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

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

Our media product can be seen to have used and developed many conventions of real media products from the British Youth Culture genre. However there are many ways in which we have questioned and challenged the forms of this genre.

Firstly here is an example where we try to imitate the conventions of a British Youth Culture genre. Commonly in British Youth Culture films they are set in a London estate where everything looks quite run down and in need of repair. We found the perfect place to film our opening two minutes as we felt it had everything that portrayed the working class.

The mise en scene and props used effectively portray the gang from a working class background and are similarly used in films such as Kidulthood and SHANK.  However in this scene you are introduced to the two main gang members.  We filmed the two characters from a slight low angle to convey their power, but the characters begin sitting behind bars which we felt would represent them being in a ‘mental prison’ even in their own territory.

We also tried to compare and contrast the techniques and conventions of films such as Kidulthood and Adulthood. Here we have a snap shot of a scene from Kidulthood. As you can see it is set in an estate the characters are wearing caps and baggy hoodies. If you compare the image below with the image above you can see the similarity between the set and the characters. We hope we have effectively imitated some of the conventions of these types of films.

 However we also tried to challenge and question the typical forms and conventions of the British Youth Culture genre. In our opening two minutes we contrasted a hard working, dedicated young man with an aggressive, openly violent gang. Usually in the British Youth Culture genre you find a character that is aggressive, violent and rude. However we have chosen to show the juxtaposition between the gang and the dedicated young man.  We hopefully conveyed the message that if you are dedicated you can achieve something in your life no matter what background you come from. To portray this we contrasted each shot of the young man with the exact same shot of the gang.

Over-the-shoulder shot of gang members.

Over-the-shoulder shot of footballer






Opening Title Sequence

Typical Youth Culture Conventions

Kidulthood

My Product

I felt the use of simple white font on a plain black background was very effective in portraying the calmness and simplicity of the opening two minutes. It also gives the audience a chance to reflect and focus on the titles and the sounds in the background and not be distracted by any thing else on the screen. The transitions of the texts are smooth an overlapping, they fade in and out. This creates a sense of mystery and anxiety. The sound in the background also creates a sense of mystery as the audience are oblivious to why he is breathing heavily. The simple white font on a black background was also used by Kidulthood which gave us even more of a reason to use this technique. 

Trainspotting

My Product

Another convention which we developed was the use of a low angle shot of the characters feet when running. I have always thought this is an effective shot in portraying the building of tension and action. It is an effective way of making the audience feel as if they are in the midst of it all. It additionally suggests the pace of the scene and is the perfect way to get the audiences attention. 

Transpotting 

My Product

The technique of overlapping titles ontop of the action was used in films such as Trainspotting. The reason behind this is so the audience are never distracted from the action or have to take there eyes away. However in Trainspotting there would be pauses when titles would come up, we felt this was a clever technique but we also thought as ours was very fast paced even the slightest pauses may loose the audiences attention. Usually in our product the titles would be placed over a relatively slow moving shot therefore the audience are given a chance to absorb the information given.