Question 1. In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or CHALLENGE forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products in a number of different ways. First of all research was required for us to make sure forms and conventions of real media products were included. Finding films that were similar to my film was vital and I watched them to see what I can gain to make sure that my film used, developed and challenged the codes and conventions. The films I did research on were Home Alone and Dennis the Menace (film) as they both have similar themes to ‘FIX UP LOOK HARD’. I researched these films because they have the same genre as mine therefore I knew I was able to learn something from it. Another thing was that their main characters who are the protagonists are young just like in our film so it was important to know how they are use and represent their characters to win the audience. Both films were able to make their characters fail at a particular but then get revenge and then succeeding in them. This was exactly what me and my group was aiming for as we wanted to show character development from the geek being a victim to being a bully himself.
            At first I watched films based on their storyline but then I realised that looking carefully at camera shots, angles and movement and Mise en scene shows how the director wants us to view a particular part, so we made sure that we used effective and smart camera techniques and appropriate Mise en scene. This was because the camera movements and angles help show the story better and brings films more to life and Mise en scene provides better quality of the film and makes the overall set design look realistic and nice.

We developed it by making sure that our main character progressed and changed for example being a coward to being brave and dressing geeky to dressing cool. These fit the forms and conventions of the genre as they tend to show character development through the protagonist completing their aim successfully e.g. in Home Alone 1 and 2 Kevin manages to set pranks on bunglers and get them caught by the police. I feel character progression is very important because it shows a change in our film which keeps our audience engaged as they feel the film may change a bit and excite them to continue watching. It also shows that me and my group are creative and can think of ways to change our character and still making him the protagonist. This is something I never realised and learnt through watching similar films and feedback.


Challenging forms and conventions of real media products was the hardest of all. This is because we didn’t follow the codes and conventions of the ending of films of our genre. For example in our film at the end the bully became the victim and the geek the bully getting his revenge. Watching films in class certainly helped me. We watched films like Amelie and short films like ‘Ice cream dream’ and ‘Job Street’. Watching these helped me understand how to use and develop forms and conventions of media products e.g. through narrative, character and sound, however they didn’t challenge codes and conventions of their genre which made it hard for me to know what to do to challenge as I had never done it before. I also had more faith because the films were independent and filmed on low budget which mine will also. I also watched some films at my own time on YouTube called ‘Future Shorts’ that show short films. I though this helped me a lot because these films were well filmed and interesting and I developed my creativity by thinking of things my target audience wouldn’t expect to see. Most of the films I watched didn’t challenge the codes and conventions so overall it was hard for me. From here I and my group thought about how to challenge codes and conventions of Media products to a great extent by changing bits of our narrative to see if it work or not. I feel this increased our creativity and teamwork skills because we worked much better to making it better, however there was risk that things could go wrong.
            The genre of my film is comedy for the family. It is a family film that mainly targets young children from the ages of 8-12. The great thing about the film is that it doesn’t discriminate and targets all ethnic and religious groups however it doesn’t target people from all socio economic groups like A and B as they may not be interested because their lifestyle wouldn’t match the characters in the film while people from C1 to E will. My film and the ones I studied tend to attract families as they include characters from different ages and deal with funny issues. Also because are rating is PG and some of our target audience are young and will therefore go and watch the film with their parents. The aspects of comedy my film includes is pranks. I feel this is the biggest strength of our film and the unique selling point as it is what makes up the film. There is also a huge decline in pranks in comedy films so it was an advantage for us to use it as well as a threat.

This challenges the forms and conventions as there are not recent ones meaning we were going against the recent ones. The threats of us doing this were high as the audience may not be used to seeing pranks as much but research and feedback helped us solve this.
My film follows the codes and conventions of family comedy films in my opening sequence. This is as we don’t reveal our character to the audience but give them clues of how the characters are going to be like. This is when Harry gets dressed and preparing himself and leaves his house. We decided to include this as we wanted our audience to try and guess what the character looks like and guess his personality by the way he looks and his costume. This follows the conventions because family comedies always like to introduce the main character in the beginning doing something that they like or represent them which makes us try and guess who it is. This is used a lot in animation films e.g. ‘Flushed Away’. I know that this will make our audience like Harry because not only do they see him first but they are introduced into his life and follow his footsteps, which is going to school and setting the pranks.

