In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our genre of film is mock-horror & comedy mainly; these two genres complement each other and in this case work hand in hand. This is similar to films like ‘scary movie’, ‘ghost station’ & ‘Evil Bong’. Our film uses the Halloween codes and conventions which are used to create comedy, the subcategory in horror we took was vampires – stereotypical codes and conventions are things like fangs, blood, vampires, capes, spooky kind of music, pumpkins etc and we used these codes and conventions in our film. We followed most of these conventions to a degree where we could still instill the comedy side of the film which must be very visible as it is significant in our story. We had Mr. Vamping dress up as a vampire and teach a lesson on vampires, this followed the codes and conventions of Halloween.
We had Rodney coming in with a garlic chain, carrot stake which is a development of the code and conventions of this genre also; this was done to instill comedy into the film. Like Scary movie we wanted to take a lot of things which are serious and make them comical. We added spooky music which is also something which is used in this genre. Moving on to comedy we use some dialogue to cause comedy like Rodney coming to class late and saying he couldn’t find his underwear, Some of Danny’s remarks towards Rodney and Mr. Vamping also, the use of actions in the film like Rodney falling over all the time, being thrown into a bush, screaming like a girl and sulking when his friends play a joke on him. All of the above are used to bring humor to the viewer. Most of the things above are not contrasting from the stereotypical codes and conventions but we have developed the codes and conventions by imputing the comedy.
One thing which we got inspiration from was Son of Rambo’s main character we wanted to take some traits from his character as a kind of comical boy who wants to save the day. We see a transformation of Rodney during the film from Rodney the clown to Rodney the heroic clown, we used this character as an example to help our actor feel more like the character and get a deeper understanding of what we wanted from him.
We thought of the idea of a child seeking out vampires from things like ‘Mona the vampire’ Mona is child who has made it her goal to fight of the vampires, it is seen as comical as she is just a child and they always turn out not to be vampires, her secondary occupation is a secret. We used parts of the ‘home alone’ character to develop our film who has been left on his own and has to fight the bad guys on his own, it is not exactly the same situation but the fact that he has been pushed away by friends inevitably forces him to gain this false sense of superiority and take on Mr. Vamping.
We decided to use the vampire effect as it is one of the main conventions of Halloween, although we knew that it would be very hard to portray a vampire in modern day society in stead of challenging the convention we chose to develop it by having fangs one moment and not at the other (we implemented the Halloween based lesson where he could use the fangs and take them out to show the class he was acting) and at the end of the film have him holding the old ones and the new pair in his mouth. I believe we tried very hard to put it in a realistic way to ensure we have a certain effect whilst also having logical causality.
We used a school like in Mona the vampire which was a convention of younger children when involving vampires, we could do this effectively as we were filming in school, so surroundings was not a problem – to input a bell and other features of school would be easy to do also. Most of our ideas we got from Mona the vampire were not challenging but were using and developing the code and convention.
However we did not just stick to the stereotypical codes and conventions, Mr. Vamping was a vampire but we didn’t take the feature of a vampire that they can’t be in sunlight, like in twilight we slightly developed the feature to implement it into our film, this was one way in which we challenged some codes and conventions. Our film was based in a school which is not an immediate setting for a vampire to be but was in school of rock which was a comedy film aimed at children – although it is not exactly the same it has some similarities, in our character profile we did state that he moves from place to place every now and then so he doesn’t get too attached to a certain surrounding.
We challenged the stereotypical character by over exaggerating Rodney’s character through making him wear a garlic necklace and a carrot stake…although it added to humor initially it would be a wooden stake which shows the differentiation from adult audience and having a audience of children. This is like in Mona and the vampire – there are loads of toy weapons instead of real weapons as it is for a younger audience in order to create suspense
The music used while Rodney is running to class is a kind of game-like kind of music which we used to add to the youth of the film, TV kids show Mona the vampire uses this same kind of music which makes it kind of childish humor, we have other music which is spooky like when Mr. Vamping comes in with fangs, this is the kind of music which is used in scary movie to create laughter.
When researching for ideas one film we looked at was Home alone we chose to use parts of the little boy’s character, ‘Rodney’ seems very loveable, yet troublesome at the same time and portrays a young boy. These conventions would attract our target audience; with Rodney we developed him through the home alone character by adding a kind of foolish side to him this was also from Kenan and Kel where Kel is very clumsy and always making mistakes, Kel is liked by people but we developed this by making most reject him and makes the boys push him away in the film. This allows Rodney to have a more rounded character instead of being a one leveled character.
