1. EVALUATION #1
In what ways does the media product use,
develop or challenge conventions of continuity,
and the language of film and editing?
Nikki Burton

2. We each researched into what is a „short film‟, afterwards we planned our storyline and
genre. Our media product idea seemed to fit the usual conventions of a drama and after
some research, I realised our film fitted in with the „social realism‟ sub-genre of drama.
This meant the narrative in our film and the action in our film are realistic to what can
happen in today‟s society. I put the conventions into a mind-map so we could apply
them to our film.
THE PLANNING
An example film of a Social Realism Drama.
We used common stereotypes of young people to portray the audience into thinking that
“Sam”, the character in the black hoody, was a troublemaker. We also used mise-en-
scene to create the atmosphere of the character through- shots she appeared
in, costume, music. We portrayed “Sam” as a trouble maker to lead to the audience to
thinking that she was going to commit a crime, which would make the ending more
surprising. Also the audience can either relate to our characters due to a similar crime
happening to them or they could be the one getting stereotyped.

3. “Jumping to Conclusions” “The Lovely Bones”
In order to make our characters
“believable and realistic” we
dressed them as a typical person
would dress. This is similar to
“Lovely Bones” as this character
dresses her age which allows the
character to fit in with the
realistic setting.
We used realistic settings
such as the park, their
home and the street.
“Lovely” Bones also used
realistic settings such as the
school, the street, their
home and fields.
We used mise-en-scene to follow the conventions of a drama genre by having “realistic
and believable” characters and settings. This shows although our film doesn‟t match the
plot or time period of “Lovely Bones”, it follows the same conventions. Another
convention of a drama is for a character to have a form of journey. Ours is an
emotionally journey as our character „Millie‟ (and the audience) learn a moral lesson-
not to jump to conclusions about people. The character‟s experience helped her journey
into changing her prejudice views.

4. SIMILARITIES
After watching the film “Knight and Day” starring Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruz. We realised
our film was similar to the end scene as it is revealed to the audience, through CCTV, that
Tom Cruz's character slips something into Cameron Diaz‟s suitcase the first time, and taking
it back out the second time so that he could get it through security. This is not shown to
the audience at the beginning as the audience see them just bumping into each other.
This is similar to „Jumping to Conclusions‟ as we also show two characters bumping into
each other, saying sorry and exiting the scene with the audience unaware of any other
action taking place. However, we do not use CCTV playing back to the character and the
audience to reveal the stolen phone, we play back the scene from the opposite angel to
reveal to the audience what really happened. We used filters of black and white while
editing it to show the audience that it is a playback of the scene and used slow motion
effect when the action is taking place to emphasise to the audience what actually took
place.

5. SIMILARITIES
We based our film idea around the TV advert for the Guardian. We lead our audience to think
that the girl in the black hood is going to injure the girl on the screen, just like the man in the
leather jacket and jeans looks as if he is about to injury the man in the suit in the Guardian
advert.
We too edited our film like this the advert as we faded the end of the action scene to
black, which allows the audience to make their own ending in their head before it is revealed to
them.
When our scene is replayed after fading to black, from the opposite angle, this is the same as in
the TV advert as it is done to reveal the real reason to why the person is approaching the other.
We also edited our film to be black and white in certain parts as we thought it would draw
attention to the audience that they are looking back at action that has already taken place.
http://youtu.be/M3bfO1rE7Yg

6. Intertextuality was used to improve our film and improve the audience‟s understanding of
our final production. We finished our film and thought there were something missing and
it was quite hard for the audience to follow and understand the message we were trying
INTERTEXTUALITY to perceive. After going back to where our original inspiration came from, the Guardian
TV advert, we realised what we were missing was the narrator. We then chose to include
a voice over to narrate to our audience what jumping to conclusions is and how easy it is
to do which helped the narrative to flow. Intertextuality was used in the voice over as we
used the style of the Guardian‟s narrator into our own film using similar phrases.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdyBjsfvOU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsccRkLLzU

7. Usually, text appears on the screen of films to inform the audience on dates, time or to
CHALLENGES/ DIFFERENCE’S inform the audience on what happens next. Examples of these are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_FKP-rjhh4
Text appears at the end of this film to inform the audience on what happens after the film has
finished, for example what characters go on to do and what they have achieved. The main idea
of this is to show how the characters get what they deserve, eg. The “good” character‟s have a
happy ending where as the “bad” character‟s have nothing. This is also done to apply realism to
character‟s.
Our Media Project
Our use of text appearing on the screen is not to inform
One Day
the audience, or set the scene using dates or times. We
used it to directly question to the audience which is not
usually found in a drama film, however we found it fitted
with our film and involved the audience to our narrative.
The text appearing in „One
Day‟ sets the time period of
the scene that is about to
come up. This is typical in
films, not just the drama
genre, other films too.

8. We knew it was important to apply continuity to our
film to maintain a continuous and clear narrative for
our audience. Applying continuity to our film allowed
structure which makes the scenes flow, this allows
the audience to understand and follow the narrative
which was important for us as they needed to
understand the moral message we were trying to
CONTINUITY
perceive.
Applying the 180 degree rule was something we made sure we applied successfully in our
film as, if we didn‟t it would confuse the audience due to the character‟s appearing as if
they have jumped places. We chose one side to film on and stayed at that side, however we
deliberately broke the rule when filming the action in the park. The rule was broken but
didn‟t confuse the audience. To do this we filmed the scene in the park twice, once form the
left, and once from the right, the first was to have continuity from the rest of the film. The
film then faded to black and the scene restarted in black and white, to show it is a re-play,
and we continued the film at the opposite side to show the theft taking place.
This is example of how we used the 180 degree rule, the camera was kept at the
same side of the road so that „Millie‟ was always on the left hand side of the scene,
if the camera moved, our characters would be at the opposite side of the screen
which would make them jump places and confuse the audience. Keeping this
camera and the same side allowed the audience to follow them and understand
what they are doing.

