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

 

My media product uses forms and conventions of real media products by adhering to the codes and conventions of the social realism genre. I researched the genre and looked into why some of these codes were in place. For example, the convention of social realism films consisting of mainly dialogue exists because it is an attempt by the genre to make it as realistic as possible. As a result of us making a social realism genre film, I looked at examples of films of this type and tried to figure out what the most common themes and issues were that film dealt with. Consequently, I worked out which ones were the best to use and which ones would work in our film. We adapted the plot to conform to some of these conventions and tried to make it seem that it was obvious that our film was of the social realism genre. The result of this is that there are many examples of my media product using forms and conventions of real media text.

 

My media product also develops the forms and conventions of real media products by focusing the plot on the same types of genre plot points that I saw in the many films of the social realism type that I had a look at. For example, I looked at films such as 'Bullet Boy', 'This Is England' and other films that aren't feature length to get a better idea of what codes and conventions are present in social realism short films as well. I noticed that in a lot of social realism films, for example 'Soft', violence is often a large part of the narrative. For example, often there is a ot of wars between gangs or very similar themes of someone attacking someone and such occurences in this genre. There is also often a protagonist, an antagonist and a character who needs to be saved from the antagonist. E.g. in 'Soft' (See below) the son is the protagonist, the bullies are the antagonist and the dad is the person who needs to be saved.

 

My media product challenges forms and conventions of real media products by not necesarily also doing what social realism films would. Sometimes I would do someone that is very unlike the social realism genre. For example, social realism, as the title suggests, is meant to be realistic, often dealing with everyday issues and problems, whereas my film deals with a mentally disturbed young man who becomes obsessed with one girl and kidnaps her and murders her boyfriend with a gun. This is not exactly the most realistic narrative, but it epitomises that my media product challenges the forms and conventions of the typical real media products. Indeed, as I said earlier about the film 'Soft', social realism films have been known to deal with violence. However, our film takes it to the next level, challenging the comparative lack of violence in the usual most violent social realism films. It is this unrealism that chalenges the whole concept of the genre as a whole. Furthermore, rather than dealing with the typical social issues, such as relationships' breakup or family affairs, our film deals with the social aspects of someone who is mentally unstable, once again challenging the social norm as in the usual film of this genre. The reason this is is because the whole process of creating a social realism film is quite standard and it is quite obvious that some narrative techniques may be replicated, so it is an important aspect of our film that it challenges the codes and conventions of the genre.