Evaluation question for AS media studies

1. Joshua Boland
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and
conventions of real media products?
Our media product uses, develops and challenges the conventions of real media
products and I will be exploring the different conventions our product used, developed
and challenged.
Mystery: Not giving too much away
The use of mystery allows us to challenge the convention of Batman: The Dark Knight. In
our product it shows a character that has not been portrayed as a mischievous teenager,
he has been portrayed as a stereotypical teenage boy however in the end he gets into
trouble and the ending of the product is a gun shot, with no body, no sight of the bullet
being fired at him. This challenges the ending of Batman: The Dark Knight as there is a
sense of mystery as the Batman wouldn’t return the ending does not give away anything
for the future much like our film the ending is a mystery, we challenge the sense of
mystery to attract the audience and therefore the convention of mystery is used. This is
what I mean, the ending of The Dark Knight gives this mystery as Batman does not give
any clues on his next move for his next chapter.
Use of titles
We used title by editing them into the raw footage to allow the viewers to know who
created the product and what roles each person had so that it is clear that it was a
group effort. This was definitely effective as we edited the titles to come in on the beat
which keeps the product having good fluency and continuity. This reflects the genre as it
keeps the theme going as the titles do not come up all at once they come up at
different time periods throughout the sequence. It is important to have titles so the
audience knows the key things about the film, such as the name, company name and
even the actors and directors so that when another film comes out of ours they would
know who we are.
Hook/entice viewers
We hooked the audience by using non-diegetic sound so that the audience has a sense
of confusion which would hook the viewers in wanting to watch more, the opening
sequence has no diegetic sound this is done deliberately so that the characters speaking
do not give away the story that was about to be told and the audience may not
understand that and would want to know what happens next. This is important because

2. Joshua Boland
if an action film does not hook the viewer its as though its not achieving the goal they
set out to do and therefore it is important because the intensity needs to be high
throughout for example in the final film of The Dark Knight Trilogy there is a point
where the bad guy (Bane) captures Batman and the scene then cuts to a completely
different scene and for about 10 minutes there is no comments or anything to do on the
whereabouts of Batman, this hooks the viewers into wanted to know where the
protagonist is in this instance but we challenged this convention.
Pre-plot narrative
A pre plot is where you plot a specific part of the film before production even begins
and it allows the director to plan around the pre plot so that the film makes sense and
be a success. I wanted to use this because that is the way I like to work, pre plot things
then brainstorm ideas and this is what we did with the narrative of ThreeSeven which
made it effective because the ideas P.A.J Productions discussed allowed us to create the
product to the standards that we wanted.
State genre
It was made quite clear that our film was an action film by the use of props, the prop we
had used was an all black M911 BB gun which establishes that the film is action because
79% of action films contain a gun in them and our product has this in too therefore it is
clear on the genre, the use of costume implies the sense of a traditional “bad guy” look
as the protagonist develops this persona and therefore allows P.A.J Productions to state
the genre in which the film is in. We could also show that our film is in the action genre
by a different story, we could have used a car chase or just a normal chase which would
then immediately refer to an action film.