Evaluation 1

In what way does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions, mention real media product?
Switch falls into the genre of comedy with elements of action. The forms and conventions were thought about very carefully as forms and conventions play a huge role within the movie as our finishing product may not have followed the forms and conventions of a comedy movie. Comedy usually consist of recurring characters in a format in which there are one or more humorous story lines centred around a common environment, such as a family home or workplace in switch’s case on the street and in a hotel room, the definition gives me imagery of our film as we have two main protagonist who consists on making money and goes to extreme lengths as Frank and Charlie are not the brightest bulbs this is where the genre comedy kicks in, but the action only takes place later on in the movie when they result to selling fake drugs. Switch uses the codes and conventions in our opening sequence we have certain technical references to the movie ‘Snatch’ as we edited some of our frames to make the shots freeze for our title sequence and also by changing the speed of certain scenes this helped keep the element of comedy it starts out quick with the opening sequence of the Frank and Charlie running in the hallway and then slowly slows down with the scenes outside and fastens up again towards the climax then there mission is accomplished. But still including action which is where the sound is also similar as in the opening scene the sound is very upbeat which helps make the montage more effective. We also envisioned our split screens to be like ‘CSI’ this was challenged as usually split screens are used to show different scenes but instead chose to include the same scene but from different angles this was to signify the climax of the film when the drug deal takes place. Our film comprises of the typical duo category which reminded us of the film ‘Dumb and dumber’ as its funny for its jokes and for its visual comedy, there’s always one who’s more smart than the other in this case is frank which we viewed as the blind leading the blind. We also developed the idea of the film ‘Dumb and dumber’ by making Frank come up with all the cunning ideas for the schemes but always wants Charlie by his side taking part in these cunning schemes. In reminiscent of or film the film ‘Superbad’ had references to one of our scenes there is a change of costume Frank and Charlie are wearing suits, In ‘Superbad’ we also see the duo act changing costume. We developed this idea whilst in post-production we changed the scene from colour to black and white.
Switch uses the typical idea of girl’s scouts selling cookies to raise money which is usually for charity or for a good cause, but challenged the idea by using two grown men who are not very intelligent hence why they are selling cookies and not looking for a job and are too greedy to even consider charity. Our film also challenged technical forms and conventions by including a variety of different music which we experimented with when changing scenes e.g. making the volume louder or quieter and fading the music, this is so the scenes would run smoothly without any abrupt sounds this may have worked if we was making a horror film but as our film include comedy and action the fading worked to our advantage. The film ‘Pulp fiction’ reminds us of our non-linear editing as our film does not run in order which ‘pulp fiction’ neither does and also we include cuts to black screens and titles which would introduce the day and time which could be like ‘CSI’. However I also believe we developed forms and conventions of real media products by using things such as a text instead of dialogue throughout most of our film, the idea of using text came about when we first found out we were making silent movies but we didn’t just want to do the typical thing by adding text to the bottom of the page we developed this by adding black screens and text with a border which allowed us to capture the whole slapstick comedy idea and gave it a 1960’s feel which alone is challenging the typical forms and conventions of the genre comedy. switch challenged the comedy and action genre as i strongly believe that we used several scenes which enraptured the idea of several schemes and not conforming to the ability of Frank and Charlie but working as a strength to make our film more effective and follow, develop and challenge most aspects of our film. As a whole I am pleased with the entire film appearance and sound and was able to make similar links to the real media industry.