The document discusses how the media product challenges conventions of real media products in its genre. It uses a teenage female protagonist rather than the typical male survivor. This challenges the male-dominated norm while allowing more opportunities to show innocence and fear. The document also discusses how it adheres to conventions for titles, weather, logos, camera angles, outfits, lighting, sound, and target audiences found in research of popular post-apocalyptic films, while also developing some conventions.

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

2. When thinking of a survivor of an apocalypse the first thing
that springs to mind is a strong middle-aged male character,
and in all of the post-apocalyptic films and books I
researched the protagonist was a male, therefore I decided to
challenge the convention in my opening and make the
protagonist a strong independent teenage girl. Men like to
come across as strong and fearless so by using a young girl I
could show that surviving a pandemic isn't about being
fearless, you just have to be strong-willed enough to want to
stay alive. By using a female, teenage protagonist I was able
to show innocence and fear a lot more. I got the inspiration
from a video game called 'The Last Of Us' and 'The Hunger
Games' which is the only bit of research that I found had a
female survivor as a protagonist.

3. •
After researching, I found that the title screen typically comes last after the other
titles such as 'produced by' have all appeared on screen. The font is usually
plain and very simple, a sans serif is usually used. As well as the font being
plain, the background and colours used in films i researched were also plain to
make the title of the film stand out. This is important as it helps keep the
audience watching. The main title font size is usually very large so that the
audience can see it perfectly this also helps with making the title stand out.
When researching the titles i found that the main title screen stayed on for about
3-5 seconds in most of the openings. I stuck with this convention and my title
appeared on screen for 5 seconds. For my main title i used a font from a
website called 'dafont.com' i found it under the 'eroded' section. I thought this
would be a really good font for the opening as its plain, yet it has an eroded to
look to it which perfectly matches the genre of post-apocalypse. Once again this
sticks with the typical convention used for the main titles. However I did
challenge the conventions of other typical media products as my font appears
on the screen from small to big, slowing down before it is just at its largest,
before exiting the screen in reverse and going off screen from large to little.
Typical media products show their fonts on and then off screen, I however
decided to have my font showing on screen like this as I thought it made a really
good bridge in between the titles and the main opening clips. My font colour is
white on a plain background as this helps it stand out, i got this inspiration from
the post-apocalyptic film 'I Am Legend.'

4. •
When researching weather for my film I found most films
started off with dull, miserable weather until later on in the
film when everything turns out good and the weather
brightens up to reflect the mood. As I was only filming an
opening I needed to really attract the audience's attention so
to do this I had to sum up the film in a few clips. The best
bits of post-apocalyptic films are when everything is dull and
gloomy and you begin to unravel the story of what has
happened. So usually the dull and gloomy bits when
referring to this particular genre. Therefore for the weather
in my opening I have stuck with the typical convention. The
weather isn't bright yet it isn't raining, it's just dull and
cloudy, so that it's dark enough to reflect the mood yet bright
enough to film in as I filmed in natural light.

5. •
During my research i found that production companies had
nothing in common whatsoever when it came to producing a
post-apocalyptic films. Some low budget companies
produced just post-apocalyptic films and therefore their logo
was already tied in with the post-apocalyptic theme however
big companies such as universal, colour graded their to
make it look darker and fit in with the genre of the film. I
decided to follow this convention and make my logo dark to
fit in with the genre. The colours i have used are a deep red
and black as they are dark colours, red is an annotation of
evil and danger and black is an annotation of darkness so
were both perfect colours to use with the chosen postapocalyptic genre. It was designed to look bloody and dark
and i believe this has been achieved.

6. •
The camera angles i used, I stuck to the conventions however i also developed
conventions by using camera angles used in other genres of films. Most camera
angles used in post-apocalyptic films tend to involve the audience by using
shots such as over the shoulder and point of view shots. I used loads of these
particular shots for example when the protagonist was lighting the fire, picking
up the leaflet and getting the matches. When not trying to involve the audience,
shots of the face and body language are used a lot to show the emotion of the
protagonist. I used this shot when the protagonist in my opening realised that
she wasn't alone in her hide out and someone was outside. For my opening, the
main inspiration for my camera angles, once again, is I Am Legend. inspiration
was also took from world war Z, The Book Of Eli and Children of men. To
develop the conventions i also took inspiration from other genre's of films, TV
shows and video games as these showed many interesting angles and
techniques. For example most of the point-of-view shots i use in my opening
have been inspired by the hit TV series, Breaking Bad. The emotional shots
were inspired by the video game The Last Of Us, as during the story clips in the
video game the protagonist has a few close-ups of her face and body to show
emotion. I decided to develop these conventions because I believed that by
applying these in my work it would improve the overall finished product and
make it flow easily together.

7. • The
overall colour throughout postapocalyptic films is typically dark and gloomy
and reflects the mood and weather. I made
sure i filmed in the right weather so that my
finished film looked dark and gloomy yet it
was bright enough to film.

8. • When
researching titles I found that they
conventionally came in a specific order, i decided to
follow this order as it doesn't just appear in postapocalyptic films but any genre film and i thought
this was extremely important to follow. By following
the typical title order it kept it simple and i didn't
confuse myself with unnecessary titles everywhere.
The fonts used were sans serif yet they were
different to the title as they were plain, however
they were still bold, white and stood out on the
background which was the establishing shots.The
inspiration for my titles such as 'directed by' was
'The walking dead' and the main title inspiration
was 'I Am Legend.'

9. •
During my research i found that most outfits used in postapocalyptic films were conventionally scruffy, dirty and old.
We tried to pull this off by using scruffy jeans, an old white
top covered in dirt, and a big baggy coat as the main outfit.
The white top was used to symbolise innocence. At the end
of my opening the protagonist's outfit completely changed
and she walked off from her hide out wearing a big bag, a
thick coat, a mask on her face and heavy boots. This shows
she's off to face whatever is left of the world and she's
prepared for it. The inspiration for the outfit came from The
Hunger Games and the outfits at the beginning of the film
The Book Of Eli. As these outfits are dirty, scruffy and they
have been wearing the same outfit for days.

10. • The
lighting throughout my opening was basically
the same. Although i filmed in two locations, outside
and inside, the only lighting used throughout was
natural light from the sun. The weather was a big
factor in helping the light as we needed it to be
gloomy and dull yet light enough to film. To get this
we decided it was best to film in the morning. The
inspiration for my lighting was Children Of Men,
Book of Eli and The Hunger Games.

11. • For
the sound in my opening i stuck to the
conventions and used a news broadcast, a rifle
shot, a dramatic sound for my title and deep quiet
drone playing over my diagetic sound. All of the
films in my research that i looked at had quiet
drones and dramatic sounds contrasting off of each
other and that gave me the inspiration to use it in
my opening.

12. • From
my research i found that the main target
audience for post-apocalyptic films was men aged
15-40.I found this particular statistic on the website
IMDB. I decided it would probably be best to stick
to the conventions here then i decided why not try
and challenge and develop this convention and that
was when the idea of a female protagonist was
formed. The main character being female will
hopefully attract more female audiences to watch,
this therefore expands my audience range.