1. Olivia Lyons
A2 Media Studies
Advanced Portfolio
Evaluation
Question 1:
In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
For my A2 piece of coursework, I worked in
a group of 3 to construct a short film. The
genre of the film we created is a romantic
comedy, and encodes clear conventions
throughout, even from the title of the film,
‘Finding Mrs Simon’. The film is based on the
life of Simon, a 21 year old student from
Manchester who has just come out of the
most serious relationship he has ever been
in, lasting 3 to 4 days. Simon then sets himself up on a dating website, which results in him
meeting 4 girls. After none of the girls living up to expectations, Simon has one last shot at
finding Mrs Simon with his final date Leah. The pretty, popular girl falls for Simon’s geeky
looks and personality and Simon finds his one true love which relates to Bridget Jones’s
Diary.
The title of our film, Finding Mrs Simon, immediately establishes the genre as it is a very
stereotypical rom-com film title. This automatically establishes the preferred audience for
the film and suggests the content. The film title doesn’t give too much away, but at the
same time isn’t ambiguous and doesn’t leave the audience wondering what it could be
about. This suggests an easy watch, which is a convention of the romantic comedy genre.
EVALUATION

2. Olivia Lyons
A2 Media Studies
Advanced Portfolio
Evaluation
The majority of the film is set at Simon’s flat, with other locations being the car park of his
ex-girlfriends flat and a set up café where one of his dates takes place. We chose this as the
location as it is an everyday realistic setting and therefore creates a sense of realism. By
having Simon’s flat as the main location, we, as a group, encoded clear conventions of the
genre as other popular rom-com’s such as ‘Friends with Benefits’ and ’50 First Dates’ are
majorly set in realistic, familiar locations, to both the characters and the audience. By doing
this, we hoped the audience would decode a preferred reading as the film would be similar
to real media products and would meet their expectations.
Finding Mrs Simon- Location
Friends with Benefits- Location
Choosing to have the location/setting of our film in Simon’s apartment conforms to the
conventions of a real media product- Friends with Benefits.
Due to the lack of resources we had a lack of props that were to be used in the film.
However, I believe this didn’t affect the story line or the delivery of the comedy moments.
We used the theory of Neale’s Mental Machinery as a guideline to ensure that, as
producers, we were providing the audience with what they want to see, by encoding clear
conventions of the genre, to ensure that they were satisfied consumers. We created the
stereotypical character profiles through the use of costume and props and related this to
real characters from real media products. For example, the main character in our film,

3. Olivia Lyons
A2 Media Studies
Advanced Portfolio
Evaluation
Simon, was very much like the character of Andy in The 40 Year Old Virgin. By creating a
character that the audience can relate to other media texts, conforms to the conventions of
real media products.
‘Finding Mrs Simon’ - Simon ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ –Andy
We used costumes for Simon to create him into the stereotypical geeky male from the
romantic comedy genre. To conform to the conventions, we dressed the girl he fell in love
with to look much more dressed up and sophisticated than the other girls, in order to
portray her as the pretty, perfect girl that the geeky unpopular boy ends up with.
When storyboarding the film and creating our initial ideas mind-map, we strongly took into
consideration the filming, camerawork and editing. We wanted to make the film seem as
realistic as possible in order to conform to the conventions of real media texts from this
genre. We planned to not use any ‘artificial zoom’ as this particular camera shot is more
associated with action films and can often look unrealistic. However, when it came to
filming we had no choice but to use artificial zoom in order to create the same effects with
the limited equipment we had. This challenges the forms and conventions of real media
texts and could therefore result in the audience decoding a negotiated reading. We tried to
make the film look as natural and realistic as possible and so when it came to editing,
avoided using over the top effects that could distract the audience’s attention away from
the action.
The narrative of our film also challenges the conventions of a romantic comedy. The
narrative of the film is non-linear as it doesn’t run in chronological order and uses discourse
time and flashbacks to majorly narrate the story. However, I believe this develops the
conventions as I believe the use of the flashbacks account for the majority of the comedy
and are extremely effective.

4. Olivia Lyons
A2 Media Studies
Advanced Portfolio
Evaluation
Also, even though a non-linear narrative isn’t associated with the
romantic comedy genre, ‘The Vow’, a 2012 rom-com, uses the
same narrative and was an extremely successful film. Although
this could decode a negotiated/oppositional reading from the
audience, as they don’t wish to accept the challenge, I believe it
was worth the risk as it worked really effectively.
Using Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model, where the producer of a media text encodes
conventions, allowing the audience to decode a particular reading. I believe we encoded
clear conventions of the rom-come genre and successfully conformed to conventions of real
media products from this genre.