4.

How did your research inform your products and the way they
use or challenge conventions?

Through an audience survey, we were able to decide, with more

confidence, important aspects of our film such as the locations, character
designs and music. We used several examples of post-apocalyptic
aesthetics in the survey and it helped us land which atmosphere would
connect with people the most, desertic themes stuck with people the most
and it is a common convention of post-apocalypse. One convention of
Sci-Fi we conformed to was social criticism, my research into films which
feature such critique informed the direction our film took, films such as
BladeRunner were a huge inspiration but from the short films I’ve decided
to research, vewn’s “Pizza Movie” helped solidify our premise to include a
heavy emphasis on alienation, with respect to our main character who is
disillusioned with the work he does for survival, as it is a relatable topic for
most working people. In terms of character conventions, a silent
protagonist is a feature of many post-apocalyptic stories but a convention
we subverted was with our villain, Teras, as we have built him up to be a
great adversary only for him to be killed instantaneously.

We researched post-apocalyptic video games such as Shin Megami Tensei

(2&5) and Fallout, in the case of SMT 2 and Fallout, the inspiration were
mostly in the costuming department, our protagonist's design was a mix
between SMT 2, in terms of the device on his arm, and from Berserk
(Manga) with the black coat. Dusthale's (the sheriff) design comes from a
Fallout character, Joshua Graham, whose face is completely covered in
bandages.