Evaluation question #1

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

To decide whether or not my film opening was going to follow the conventions of a modern comedy, I first had to research the market. I took inspiration from the openings of both Step Brothers and Snatch. They are two completely different films in terms of themes and filming styles, making my final product quite unique.

Step Brothers is more of a typical American comedy, using very conventional shots and forms of directing. Most shots are very simple and plain such as medium shots, long shots, close ups and over the shoulder shots. These are the main shots I feel make it easy for the viewer to understand the scene in many ways, making it perfect for a wide audience, so I have included them thoroughly throughout my opening scene.

Many directors, particularly in the British film industry use camera angles and editing to create comedy, this can be seen within Edgar Wrights films such as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. These can be considered as somewhat unconventional, as this style doesn't appear very often in big Hollywood blockbusters, i tried to implement some of these more advanced shots like canted angle shots and deep focus to add more interest to each scene, giving the audience a slightly more intricate and comedic opening. Since my target audience is within the UK i feel like this style of directing will appeal to them a lot more, being perhaps somewhat unconventional for big blockbuster films but slightly more conventional for smaller British comedies. Using both the simple shots to show my characters and the unconventional shots allow for a good balance, so I would say in terms of shot types, my film follows conventions in a sense, but goes against them in other instances.

A lot of films throughout the genre also have openings without much speech, just a visual sequence with music in the background the briefly introduce each of the characters. In this case I have followed conventions as my opening is just a short introduction to each of the characters. In my case though, i have done it slightly differently, as I have given each of the characters a freeze frame in which they have a codename. Not many films do this, and simply open with a few characters doing various things where perhaps their name is shown through dialogue, or other separate details about them.