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

Within the genre of comedy, there are many elements that occur regularly, for example, the music is generally upbeat, and light-hearted. However, this can be changed to mock another genre, for example, to change the musical score to that of a more serious tone, when the action is that of something silly the genre action or thriller is belittled, making humour.

There are also a lot of close-ups, because the actors (particularly in the sub-genre slapstick comedy) pull funny and over-exaggerated facial expressions. Also, it is conventional for actors to stick to this genre, and rarely do other “more serious” films in other genres such as Ben Stiller or Will Ferrell or Jack Black, they rarely star in films outside of comedy. 

Within my film opening, I used the convention of upbeat music to keep the tone of the film light-hearted and comical, emphasizing that the film opening is the opening to a comedy. Another convention that I used in my film opening was the film focused on individual stars, namely the 2 robbers. Many comedy films put much more focus on their leading characters and their stars than other genres down to the fact that many stand-up comedians transitioned from stand up comedy to starring in films due to increase in popularity.

Comedies humorously exaggerate situations, characters, language and action for comedic effects. I feel I have used this convention within my film opening as the entire situation of burglars breaking into a house at exactly the same time a surprise party victim gets home is kind of ludicrous, and the chances of them entering the same room at the same time like they did in my film opening is extremely unlikely, which is why it works as a comedy.

The genre of comedy can be split up into sub-genres such as Slapstick Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Black/Dark Comedy, Parody/Spoof Comedy and Gross-Out Comedy. Comedy can also be split into what are called “Hybrid Genres” where 2 genres a merged together to create a film, examples are Comedy-horror, Action comedy, Fantasy comedy and Sci-Fi comedy. 


I however feel that my particular film opening falls into the category of Comedy, or possibly British Comedy. This is because I don’t feel that it falls into another type of genre to form it into a sub-genre or hybrid genre. It isn't a romantic film, parody or gross-out film like the sub-genres offer, and I don’t feel that it falls under the genres of horror, action or sci-fi therefore not making it into a Hybrid comedy. I therefore feel that this is the best way to describe my film, as a British comedy because that’s what it is - a comedy, made in Britain, very much like films such as Hot Fuzz and Wild Target.