Evaluation Question 1: "In what ways does your media product

Challenging the Forms and Conventions

As it is said in earlier posts, mockumentaries are a parody of documentaries. The majority of real media mockumentaries end on a comedic high note - a climax. We challenged this by going against the genre and incorporating a dramatic ending. Even though this does not sound to out of line with conventional pieces - some can have 'bad' endings rather than 'happy' endings - we decided to challenge it further by having a non-humorous ending all together. We realized that by producing an ending that tells a story (relates to drama genre) compared to one that carries on with the theme of the piece is risky and does compromise what the audience believe the genre is - some may think it is not a mockumentary at all - however we still believe that there are enough foundations through out to make it stand out to be a mockumentary. For example, in our media product, Paul's dad reveals, in a covert way, that Paul's life is built on delusions from his childhood. We see this happen in the end scenes when the reality of Paul's bad mental well-being is shown to the audience. Though these revelations suggest that Paul has a mental health issue (possibly schizophrenia), it is unconfirmed and gives the audience an enigmatic twist - we believe it exaggerates the reality of deciet.

Development of Forms and Conventions

On screen text is a feature heavily used within mock/documentary's. They are used to identify characters, settings and time. In our media product, we only used them to introduce characters and identify an artists drawing. We believed that they were not a necessity - we felt that settings were self-explanatory and there was not a time period that needed input.

'21 Jump Street': Drug Scene - Courtesy of YouTube

A real media product with effective and appropriate use of on screen text comes from '21 Jump Street' (2012). They use on screen text to explain phases of taking the fictional drug HFS. This type of on screen text was not needed to explain any of our plot, therefore we did not use it - in fact we felt that too much text would over crowd the screen and withdraw attention from the acting.

Development of Forms and Conventions

As mentioned earlier, we used interviews with characters, which is a major identifiable characteristic of mock/documentary's. However we used these interviews as the main dialogue. Normally in a mockumentary there is further dialogue; for example in the feature length mockumentary 'This is Spinal Tap' (Rob Reiner, 1984) presents dialogue from interviews and from 'fly-on-the-wall' filming. We did not want to have dialogue running through-out or a talk through during scenes as we wanted the audience to pay attention to the irratic movements of Paul Smith , so we decided to keep dialogue to a minimum. It is the interviews which tell the story, not a scripted talk through.

Use of Forms and Conventions

'This is Spinal Tap'-

Clip courtesy of YouTube

Realism:

The use of natural light sight.

Use of Forms and Conventions

Interviews with characters:

In our media product, we only used natural light. This was to make the situation seem as close to reality as possible. As some scenes were filmed in an evening, there is no natural light, so we overcame this by using house lamps - though this gave a yellow tint , it still reproduced a realistic theme. We also used little sound dubbing, as this would of created an artificial feel. The only time we did dub was during the first house scene, we had to dub in the young boys dialogue as the microphone did not naturally pick up the sound, however we still believe that the method was effective.

As you can see from the picture above, house lights do create a yellow tinge. However, if we were to of used stage lights, it is possible that they would of been too bright, therefore unrealistic.

In real media products, these are used to get more in depth knowledge about the characters and connect with them on an emotional basis. This is the documentary side of the film, however it depends on the strength of a script to create a comedic aspect.

In our media product (short film), we used interviews to gradually reveal the plot. It allowed for the enigma of 'Who is the Sockmonster?' and 'What does Paul Smith have to do with him?' to build tension with no questions answered until the end. Other than small snippets from voice-overs, public interviews and Paul in the moment; there is no main dialogue except from these interviews, hence their importance for information

Our Media Product: Short Film

For our short film we decided to follow the genre of mockumentary. (A mockumentary is a type of film or television show in which fictional events are presented in a documentary to create a parady - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockumentary

For the audience to identify that our product is a mockumentary, we needed to follow the main conventions. Otherwise the product would be mistaken for a drama, which was not our aim. Documentary's also follow the same conventions, so it was important that we portrayed these conventions with humorous exaggeration, such as that found in the series 'The Office' (UK, 2001) - the dry humor is an identifiable feature of the series.

'Confessions of a Sock-a-holic' - Courtesy of YouTube

Evaluation Question 1: "In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?"