Evaluation: Question 1.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film; Happily Ever After, is categorised within the Romantic-Comedy genre. This means we had to look into the general conventions of a Romantic-Comedy film (often referred to as rom-com), however at the same time we wanted to give our own spin on things. So in terms of following general conventions of a rom-com, we begin by introducing the characters subtly, with multiple comedy-specific sequences. We also have a romantic montage which is seen in many rom-coms. Similarly, we challenge the conventions of rom-coms by using a comedic meeting of the two romantic characters as opposed to over-exposing the romantic side of the film.

Through the montage, we develop upon the general conventions of a rom-com. A usual montage will be a simple compilation of romantic scenes, while ours includes different scenes in a transparent fade playing simultaneously, we did this as we feel it conforms to the forms and conventions of real media products, while also adding to them and developing upon them.
Our film was very much inspired by "Vicky and Sam". This short film uses similar shooting styles while also varying comedy types; they use subtle humour while also using obvious and over-exaggerated humour. The music used in the film goes for stereotypical love sequence music, however we decided to steer clear of that as we wanted to be less manipulative with our films micro-features. "Nightwalking" is another film that inspired our film, while focusing on the comedy as opposed to romance, the film uses many tracking shots to keep the audience following the main protagonist.

This image shows the comparison between our film and "Vicky and Sam", both shots are from the romantic montage, however we use cross fades between shots and light hearted music. However "Vicky and Sam" uses simple cuts and overly dramatic music. By opposing these conventions, we are challenging the forms of large budget blockbuster films.




For the poster, it mimicked other Romantic Comedy Posters such as the poster for "Win a date with Tad Hamilton".

Both posters feature two characters enticed within the narrative, while the other character is seemingly out of the loop. The thing we decided to do differently is not have the couple be the enticed characters, instead it is the protagonists best friend and 'girlfriend'. This was done to give the audience a fair understanding of what to expect.