Conventions and Social Groups (CCR#1)

CCR Question #1 Research 

How does your project use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? This question… this question is one of the 4 questions that I will have to respond to in my CCR production, and, to be honest with you, at first I didn’t even know what conventions were. So yes, this question have been in my mind a lot recently, and yes, I finally kind of know how to answer. 

Background info

First of all, I think that I should talk about the tings that I find exiting of this CCR project, before getting into the boring stuff… whoops. My idea for the first video of the CCR (I have to do 2 videos, each answering 2 questions) is to tie me up in a chair, like Maverick was, and answer the questions while trying to escape. 

Research for Conventions

To know what the question meant, and be able to answer it, I had to know what conventions were, so I went into google and found that they were the specifics of a genre (in this case), so the question “How does my project use or challenge conventions” means how my project is similar and different from the usual “rules” of action films. For example, a convention of the genre is that films usually have a “good guy” and a “bad guy”, and in my opening, Maverick’s is the “good guy”, and the person who hurt him, and kidnapped him is the “bad guy”. 

A common convention that my project challenges is that action films usually happen in big cities, which are very modern, and my project challenges this convention because I'm not going to show the city, and even if I did, it would not be futuristic.

Research for social groups and issues

Luckily, this part of the question was much easier for me to understand, but when I started thinking about it, I realized that it was going to be more difficult to answer. 

My project can represent trauma after a violent event, because of how scared Maverick is. It represents how the trauma doesn’t disappear, but keeps affecting Maverick’s mental health years later. Also, it represents the challenged stereotypes about masculinity, because Maverick is shown vulnerable (when he was kidnapped), and weak (he was covered in blood and bruises), and also because he’s shown emotionally vulnerable, even years later. 

Maverick, experiencing trauma, and being vulnerable.

Citations

• Simsimma. (2011, February 8). Conventions of action films [PowerPoint slides]. SlideShare. https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/conventions-of-action-films/6600675
• Gilbo, S. (2022, February 15). The 10 things every action story needs. Savannah Gilbo. https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/action-conventions