With the boys we had films like lil rascals who think they are bigger than they actually are, with the scene where Rodney is pushed into the bush – the other boys are chanting as if there hooligans – it is a shot where the boys think they are older than they actually are like in the lil rascals the kids try to build there own house and make a lot of money, its about boys thinking there men. We didn’t challenge the code and convention that much but added small pieces of a more older film.
Through our film we mainly stuck to the stereotypical codes and conventions of Halloween and comedy as sticking to this usually allows you to create a good production which has a visible level of attainment which can be obtained. When branching away from the conventions too much it makes it very hard to be successful and still attract to your audience. We must remember that pleasures of predictability are vital to attracting an audience if your film has been categorized as a certain genre and theme and the viewers have no sense of prediction then it is not really successful, making it hard to achieve a good review.
Our genre of film is mock-horror & comedy mainly; these two genres complement each other and in this case work hand in hand. Our film goes for the Halloween theme which is used to create comedy, the subcategory in horror we took was vampires – stereotypical codes and conventions are things like fangs, blood, vampires, capes, spooky kind of music, pumpkins etc. we followed most of these conventions to a degree where we could still instill the comedy side of the film which must be very visible as it is significant in our story. We had Mr. Vamping dress up as a vampire and teach a lesson on vampires,
Rodney coming in with a garlic chain, carrot stake which is a code and conventions of this genre also. We added spooky music which is also something which is expected in this genre. Moving on to comedy we use some dialogue to cause comedy like Rodney coming to class late and saying he couldn’t find his underwear, Some of Danny’s remarks towards Rodney and Mr. Vamping also, the use of actions in the film like Rodney falling over all the time, being thrown into a bush, screaming like a girl and sulking when his friends play a joke on him. We use these kinds of things to bring humor to the viewer.
One thing which we got inspiration from was Son of Rambo’s main character we wanted to take some traits from his character as a kind of comical boy who wants to save the day. We see a transformation of Rodney during the film from Rodney the clown to Rodney the heroic clown, we used this character as an example to help our actor feel more like the character and get a deeper understanding of what we wanted from him.
We thought of the idea of a child seeking out vampires from things like ‘Mona the vampire’ Mona is child who has made it her goal to fight of the vampires, it is seen as comical as she is just a child and they always turn out not to be vampires, her secondary occupation is a secret. We used parts of the ‘home alone’ character who has been left on his own and has to fight the bad guys on his own, it is not exactly the same situation but the fact that he has been pushed away by friends inevitably forces him to gain this false sense of superiority and take on Mr. Vamping.
We went for the vampire effect as it is one of the main conventions of Halloween, although we knew that it would be very hard to portray a vampire in modern day society like having fangs one moment and not at the other we implemented the Halloween based lesson where he could use the fangs and take them out to show the class he was acting and at the end of the film have him holding the old ones and the new pair in his mouth. I believe we tried very hard to put it in a realistic way to ensure we have a certain effect whilst also having logical causality.
We used a school like in Mona the vampire which was a convention of younger children when involving vampires, we could do this effectively as we were filming in school, so surroundings was not a problem – to input a bell and other features of school would be easy to do also.
However we did not just stick to the stereotypical codes and conventions, Mr. Vamping was a vampire but we didn’t take the feature of a vampire that they can’t be in sunlight this was one way in which we challenged some codes and conventions. Our film was based in a school which is not an immediate setting for a vampire to be, in our character profile we did state that he moves from place to place every now and then so he doesn’t get too attached to a certain surrounding.
We over exaggerated on Rodney’s character through making him wear a garlic necklace and a carrot stake…although it added to humor initially it would be a wooden stake which shows the differentiation from adult audience and having a audience of children.
Through our film we mainly stuck to the stereotypical codes and conventions of Halloween and comedy as sticking to this usually allows you to create a good production which has a visible level of attainment which can be obtained. When branching away from the conventions too much it makes it very hard to be successful and still attract to your audience. We must remember that pleasures of predictability are vital to attracting an audience if your film has been categorized as a certain genre and theme and the viewers have no sense of prediction then it is not really successful, making it hard to achieve a good review.
