Critical Evaluation - Question 1 (Emma Gardiner)

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


Throughout our production we had to make sure that we took the conventions of continuity into consideration during the filming and editing of our film. Firstly we had to follow some rules:


180 degree line rule


The 180 degree line rule refers to keeping the camera position within a field of 180 degrees. It means that two characters should always have the same left and right relationship to each other. The reason for the rule is that without it the audience may become confused if the camera is moved to the opposite side as they would become disorientated and it would no longer be clear that they are, for example, still having a conversation.


The diagram below explains the 180 degree line rule by showing the axis between 2 characters and the 180 degree arc where the camera may be positioned in line with the rule. If cutting from the green arc to the red arc, the characters appear in opposite positions than before which would be highly confusing to an audience. Therefore throughout our filming we ensured that we stuck to the 180 degree line rule.

Shot reverse shot 


Shot reverse shot is a technique that is used when filming scenes such as conversations. It refers to a shot of one character looking at and interacting with another character, before another shot of the other character looking at and interacting with the first character. This is a useful technique as it allows the audience to assume that both characters are looking at each other without technically seeing so as they are both looking in opposite directions. It is also useful to avoid long conversations becoming boring and audiences losing interest. 


Shot reverse shot is a classic way of continuity editing, however as we do not have many long conversations, we did use it during our first draft but in the end decided against it. Below is an example of the shot reverse shot in action:

Along with filming rules and techniques, we also had to think a lot about the genre of our film. The genre of our film is romantic drama, therefore we researched into the conventions of romantic dramas and found out what our audience would expect to see in our film. When producing our treatment and script we wanted our storyline to fit in with our genre so we tried to reflect this in these. For example, in romantic dramas there is usually a boy and a girl who fall in love but face problems along the way which they later overcome, creating a happy ending to the film. Therefore we chose to reflect this with our boy and girl characters who face the problem of breaking up but fate brings them back together, making a happy ending.


In order to do this we collected research on similar films from the Internet by looking at their storylines, titles, characters and credits. This helped us to make the decisions that we had to about ours and gave us ideas on how to do so. The film which we took a lot of inspiration from was 'The Perfect Man'. For example, it gave us ideas for the title of our film, 'The Perfect Match' as well as a style model for our poster, titles and credits. The film 'Mean Girls' also gave us inspiration and helped us to make decisions during our filming and editing. For example, they used phone conversations with friends, giving us the idea for Grace to ring her friends. (shown below)