Evaluation Question 1 - Melissa Thomas

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

Main Task - Short Film - 'Intertwined'

For our short film, Intertwined, we attempted to use and challenge different conventions of short films. In the early stages of this project, we each did our own research into short films and used it to create our own work.



Similar to real media products such as Traction, our short film's beginning title sequence follows the introduction to the action. In Traction, as the tracking shot continues to follow the waitress through the restaurant, introducing the audience to the setting, the titles introduce the audience the cast members and directors as well as the title of the film. Our short film, Intertwined, has a similar effect. The difference here was that we wanted our title to introduce our short film and having the fade from black transition whilst the titles remain onscreen is further emphasizing our theme of connections. This is because, as we discovered from the research we collated, a convention of short films is to have very little introduction into the main plot. After all, every second matters when trying to fit a story into such a limited amount of time.



Intertwined fits into certain conventions of short films. We followed certain iconographies of the romance genre by playing with gender and age stereotypes of our female protagonist. She puts on feminine clothing and puts on makeup whilst texting in the setting of her bedroom. This is also shown in Traction. In Traction, the use of costume, makeup and restaurant setting shows the characters on an average, ordinary date. This helps create the contrast between the controversial  conversation they have whilst keeping to the director's aim to present the characters as ordinary people who make mistakes. We were going for a similar effect by our use of costume, makeup, and setting which created a stereotypical teenage girl preparing for a date. This proved effective for the twist at the end of our film as the dominant ideology within our society is to assume people are heterosexual. Our aim was to get the audience to question their views on the assumptions we our encouraged to make in this society and by using the iconographies of romance and playing with stereotypes, we actually challenge the common stereotypes of homosexual people. We wanted the audience to challenge their assumptions and show that they can't just rely on what they first see.

The use of parallel cutting in Intertwined follows a similar sequence seen in the short film Cosmic Divide. In Cosmic Divide, the parallel cuts create enigma by making the audience question whether there are one or two protagonists. The audience are led to believe that it is a flashback sequence of the same person, only for the twist at the end to reveal that they are twin brothers. This is similar to our use of parallel cutting. We make the think one thing, only to reveal the "truth" and flip the audience's expectations. Our use of parallel cuts also links the two main characters, just like Cosmic Divide. This was useful for our theme of connecting stories.

The use of sound in our short film challenges the conventions we discovered in a majority of the short films we looked at. The short films Traction and Cosmic Divide use lots of ambient sound and have no use of non-diegetic soundtracks. The dialogue in Cosmic Divide is a voice over but it is set up as a diegetic phone call, compared to the short film Irene Lee, Girl Detective which has a narrator throughout. This creates a sense of realism which the audience identifies with in their daily lives. This means that they engage more with the characters and their stories. Other short films we studied such as Irene Lee, Girl Detective and Office Space take a different approach. Both of these films use very little diegetic on-screen dialogue and use lots of non-diegetic music.


For Office Space, this represents the protagonist's disconnect from his everyday working life and lets the viewer focus more on the message of the short film, which is to value creativity and to follow your dreams. In the case of Irene Lee, Girl Detective, the use of sound with a voice over who uses lots of rhymes represents the young age of Irene Lee and makes the viewer focus on the message of the short film, which is to enjoy your childhood and to have fun and make friends without worrying what other people might think of you. Our use of sound uses a mixture of the two. We wanted to create a sense of realism so that the audience connects and identifies with our two main characters. However, we also wanted to separate them for the reveal at the end of the film. We had very little dialogue so that we could connect the two characters. This is similar to the conventions of sound we saw in the short film Plaster. The use of non-diegetic music in both Plaster and our own short film was meant to reflect the feelings of the character so that the viewer feels more connected with the emotions of the characters.

Our film uses a multi-stranded narrative. Similarly to Cosmic Divide, our narrative is connected by a phone conversation. In Cosmic Divide, the themes and story is told through the use of voice over whilst our film uses post production text messages appearing on screen in the place of dialogue to reveal the story. The effect of this is that it creates enigma. The viewer has to wait until the end of the film for the reveal, maintaining their interest throughout as the wonder what is going to happen.

Ancillary Task  - Film Poster

'Intertwined' posters in the centre of real media short film posters

Here is how our short film poster follows the conventions of real media products:

• Has a large title in a font that is also used in the film itself
• The awards and sponsors are clearly shown (using the brand's logos)
• Quotations are from relevant critics who might review short films
• Uses a large main image that is relevant to the film (there is at least one main character who is shown in the park setting our short film is based in)
• There is a billing block that contains: directors, production company, actors, costume designers, music, writers, editors, cinematographers, and producers
• There is a link to the film's website 
• The names of the main actors are shown

What we did to make the poster stand out from the rest:

• We knew that Little White Lies magazine doesn't have a five star rating like other film magazines. We had to make some minor changes to our draft posters to make sure they were as realistic as possible.
• We created our own production company logo and incorporated it into our poster
• We created our own social media links
• On our first poster, we had a separate photo shoot and used Photoshop to create an autumn aesthetic which fits the theme of the setting and creates a romantic tone (a similar idea to the poster for Take Your Time which creates the theme of adventure and childhood)
• Our second poster takes the idea of the romantic theme with the two protagonists from real media posters such as Silent Things which makes it look like they will meet but the banner and the title actually separates them, creating irony

Ancillary Task - Little White Lies Review

Our review of 'Intertwined'

By studying the film review magazine, we were able to learn and understand the format and were able to recreate it to make our own review. Here is how we recreated the average Little White Lies review layout:

• We made sure to use the same fonts as the magazine
• There were three columns with roughly five paragraphs and a dropped first letter
• There is a title, followed by the directors, followed by the main stars, and the release date
• There are three boxes for a rating out of five. These three categories are anticipation, enjoyment, and in retrospect
• The main image at the top uses a capture from the short film itself, not a separate shoot
• The review page label is sideways halfway down the page
• The page number is made out of three-digits
• We attempted to recreate the style of language (casual with colloquial phrases, however not patronizing language) so that it would appeal to the magazine's demographic of 25 - 35 year olds

However, we challenged conventions of the Little White Lies magazine by:

• Having each of us write at least one paragraph each
• Coming up with our own ratings
• By using more casual language to appeal to our film's demographic of 16 - 24 year olds