Final Answer for Question 1

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

The genre of our film is children/mock horror. The characters of our film follow the typical themes of the children genre. We used a typical little boy that always gets himself into what seems to them as big dilemmas. The character Rodney shares the same themes as characters in films like Home Alone, Son of Rambow, Goonies, Little Rascals which all fall into the same genre. In these films we see that they have used little kids (mainly boys) to show the kind of madness and trouble they get into and how much they are in a world of their own that only children of their age will be able to relate to. In the our film we have a group of boys that bully Rodney, in children’s films its typical for their to be a group that bully the main character, usually in these groups they have a head bully which bosses the group around, in our film we have Danny as the head bully. Danny’s character is like Caruso form everybody hates Chris, he always making fun of Rodney and loves seeing Rodney get himself into trouble. Rodney’s character is not strongest but he grows on to being the bravest, like in most children films the main character always seem to build up some sort of courage and independence to stand up to there dilemmas. In home alone Kevin at the end builds up his courage to fight the burglars and protect his house.

Our film is set in a school which is a typical of this genre. Most of a Childs life is spent in school so many of their events happening in school. The TV series Mona the vampire is has some scenes that are set in a school. This is uses the form and conventions of a real media product because in many children’s films in most or sometimes a school is shown unless the film is set in a time when the kids are on holiday. The scary music used in the film is a typical form and convention of a mock horror. We used eerie music that would normal be heard in horror films like Van Helsing and Queen of the Damned because these films are about vampires; this type of music sets the mood of the film. We developed our film by playing around with the camera. In many films that fall under the children’s genre the camera movement are very simple but we tried to play around with our camera movements, e.g. we had a fast pan of Rodney when his running towards Danny and crew. At the end of the film we see that Mr Vamping is actually a real vampire, this challenges forms and conventions of our genre because in many children’s films there is always a happy ending and for Mr. Vamping to be real we haven’t followed the typical forms and conventions of a children’s film.