Question 1

Question 1

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

Our film, Switch is based mainly in the genre of Comedy but has developed as there are some elements of the genre, action/crime in it as well. The key themes shown throughout our film was Thieft/ Robbery and East end- gangs. All through our film you can see the theme thieving/robbery as the double act Frank and Charlie do con after con in order to make money to buy their dream car. This shown when we see Frank and Charlie come up with the idea to cookie con, where they are seen going door to door trying to sell biscuit but failing miserably. We next the theme when the double get idea of begging for money as the pair stand on the corner of road asking for money, Charlie pretending to be blind and Frank holding the money tin. The last one was the actual SWITCH. When the pair arrange to meet with big time drug dealer, Big Pete; coning him and his body guard into thinking they have drugs which they made from sugar/flour, Frank and Charlie get away with taking a large sum of money from him. The double act, Frank and Charlie not being the most intelligent pair come up with most silly money schemes... this is very typical convention in comedy and is very similar the Chuckle brothers (Chuckle Vision) who come up with so many ideas to make money but end up failing by doing silly things. The double act is also very similar to Del boy and Rodney as they are a typical form of a comic duo. The other theme is of East End gangs is not typically something that you see in our genre and challenges the form/conventions. The other characters Big Pete and the Bodyguard who were briefly mention before are a representation of this theme and are shown through their hard facial expression, serious unapproachable body language, costume of a suit and props of large sum of money and drugs. This is similar to the characters Brick Top (played by Alan Ford) and his Bodyguard, Doug 'The Head' Denovitz (Mike Reid) in the film Snatch.

One of the settings being a staged hotel we challenged the stereotypical codes and conventions of it typically being in a house or it being outside. The setting of a hotel was used in a drug scene Frank and Charlie make the switch. We develop the idea by mixing action into our genre of comedy. The other setting is outside and is where most of the film takes place. An outside location is very typically in our genre which is convention, we used in our film. Characters are mainly seen doing silly in front of other people.