In Dennis the Menace the director chose not to show Dennis in the opening sequence but showed his bike and Dennis riding fast and rough with props like a teddy bear and snake in the back and him scarring an elderly man suggesting the character is a naughty child disturbing a neighbourhood. This will make the audience know what to expect as they have already seen his props and him riding rough and just like in mine, bringing the audience into his everyday life. I believe it’s at the opening to tell the audience what type of comedy they will be watching. It’s a code and convention because they reveal a comedy scene when scarring the old man and it’s at the opening to tell the audience what they of comedy they will be watching. By showing the bedroom, costume and props of Harry they as well follow the codes and conventions. I feel that we challenge codes and conventions of family comedy by not revealing the character as most comedy films reveal their character.
              Our characters and narrative follows codes and conventions of comedy because our characters play typical comedy roles like protagonist and antagonist. The protagonist/s that is normally the main character goes through a situation and then solves it at the end e.g. ‘Click’. These are common because in films especially the comedy genre there needs to be a protagonist and antagonist so that the target audience can relate to the protagonist. In my film there is a geek and a bully. They both follow codes and conventions by their personalities and attitude for example the geek being a loner and the bully being angry which can be seen in our character profile. We developed the character traits from the films we studied by making our geek really geeky and our bully really heartless. We challenge it because at the ending the geek gets revenge by setting pranks to the bully and scaring him away which isn’t common in comedy films even though sometimes they get revenge like when Kevin gets revenge on the bunglers trying to break into his house in ‘Home Alone 1’ The difference between the endings of my film ‘FIX UP LOOK HARD’ and ‘Home Alone’ are that Harry(my main character) becomes confident and in a way acts like a bully even though Jack(Antagonist) slaps him before while in ‘Home Alone’ Kevin doesn’t physically gain confidence but calls the police to take them away.
One of my roles in the task was finding and using sound. In order to make sure that my sound was right and suited my film I had to do research on comedy films and see what types of sound they use. I researched films like Home Alone, Dr Doolittle, Dennis the Menace, Meet Dave to see what types of sound they use at different situations and scenes and. From here I knew I had to create and find sound that Parallel to certain parts of the film.

Below is a non digetic sound that features in Home Alone.

This is a sound that featured on my film and I chose it from inspiration after hearing the other sounds from the films I researched.

 I chose this sound because I received positive feedback from it by my group and other students. I chose this sound for consideration to put in my film because it follows the codes and conventions by making the mood sad and the character is in a bad state.

I used sounds that have the comedy element and lots of Parallel sound so that my audience will understand. Sound bridges were also used when a certain mood was being played and so continued the same non digetic sound. Challenging sound was the hardest part because my target audience are children and young teenagers. I thought that if I used sound that isn’t typical in family comedy films or contrapuntal sound they wouldn’t understand so I made sure that the sound I used were not to serious and can possibly be seen lightly

Mise en scene was probably the hardest part in the production process but was the most I spent time working on as setting helps people know what is going on even without any sound. I did a lot of research on films with great Mise en scene and looked at the worlds greatest photos to see how a single picture can tell a lot or a story. For example ‘The Afghan Girl’. I challenged this research as I looked at a variety of photos and not just funny comedy ones. We followed the codes and conventions of comedy film locations by making the locations colourful (if needed) and detailed for example Harrys bedroom was very dull, with pictures on his wall representing him.

(Above is the sound of harry gaining confidence)
Mise en scene was used to create the setting of the location chosen for the film. Mise en scene was probably the hardest part in the production process but was the most I spent time working on as setting helps people know what is going on even without any sound. I did a lot of research on films with great Mise en scene and looked at the worlds grestest photos to see how a single picture can tell a lot or a story.

This picture which was shown in the opening was used to show Harry’s lifestyle. The room is very dull and boring and this tells the audience how he isn’t very creative or adventurous. It also reveals his costume which will get our target audience thinking he is smart, geeky, boring or posh and make them carry on watching to see who he is. Not only Comedy films but many other films with different genres do this as well to represent the character for example a short film I watched called ‘Hard Labour’ made their location normal with things like a fridge, chairs etc.
Props such as his school bag also follow codes and conventions of geeky characters because the bag he uses is old and today is considered unfashionable. The bully has a Blackberry showing he follows the latest trends that are considered cool to society.

