Preparing for critical reflection

 Before going into the critical reflection head first, I wanted to go over the necessary components and my approach for each part as it’s been a while since I’ve seen these questions and I have different things that I don’t want to forget to bring up.

So first, “How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?” The main focus of this question is research and genre. So here I would be talking about all of my earlier posts about research into genre, short film comedies, other films’ instagrams, etc. I’ll talk about how I adapted the different techniques that I saw in other comedy films such as the wide angles lens from CRAZY CULT CAMPING MOVIE or the whips pans in WHEN IN POUGHKEEPSIE. Also a lot of inspiration from social medias, such as the DVD and the storyboard/actual shot comparison. Need to talk about how I mostly conformed to the genre.

2nd: “How do your products engage with the audience?” I think this questions is simple enough for my piece. I need to describe the target audience, mainly teens and young adults, mostly male as all the characters are male and they’ll relate to the characters and their interactions with each other the most, and their shared interest being comdies…especially those that are a little bit more absurd lol. Then I’ll explain the ways that I intentionally engaged with this audience through my techniques, which would be the characters and dialogue, being written with teenage boys in mind, immediately connecting the audience to the boys. Aspects of the social media also draw in a younger audience that has this sense of humor, particularly with the main actors being introduced inside of toilet bowls. 

3rd: “How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?” This is probably the most interesting question for me as it is really what sets it apart form AS level, being able to create an identity for the piece outside of the piece itself, mainly though social media. I would describe the goofier and sillier brand that I aimed to create, mainly through not only the ridiculousness of the plot, but also through the social media posts like the previously mentioned toliet bowl portraits. I can talk about the how I also develop a more intense and in your face branding for other aspects of the production to invoke the intenseness that the short film reaches at points. For improving the branding of the piece, I would talk about making the Instagram feeling a little less disjointed, as I had just said, there are a few different things going on and I would have liked to streamline it a little bit, but it just wasn’t my main concern throughout the production process.

4th: “How do your products represent social groups or issues?” In my piece, the most represented social group would be young teenage boys, and I would talk about how I represented them in my piece, with dialogue, props, how they act throughout etc. I could also bring in the homeless character if I’d like, and talk about how I exaggerated this notion of homeless people being crazy and unhinged in order to make a gag out of it. While this isn’t very representational of homeless people as a whole, I used it for my personal purpose of making a funny bit. Overall, I’d evaluate whether my representation of teenage boys is successful or not and why that is.

With this outline, I can confidently go into the critical reflection making sure I hit all of the points that I want to.