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

Challenging and developing the codes and conventions of our chosen genre (comedy) was key for us. We were targeting an audience of 12-21 years of age, so it was important that we carried out research into similar genres to make sure that we captured the comedy aspects correctly.
At the start of our long process , we were given a stimuli in the form of a film , the film was called 'The Fall' and is directed by Tarsem Singh. Although the genre was different to ours (Action/ Drama) , we found that the scenes which did contain comedy in it were genuinely funny. What made it funny was the relationship between two characters , one young and the other middle aged. The difference in views and understanding between the two constantly made you laugh, and especially the innocence and confusion of the younger character. Even though the director did not intend for the film to be a comedy , a comic duo is born through the the two characters. You could compare the characters relationship to other legendary comic duo's such as 'Del Boy' and 'Rodney' from Only Fools and Horses , or the two Ronnie's. They follow the codes and conventions of a typical comedy duo , and this is where the idea of creating a duo for our film stemmed from. We saw how effective they can be and so thought it was the smart and logical choice of creating one for our production. Saying that we did not just want to copy what we have seen , and so started to think about ways in which we could challenge the codes and conventions. The first thing we developed was the gender of our comic duo, which we decided should be female. This was a massive gamble as comedy is very 'male' dominated and there are not many female comic duo's out there. Although after researching this I did find one duo who had achieved great success and the tiles of the queens of comedy. They are French and Saunders who have been creating comedy sketches for over 20 years. We believed that by making our comic duo female we would be challenging the bigger male duo's , which could appeal to a wider audience. We also created our characters so that one took a more leader role, and the other would follow. We took this decision after watching films such as 'The Hangover' which contained two types of characters , ones which lead and others that follow. We took this idea , but changed it so that the character that followed would rebel, which you see in our production. The reason behind this was that we thought it would create more 'funny moments' if the two characters were against each other at points within the film. You wouldn't expect the less assertive character to stand up for them-selves , challenging the conventions again and at the same time creating comical moments within the production as they argue.
We knew from our brief that we would be creating a silent film, and after deciding on our genre , we started to focus on how we was going to make the audience laugh without using dialogue. To do this we started research into to king of silent comedy , Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin is known throughout the world for his cheeky comedy , and has created such films as The Tramp and Making a Living. When looking at his films , I noticed something that was consistent through out, and that was the piano soundtrack. The music was quick and kept up with the speed of the film which complimented it well. It also made you laugh , which is he most important thing about a comedy. This taught me that I was going to have to pick a soundtrack which complimented my production , was funny at points , but not so over whelming that it took your attention away from the production itself. At the start we picked at 4 different soundtracks which we believed could go with our production , after and review of them all we cut it down to two. One was a quick drumming beat and the other a violin remix. Each was comical and would have gone well with our production, but the drumming beat seemed to compliment the film better. The speed was perfect,t and in a way resembled a soundtrack you would hear in a Charlie Chaplin film. The reason for not wanting to challenge the convention was that we thought that it was code which was not worth changing , but instead embracing it. As they say , if its not broken then don't fix it.
Staying on the lines of Charlie Chaplin , while conducting research into his films , I noticed that his editing techniques were very unique. Obviously the technology they had was limited but the way in which he edited the cuts made the production even more funny. For example everything was sped up , making actions and movements more comical. This is a convention which has been followed for many years now , and more recently in cartoons such as scooby doo. We wanted to develop this and and dare to challenge it to break the normal convention. This is why in our scene which has been sped up we have purpose behind it. The meaning of it is to show the lengths the characters would go to just to be the one who holds the lottery ticket. Although we would still be keeping the comedy aspect at the same time , developing on the scooby doo research.
Overall I believe our production follows the codes and conventions to allow it to be classed as a comedy. Even though challenging conventions is encouraged , if an audience finds something funny then why change just to be different? Although there are points in our production in which we have challenged conventions , but this is so that we break the stereo-type of comedy films. What people expect is different to what people enjoy, and so for the example the decision to change our characters to females was based on the idea that it is not what the audience expect , but they will still enjoy it.