Mise en scene also challenges the codes and conventions through the costume Harry wears the next morning. He wears a dark grey hoodie which is stereotypical associated with chavs or gangsters in the case of Jack. We decided for him to wear a hoodie because he has changed and become a new person. He also acts the role of what the bully Jack will do to him on a regular basis so wearing similar clothes will make the audience aware that he isn’t being a victim anymore. In a behind the scenes of the film ‘Black Swan’ the director Darren Aronofsky and costume designer said that costumes are important as they need to stand out and everything needs to connect.

Question 4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies were used in the making of my film, some in order to make it look better, real or professional and others for it to even happen.

Throughout the pre production, production and post production I used a type of technology that was best suited for example Microsoft Word was used for pre production because it was simple and easy to put down our preparations. The research part included me looking at films, genres etc. In the research stage I used the Internet a lot because this was the part that I needed to find out things like making good silent films and do things like making my own film with only pictures. Websites like Google, YouTube and Wikipedia became popular as I wanted information on things. The benefits of using them were that I could find everything I wanted. I used YouTube to watch short films the same genre as mine and I used Wikipedia to get background information on things that were hidden or not included. These helped a lot with my research because I didn’t struggle looking for anything. On the internet I also looked for sound that was copyright free to use in my final film which was important as some sound were needed. Another part of technology on the internet I used was Blogger. I used blogger to see what the previous years did and how they used research. This was because I wanted to know why they researched certain things and how it helped with their film and ancillary task.


The blog was used to create most of our ideas and written work because it had everything there that was able to do it. This allowed me to put my work up in a certain style and format that WORD can not do, however it also had its disadvantages because it didn’t allow me to put some things up that it didn’t recognize from sites


During our planning process which included script, treatment, storyboard, pitch etc I used Microsoft Word for the script and treatment as this only featured writing and nothing else. The advantages were that it was simple. I used a new technology when it came to the pitch. I started of by using PowerPoint and when it was finished I put it on Slide Share. Although Slide Share isn’t new it was the first time I used it. In the planning process I also used the Cannon XHA1 camera and Rycote Windshield System for practise just to reframe and remind us of how to us them. These technologies were used due to their quality, features and their ability to pick up things we couldn’t. They were good because they helped us in making the film appear better and producing a great film.


As I was in charge of sound I used the Rycote Windshield System. I used it by holding it in the position the action was taken place and near the camera because that was how to pick up the best quality of sound possible which enabled me to use it properly.


In the evaluation stage I used the most technology. This part I created my poster, review page and shot my film. For my review page I only used Publisher because I only wanted it to be A4 page size. I used Publisher by placing my picture on a part of the page and included writing and which allowed me to make it look realistic and helped me to check if it looked right or not. For my poster I used all different types like Photoshop, PowerPoint, and Publisher etc. This was because I wanted my poster to look really good so using different types of technologies would of helped me choose which one looked best and then to get feedback on. I used all the technologies the same way by changing things round to see how they appear. The advantages of Photoshop are that it really makes the poster look like a poster but it is very complicated to use and takes too much time. PowerPoint and Publisher are simple but not the best of quality.


The best one in my opinion is Publisher only because it’s best at producing posters and still does it to a great extent and can be done without too much time.

Question 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Personally to me audience feedback has been the most beneficial and best way of making my coursework much better. It helps me to know how I’m doing e.g. whether I’m doing well or not, what to do next and how to improve by what was said in feedback. Without audience feedback my coursework wouldn’t be the way it is now. This is because audience feedback helped me know what the audience wanted to see and what they never wanted to see which made me know what to do to improve by hearing their reasons. For example during pre production I told some year 8 students about the idea we wanted to make and asked them whether they thought shooting in school will be the best location and they said yes and their reasons were because most films featuring kids and teenagers are set in school. As a group we decided to use audience feedback at all stages of our production. This was because we wanted our film to appeal to our target audience which will only be done by asking them and other people what they think is best. For example we got feedback on ways our audience will like us to shoot during production.


As we really wanted to come up with really good ideas we kept thinking of films. We had ‘Locked in my mind’, ‘The adventure of Babashola’, ‘Self Defence’ until ‘FIX UP LOOK HARD. Feedback helped us a lot with these because it told us how to improve the film and if it could even work. For example ‘The adventure of Babashola’ was changed because it would have been too hard to shoot and there was a huge possibility that it wouldn’t appeal to our audience. We got this feedback from our teachers and other students when talking about our films, and we took it into consideration because we knew that they know a lot about films and the other students are shooting also. We then asked people in year 10s what they thought and they said the same with one called Sam saying ‘It doesn’t seem to appeal to him and thinks his friends won’t like it. After having our final film to mind, we decided to change our film title because we were all told it doesn’t suit the film. Many people said ‘Self Defence sounded like an action film rather than a family comedy. ‘FIX UP LOOK HARD was chosen because we knew there was things going on with slang and young people as many of us sometimes speak it. The feedback we received was very positive with people saying they want to actually watch it just by the name itself. I feel that it fit our target audience demands better because that is the type of film name they like and film they like to watch and by changing it we have took their feedback and used it for the better.

