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

Before we started filming our final piece, we had to do some research on the generic conventions that are used in family adventure films. We did this because if we didn't use the conventions, marks would be lost, and researching them would give us more knowledge about the genre in general, and it would give us more ideas on what to put into the piece.


The generic conventions for family adventure films aimed at children are:

• The journey of the protagonist showing how he achieves his aim
• Problems for the protagonist
• Kids playing the main characters
• One character always plays the comedy role
• There is always a happy ending
• There are usually characters that are family orientated (parental characters, siblings etc.)

Did we use the coventions listed above?

Our film does involve a protagonists journey, as this is the main storyline of our film. The protagonists in our film get sucked into the game, into a surreal world. They then have to find their way out in order to return to the real world. This is the first convention listed as the whole film is the kids journey through the game, and it shows how they get out, back into reality, which was their main aim.

One of the conventions for a family adventure film is that the protagonists encounter problems. We have included this as during the middle of our film, the protagonists come across the antagonists of the film, and have to defeat the antagonists to finish the film.

Another convention that should be used in our genre is that the main characters should be played by kids. We have done this as the 5 main characters, who are seen in the opening sequence of our film, are all kids, in the age range of 11-13. This is possibly one of the most important conventions as the kids in the film are one of the main things that attract kids to go and watch the film, and as our main target audience is children, we had to make sure that this convention was done properly.

This screen shot shows that we have used kids in our film, which is one of the conventions of family adventure films.

One more convention of family films that we had to use was that one of the main actors had to play a comedy role. One of the first things we did with regards to planning was find this out, so we tried to have a character similar to Chunk from The Goonies, as he is the ideal comedy role in a child's adventure film.

This screen shot shows the character Chuck, at the back of the group, who plays the comedy role in our piece, which is another convention for our chosen genre.

We have also made our film have a happy ending, as this is also a generic convention for family adventure films. Our film ends up with the kids escaping from the game, and getting back into reality, therefore this is a happy ending, and we have therefore included this specific convention.

The final main generic convention for family adventure films is that there needs to be family orientated characters involved, for example parents or siblings. We have included both of these, as We have we have included the parents of Tyler, Chuck's mother, Lilly's father and also Tyler's older sister. Using these types of characters will hopefully allow the children audience of our film to relate more to their situations and feelings towards the older people in the film, and vice versa for the adult audience of our film.

Were we influenced by other films similar to ours?

Yes, we were influenced by films similar to ours, mostly by Jumanji, The Goonies and Spy Kids. These three films especially influenced us because they are two of the most successful and popular family adventure films ever to be released, therefore using similar conventions to these two films would hopefully make our film a success.

Our characters were more influenced by The Goonies, however the location and storyline was more influence by Jumanji and Spy Kids.

We were influenced by The Goonies to make our characters similar to the ones used in that film, as there is such a wide range of different characters, all with unique personalities. This is then what we tried to do with our final film, by making each character have a different personality to the others, and in some cases, for example Chuck and Leonardo, they have absolutely nothing in common with each other, yet they are still good friends, which is something that happens in a lot of kids films nowadays, in order to attract a wider range of people.

Jumanji inspired our choice of location as the setting in the film is very surreal, however there are also very realistic features to it, which is what we have done in our film, for example there is a normal neighbourhood, however the house has trees and such growing inside it. The setting in our film begins in a cave, which is realistic, however there are lots of diamonds in the walls, which then makes it surreal, which is quite similar to Jumanji. This often happens in kids films, and is done in order for the kids to stay attached to the film whilst watching it, as a normal setting could be seen as boring by the audience.

Our storyline was inspired by both Jumanji and Spy Kids, as we used the idea of people getting sucked into a board game, which is used in Jumanji, and the idea of being trapped inside of a game, which is used in Spy Kids. We have used a unique storyline like this because it is a convention that is used in a lot films similar to ours, and also like the unique setting, it will keep the audience attached throughout the whole film, because a normal storyline could be seen as unoriginal and it could put people off coming to see our film.