write about different genres because then is shows my point made earlier about short films being inventive and unconventional. 

Editing 

I have chosen two screen from the short film "The End Of The Line" because I thought it had the best editing techniques used out of most of the short films I had picked. Because there was so much used in the film, the colour change to show the importance of the beach to this character which links to characterisation, and also, all the filters used to show her confusion and show what the problem is with her. I think in our film we should have used more editing techniques this made of improved our film and would have been better.