Question 1

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

Continuity is an important convention to uphold as it helps maintain the realism of a film, without it the film would not seem to ‘flow’ and the concept would fall apart. We planned carefully to make sure there was continuity and although there were come small mistakes they’re not particularly noticeable due to the idea behind the story; for example originally in the story the day 'Carrie' gets the drugs from 'Oliver' is supposed to be the same day she takes the drugs with 'Jared' however on the day of filming we didn’t realise but as the filming had gone so well we kept it and because the story was things from her point of view if scenes seemed a bit unnatural or confusing I just related to the unravelling of 'Carrie’s' mind.

We used shot-reverse-shot in conversations, we were careful to follow the 180 degree rule again to keep the realism throughout our film and we also followed the 30 degree rule so any shots that got closer up or further away could be edited together more smoothly.

Typical narrative conventions of a drama film genre include; conflict, characters in a situation that is easy to relate to and usually a form of realisation at the end or a happy ending.

We reflect these conventions as we have ongoing conflict between ‘Carrie’ and ‘Jared’; two characters which are realistic and easy to relate to, where he’s trying to push her into smoking, drinking and taking drugs; the main characters are in a typical peer pressure situation that many adolescents face and there’s a huge twist at the end where ‘Carrie’ realises ‘Jared’ is dead. There is a not a particularly happy ending as we want it to be realistic and most stories like this don’t end happily, the most positive outcome in this is that ‘Carrie’ doesn’t die when trying to commit suicide.

We use strange colour effects through parts of the film to emphasise 'Carrie' losing her mind, which is something I'd seen done in the film Mental in which the majority of the film is in a bright colour that makes it look abnormal but works with the storyline and characters. This 'plays' with the conventions of the drama genre as it makes it look unrealistic, however it's done for a reason and as a whole improves the scene a lot.

I have looked at some typical stereotypes, which are important in our film, such as race. For example in many films the black characters are drug dealers and pushing it upon white characters, however in our film we have a white drug dealer and it turns out ‘Carrie’ is mentally unhinged which is why she’s taking drugs so it’s not the fault of ‘Jared’; so here we have broken this racial stereotype.

However a stereotype we follow is having a mentally unhinged female character, which tends to be the case in many films such as Sybil, Mental and Girl, Interrupted. Females tend to have weaker characters that are in some way broken not only in the “psychological” genre but also in paranormal films such as The Exorcist, as explained by the theory of the male gaze.

Gratifications Audience Theory has four categories; education, role models, socialization and entertainment. Our film educates the audience by demonstrating what it can be like to have a mental disorder and the severe consequences it can have on a person. Socialisation relates to our film as people may want to discuss the psychological symptoms our film demonstrates, the way we emphasised things and the shocking twist at the end. Also, as the audience would hopefully empathise with ‘Carrie’s’ situation, our film is quite emotional it is relatable to entertainment.

Also our film relates to Richard Dyer’s Theory of Entertainment which includes; energy, abundance, intensity, transparency and community. Our film relates to intensity due to the high emotions and ongoing conflict, between ‘Jared’ and ‘Carrie’ and in ‘Carrie’s’ own mind. It relates to energy as there is suspense and tension created particularly through the editing we’ve used. Finally there is transparency which flips the story and our ideas of the characters when the twist is revealed at the end.