In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Research became vital when it came to making big decisions about our own film, it allowed us to fully understand the conventions of short films and gave us the opportunity to understand what worked well when trying to convey certain emotions and atmospheres in such a short period of time.
My research taught me that every short film has a hidden meaning in it, because 5-10 mins (average length of short films) isn't enough time to thoroughly explore a story and come to a penultimate conclusion, and so instead what they do is quickly set the scene, show the pressing issue, and then come to a quick and precise climax which normally has some form of pragmatic meaning. the most prominent examples of this are in the films: 2+2=5, and Doll face.
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| Doll Face is an animated short film showing a robot apply make up on its face trying to mimic a model on the tv in front of it but each time it applies the make up the model changes and the tv gets further away, this has pragmatic meanings of the un reachable beauty standards of today's media and is trying to reassure the viewer of the film that they should not spend there lives trying to mimic what the media shows them. As well as this the research taught us the many different techniques that are used to make a successful short film. For example Doll face is an animated short but taught us a lot about the flow of a short film and the use of cuts, for example it didn't linger on shots for a long time each shot was held for a fitting amount of time, which is massively important if you want your film to have an impact on the audience as it is very easy to cut your shots too quickly or hold them for too long losing all impact of the film, doll face did an amazing job of this as it manages to keep the audience engaged but yet the story and whats happening is so simple and almost boring but by cutting between long medium and close up's at the right moments it manages to hold the audience's attention for long enough to convey the narravtive properly. It also taught us the importance of angles and shot distances, for example the film opens with a pivatol panning establishing shot of the box before the robot comes out but that shot gives the audience time to get used to the setting, props lighting etc which allowed them to focus fully on the actions, and emotions of the robot once it came out of the box, which allowed the audience to make sense of the narrative and made a potentially obscure and abstract meaning (dont follow media's beauty standards) very clear and prominent.  The research i did on Doll Face helped me during both post production and production, whilst making the film i was sure to think about the camera angles i had shot and making sure i had shot enough, when shooting i would get about 5 different angles of one scene to ensure that we would have enough angles to play around with and cut if and when necessary. This has helped our final product as the audience never gets bored of the scene in hand as the visuals change as soon as the effect they initially have wears off. For example, a close up shot is supposed to convey the emotion and or intensity of a character depending on the narrative and context of the film he/she is in, but after that intensity and emotion has sunk in the viewer becomes distracted and the power the shot initially has worn off over time, we however spent a long time editing to make sure the cuts were timed perfectly, we did that by analyzing how long it would take before we ourselves got bored of a certain scene and then made adjustments accordingly, we would then test it on our classmates to ensure they didn't get bored of the shots either, i would not have focused on shot duration so much if it wasn't for my short film research of Doll Face. Our short film's genre is comedy and so it was important that we looked at lots of clips from films and short films that have success as comedy's. comedy is such a hard genre to get right as there is a fine line between funny and cringe, knowing where the lines is comes from the research. The two main sources for this information that i used were "One minute time machine" and a clip from the film "Step Brothers" They both successfully create comedy and are not cringe, and research showed me that it was down to three main things:well timed and placed pauses, good scripting, and camera work.  
The main component's of comedy is timing and script, so we spent a long time before each scene:
Both step brothers and One minute time machine had long pauses after the delivery of certain jokes which help to create incongruous comedy, as well as this they both have very silly scripts and plots which match our films plot perfectly, which allows us the freedom to make the script as silly as we want in order to make it incongruously funny for the viewer, it works because the viewer is laughing at the characters stupidity and inability to follow the normal politeness conventions of everyday life.
We are shown this incongruous comedy in the following image:
Both characters are in the interview and one is sitting directly behind the other, which is very odd and doesn't follow the conventions and expectations of everyday life, and so the viewer finds it funny, there is also some relief theory in there as the viewer is laughing at the characters stupidity and laughing because it isn't them making the mistake of "interviewing as a pair", this comedy is also reinforced by the script and how the characters expressions show no sign of embarrassment as they progress through the interview they begin to become hostile towards the interviewer as if she is the silly one which once again creates incongruous comedy using script body language and tone.
One minute time machine is another great example of incongruous comedy, using script pauses, and tone, a lot of the comedy in this short is created just by the script and facial expressions as the protagonist tries to hit on the lady on our left (his right), but keeps failing and watching him fail repeatedly creates a lot of incongruous and relief comedy.
When making our film we tried our best to tap into this use of script, tone, and body language to create incongruous comedy, this is clear to see in our first interview, when he goes to get the sweets, and he drags them across the table and there is no dialogue making it extremely incongruous in its context. We also decided to try to use a funny non diegetic soundtrack in the background to help build another layer to the comedy.
In conclusion we used the research of those two shorts to ensure we payed attention to:
Poster Design And Research
I spent a long time looking for ideal posters to analyze to ensure that my design followed the correct conventions for its mise en scene and target audience.
The Main Features that make this poster so good at portraying the comedic aspects and success of this film are the facial expressions of the characters, and the text's colour and reviews, they really give a sense of incongruous comedy without being so silly that its cringe. The colours of this poster are also a massive aspect of its success it they all match and are aesthetic showing the professionalism of the design as well as portraying the comedic genre again with incongruous colours. Its also portrayed by the tagline "killers have never been this close knit" it relates the the clothes they wearing again to create a sense of comedy.
 Graffiti has a more serious feel to it, i chose to research it because unlike the other films ours isn't all comedy it has a lot of life issue and serious scenes in and so i needed to research how other successful films had made posters that gave connotations of being a little more serious, Graffiti does it perfectly as the image on its own is quite ominous but that paired with the lack of text really emphasis's the serious tone that it is clearly going for as it has none of the bubbly text we usually expect from film posters and so by going against the connotations and expectations of a typical film poster it has made the viewer feel un easy and so creates a much more serious ominous feel. 
I have followed all the key aspects that the poster research had shown me to create the right tone for the film I have made.
For Example:
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Avoid using dark blue to highlight - the word can't be read. In your analysis of research and how you used it - there are a lot of good points made here. However, you should make comments about plot/narrative and story more explicit by using theoretical terms. Also - you say script is part of mise en scene, but it's not - this is your opportunity to discuss narrative explicitly. What about character types? You discuss the elements of comedy, but character traits in short films should be discussed. Your film actually does feel very much like a short, but it's not really as convincing as it could be in your evaluation. You should discuss use of camera and music too. The sections on the ancillary tasks are too short for more than low level 3. You need to show that you know the difference between posters for feature length films and short films, and then be much more precise about the design features , using terms and illustrations from stages of the process.The section on LWLs is again too short for higher than level 2. Much more on the magazine itself - design and house style in form and content, with many more screenshots and embedded video. Again, look at exemplar work for good practice.
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