9. Match on action was also important when making films as everything needs to flow to look as
if there were no breaks in the scene. We applied this a couple of times in our film, an example
of this is with opening and closing of the doors at the house scenes, sitting down on the swing
at the park and when Millie leaves the room to walk upstairs. Applying match on action was
simple to do through editing, although I had to make sure that it looked smoothly. For
example, when Millie sat onto the swing, we cut to a close up of her sitting down, then
CONTINUITY
returned to a mid-shot. Once editing it all together we had to make sure that the swing was
swinging backwards and forwards as usual and not look to have jumped or stopped in any
way in order for the scene to flow continuously.
This match on action is then followed by an eye-line match. This was done to show the audience
exactly what “Millie” is seeing, in this case she see’s “Sam” struggling with “Jodie” , the girl she has
just bumped into. This allows the scene to run smoothly, where as if we just cut to the next scene the
audience may be confused to what is happening, and unsure whether the character see’s the
struggle. This would confuse the narrative.

10. Although shot-reverse-shot is used as a quick paced edit,
we allowed ours to fit in so it looks continuous. Our shot
was applied while our character’s were walking, this shot
looked smooth as I panned the character’s crossing the
CONTINUITY
road which allows a smooth shot as if the audience is
following the characters. Then the characters looked at
the car, the person in the car looked at them, then the two
characters looked at each other. This built up pace and
excitement for audience making it more engaging as they
want to know who the character is in the car and they may
also build up their own idea of the type of person. A shot
through the reflection of the car mirror is used when
watching the characters walk away. This is also a point of
view shot as the audience are seeing what the person in
the car is seeing, match-on-action was applied too as we
had to make sure that the walking was continuous in each
shot to look as if it was one walk. This allowed us to be
more creative with the camera and explored different
ways of shooting the scene.

11. Another convention we followed was a steady increase build up of tension along with
climax and anti-climaxes to keep the audience engaged. We increased tension not only
through the direct shots we filmed, but mainly through the editing process. We added
high pitched non-diagetic music which built up tension, also it was done through the
“too much too soon” edit which shook the camera and faded to black in the scene
where the hooded girl darts direct towards the screen. This builds up tension as the
audience will want to know what is going to happen and the girl is looking directly into
the camera, which when watching as an audience member, is looking directly at them.
EDITING
This was the music I
downloaded from
FreeSound.org. The
music built up higher
and higher then had
an impact sound.
This was good for
http://www.freesound.org/people/m_O_m/sounds/107195/ building up tension
to the audience. I
Rhythmic editing was
used rhythmic
also used in the trailer editing as i played
as the sound was the sound to mirror
played to introduce the the scene of “Sam”
title on screen, this is directly walking
also done in the final towards the camera.
project.

12. THEORIES THAT APPLY TO OUR FILM
Todorov’s Theory
of Narrative
Return to equilibrium All as it should be
How this theory
Recognition and an attempt Disruption
to repair the disruption.
applies to our film

13. AUDIENCE PLEASURE THEORY USES AND GRATIFICATIONS
1. Entertainment
2. Education/information •Finding our about relevant events.
3. Role Models •Satisfying curiosity and general interest.
4. Socialisation •Learning/self-education.
•Gaining sense of security through
knowledge.
I believe that the uses and gratifications theory applies to our film as we
are educating them and informing them about prejudice behaviour and
how easy it is to judge people. The moral lesson at the end also is
educating the audience that is its wrong to do as well as informing them
on what the definition is for “jumping to conclusions”. Due to our project
being a short film, it engages the audience long enough without them
loosing interest which enables us to get our point across.
•Celebrity Actors.
•Character’s they can learn from.
•Likeable character’s.
•How to positively handle a situation.
•Character’s/people they aspire to.
Role models is also an important factor as we have both positive and negative people
in our film and include a situation that is handled positively. The character in the
“hoody” is shown to be the positive character which is unexpected to the audience but
is showing how people they should act, for example returning the phone. People could
see her as a role model as she saw something wrong happening and stepped in to help
others.

14. OUR AUDIENCE
I believe our audience will get pleasure from watching the film because they get to watch something that is
realistic due to our believable characters and also through the question left at the end. I think this because
we have engaged with our audience emotionally and directly and so they may take pleasure in that they are
involved in the story and have an unexpected, yet satisfying, closed ending.
Another reason I am confident in our audience enjoying our film is through our research task for our
potential audience. We went into the public to ask what they thought of our rough draft of our film idea‟s,
and they told us to “relate to people more” and so, after changing our idea to what we have now, I believe
that we have achieved the conventions of a drama and pleased the audience because we have related more
to real situations which is what drama films is all about.
Finally, we leave our audience with a lasting impression (which is typical of a drama) and our lasting
impression I believe is given successfully, as questioning „text‟ appears on the screen, directly asking the
audience to question their own prejudices.
CONCLUSION I feel our film has stuck to some of the common conventions in technical terms such as
Although
continuity, our film has challenged some other conventions of a typical drama such as the direct text
and the twist of the moral in the story. It is something that the audience don‟t really expect which
subverted their expectations. We researched into our audience to see what they wanted and based our
film around involving them into our plot as much as we could, through this I believe our audience
would gain pleasure when watching it. Although we had hints of intertextuality in our project which was
the Guardian advert, we never intentionally set our plot to reference to another film although after
looking through our film we have found some similarities to others.