The next piece of feedback I received was for my pitch in which me and my group spoke about our film to the whole class and teacher. We received both positive and constructive feedback and used it to improve on when we present our second pitch. Some of the feedback we got were that the idea of the film came across clear and simple but not creative. This revealed to us that our storyline is understandable and we know it but it isn’t much different and doesn’t challenge codes and conventions of our genre which made us start thinking of what we could do to improve. Another feedback from our pitch was that we didn’t have an audience which was when we changed out storyline. For our pitch itself we were told we explained our story clearly we should next time interact with them (audience) more to make it seem more interesting and to show we are passionate about our film. We improved our pitch the next time by acting out Harry and Jacks roles in a Q and A debate. After this our class told us that we had listened to their feedback and that our final pitch was much better than our first one.

From this point I began to realise that feedback is really important because it tells me what other people see and to get a good mark you need other people’s opinion as you may not see things that they are seeing. After the pitch we decided to change our storyline a bit by improving the ending. This came to our mind after the feedback we got for the ending was poor and people wanted it to be like they want to keep watching. So we changed it as that was better than a rubbish ending.

My role was in the task was to be Assistant Director and be in charge of sound and continuity. While the week of filming our film, at my own time and at home I done research on sound for the film. When I found all possible sound I immediately went to get feedback on first my group members to see what they thought of it. Some of their response was positive and negative and after them I went to other people. This helped me because I was able to know if people will enjoy the sound in the film or if it should be removed. I was also able to know why it wouldn’t suit our film for example because it wouldn’t make sense and how to improve the sound I made from music students. This was also an advantage for me because our target audience are children, young teenagers and adults meaning it is a comedy/family film so many people can watch it.

After feedback I received for my sound I then managed to look up some more and even better sound to make sure it suits my film and so it appeals my audience as they will watch it. As well as sound that I found I also made my own. I made it in the music room after my friend told me how to use the equipment.

Above is a sound that I made. It was meant to be played during the part when Harry is setting up the pranks to play on Jack, but it had to be removed after we had no more time to shoot that part of the film. The feedback I received from this was positive with people saying they can picture it playing at that specific time and it builds up a scene meaning it is building something or carrying on something.


Feedback on our film helped us to know whether it was funny or not. We managed to ask some year 9 students if they found it funny and they all said yes. Most of them said the sound made it funnier and the way Jack was bulling Harry made was funny. The most common negative feedback we got was that the acting of Harry (Edward Obeng) was bad and he looked as if he had been forced. At this point there was nothing we could do as me and the director (Antoinette Seki) did everything in making him act well but he wasn’t used to acting and didn’t like his role.

The next part was the Ancillary Task which was making the poster and the review page. I managed to get lots of feedback on both of them which helped me improve my work to a better standard. To me the posters feedback was more important because the review page had to be from a magazine so we just had to copy the overlook of a magazines review page while the poster had to ours and not copied. At first the feedback I was receiving for my poster was really negative and I had to keep improving it as everyone said it doesn’t look like a poster.

Feedback helped me see what I didn’t include for example simple things like actors names, crew etc and how to make it different from competitors for example in animation or sketch. It also helped me know how a comedy poster should look like as well as independent research on the internet and magazines. At the end I went from producing this

to improving it to this

in a matter of days thanks to feedback I got from people I asked.
I also managed to get children to put my final three posters in 1st, 2nd and 3rd in order of which was best. The one that was 1st the most I asked them why they chose that and they said it looks nice and like a poster. From this I learnt that even children are able to say why a poster is better than other and enabled me to think beyond the obvious.
As well as the advantages of using feedback like to improve and see if I did anything wrong, there are also some disadvantages of them also. These are they might be biased and the person I’m receiving the feedback from may not much about my genre or films in general. These could ruin my coursework if taken in construction.

Question 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

For my film to be successful overall the ancillary text also had to be well created. This includes my poster and my review page. They all work together to sell, promote and advertise my film. To get information to my target audience it will need to follow a certain pattern which is an order to make the film aware to the audience all the way to showing the film. First is the poster. Posters are used to advertise a film, attract the target audience and persuade and inform them to watch it. The posters that I made were of a comedy for my film and featured things like pictures, colour and text. The fact that my film was a family comedy I needed to know what pictures, colours and types of text would best suit my film. I researched other film posters to know what they do to appeal to their target audience and found out that many family comedy films use on average more than three colours and the picture on the poster is usually the protagonist, while texts vary according to type of comedy.
I put pictures of the main character Harry on each poster so that my target audience will know what type of character he is and features the antagonist Jack on two of them. On the posters I don’t show his face in detail because I want my audience to go and watch the film and also because in the opening sequence we don’t show his face so I wanted it to follow on. My reason for including Harry on each poster was because he is the main character and the audience need to see something about him. It is also follows the codes and convention of many family comedy films meaning I wanted my film to fit in. The two posters were Jack was featured I decided to put him in to have different types of posters and also because I wanted my audience to know what was to be the theme and what will be in the film which are the pranks. I feel my audience will appeal to those two posters as pranks are funny and from my feedback I received from people as well as research I did on other films that feature some pranks like ‘Baby’s Day Out’ they normally do well.


The texts were of comic or comedy which was the only type of texts I could use that will suit my film and the colours used were colourful but a bit different on each poster. I done this because it had to look like a comedy film otherwise my target audience will miss out and it may look like a different genre and attract a completely different audience. When creating the posters I knew I had to research other posters to see if what I was putting in followed the codes and conventions or went against it. From the posters I wanted people to say they really looked like comedy posters and not just ordinary posters as the comedy genre is very competitive meaning I need to make sure my poster stands out as a comedy film. Feedback helped me to achieve this as people got their opinions across and told me how to improve it.
On my final poster the picture I showed was Jack pouring water from a bottle all over Harry taken from my film. The reason I included it on the poster is not only because it followed the codes and conventions but it gives my target audience an insight of the film which will excite them. It tells my audience the genre of my film and how the characters will be like and what to expect from them. I feel this will attract them to watch the film because they will like to see something funny and entertaining as it is advertising a comedy film in the first place. The text was a comic text and was chosen as it suited the poster layout.
Overall I feel that the posters I made were suitable for marketing and will appeal to my audience based on the picture used and text. I feel the effect of the combination of posters I made was very positive as it made me see what I didn’t do well in the first one and so do better in on the next one. It also helped me with my creativity skills and understanding what to include in a comedy poster. I was also able to choose the best one which helped me a lot as the one I wanted wasn’t favoured by feedback I got from my target audience as well as other people. I think it will go well with my film because it gives enough information to persuade my target audience to watch it and most important reveals the genre.
Review was used to promote our film. Reviews appear in magazines especially film magazines and give brief information to the audience and they are also given a verdict and a rating which can either be a benefit or problem for the film. For example ‘Fred: The Movie’ received a bad review in Total Film Magazine. My reviews were featured in Empire Magazine and given 4 stars and good verdict. To not be bias I asked my friends how many stars they will give it and they said 4 stars which was why I gave it that. As my film is a comedy/family it will appeal to people who are up for a laugh and perhaps that will be a lot as comedy and family genre are the most popular film genres out. The writing and reporting style in my review page is pretty simple and doesn’t include any posh or complicated words. This is for my audience to understand as well as the audience of Empire magazine as that is how they approach their audience because it is mostly people from socio economic C1 and below. Empire magazine is mainly read by teenagers and adults and cost £3.99 could mean that young children will not know about it but with its good reputation and parents passing viral marketing to them.
My review page gave enough information to my audience and will appeal to them due to the style of writing as it was written through Empire Magazine format that are best with comedy films. My review, poster and the film combined really well mainly because each one was done in high quality and they all used and challenged the codes and conventions of a family comedy film. I believe this all made it effective because it made everything look realistic. Also we had almost no budget and no help so the combination of my main product and ancillary text was successful especially because it was my first time making a 5 minute film.
Using posters and reviews will help market the success of the film as they both inform the public that a new film is about to come out. The combination of my film and the two will make my film seem even more interesting to my audience as it is seen on posters everywhere like on buses, walls and billboards and spoke about on magazines, internet and newspapers. These will encourage people to watch the film as the film is represented in a positive way.