In
what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
I first thought about how I can use,
develop and challenge forms and convention in my own work when it came to
researching and planning the trailer that I was going to make. After conducting a lot of research into existing
trailers that were similar to my own trailer I was intending to make, I thought
that it would be a good idea to both use the conventions that I was seeing,
developing the in my own way and also challenging the conventions, especially
when it came to changing the relationship between the two characters. This was important to me so that I could get
a strong sense of the fact that they are unlikely friends, which is why this
was the title of the film. I mainly chose
to develop the conventions that I was seeing in films such as The Untouchables
and The Blind Side, so that I could make my trailer unique, but still conform
to existing media that is out there. It
is fair to say that the majority of drama films are mainly based around a
realistic scenario, which is why creating a sense of verisimilitude in my own
drama trailer was highly important to me, in order to relate to a wide variety
of people.
I decided that I was obviously going to use
conventions of drama trailers, so that I could appeal to my target audience and
appeal to the large majority of people that like watching drama films. Such conventions involve including realistic
relationships, which is very important when trying to engage an audience. This is something that I both decided to use
and develop so that I could appeal to a wider audience. I used this convention in the sense that I
made up a realistic scenario of a young boy who feels isolated both at home and
outside of the home. Alongside the young
boy, the old lady is also very isolated and has no-one around her, which creates
a connection between the two characters, that the audience can relate to. This is creating the idea of verisimilitude
that a lot of people like to see, especially when they are watching drama
trailers and films as it makes them feel more involved in the storyline. Storyline is something else that I wanted to
use in my own trailer, as a convention of drama films is the dramatic course
that they take. This was important to me
because without a dramatic storyline that the audience can follow, they wouldn’t
be very interested in what is going on.
I developed this idea by positioning the disequilibrium from the film at
the beginning of my trailer and also half way through to highlight what is
going on and to make sure the audience know that it is important. In this way, I challenged the stereotypical
view that a drama trailer would take, starting off happy and cheery and I
thought that the outcome was really unique.
I mainly chose the use the conventions of drama films when it came to
the ancillary tasks as I thought that there were a lot more stereotypical
conventions that I could use and also develop in my own way. In the creation of the poster, I did this
through using an existing poster that I had been looking at a lot. I took many conventions from the film poster
‘The Untouchables’ as I thought that it was a very relatable film. I used conventions such as the composition of
the main photograph and the text and positioning of all of the writing. I chose a different colour scheme to develop
to emotion that is felt throughout the trailer.
In regards to the magazine I took conventions from magazines such as
Empire and Total Film, as research would suggest that they are the two most
popular film magazines. Much like
Empire, I decided to use a red and black colour scheme, with a few of the
colours from my own production, which is somewhat of a beige, very natural
colour to replicate the characters in the film.
This was important so that people would gain a better understanding of
the type of film it would be, rather than having to read up about it. I developed the stereotypical idea of Empire
by adding a simple film strip at the bottom of the page, including shots from
the film, rather than other films as I wanted it to be the main focus of the
front cover. This made the magazine
cover look unique and a lot more intriguing to look at.
I challenged forms of conventions in many
ways. Firstly, in my trailer, I chose to
use very unlikely characters of a young boy and an old lady, which is something
that you wouldn’t usually see when watching a film. You would certainly not see the two as being
good friends, which is a relationship convention that I chose to
challenge. I wanted to get the idea
across that any two people can be connected by similar lives and that it can
happen to anyone, which is something that I believe I got across in a very
simple and believable way, still challenging the character conventions of drama
films. This makes my film stand out amongst
others as it give it it’s own personality, which it another thing that I wanted
to achieve. Despite challenging this
convention I was still conforming in the sense that it draws the audience away
from what they think is going to happen, which seemed to be a very
stereotypical convention of drama films.
Despite the conforming of areas of my drama trailer, I am still
challenging people’s views on the type of relationships that we can have, which
is a stereotype that I wanted to break.
In regards to my ancillary tasks, I think I generally conformed with the
conventions that I have seen from conducting researching into both film posters
and magazine covers as I thought it would be an area that should have some
consistency in order to make sure that the audience feels like they know what’s
going on. I challenged the conventions
of posters somewhat, by jumbling up the layout slightly, having some of the
information at the top of the page to stand out, which is something that I only
rarely see in drama posters. I also used
very natural colours which challenges the colour scheme conventions of posters
as they are usually designed to stand out.
I decided to create my poster using this colour scheme because I didn’t
want to take all of the attention away from the main image and the information
such as the title of the film and the info at the top of the poster. In regards the magazine I decided to keep the
majority of it very conventional as I didn’t want people to feel uneasy when
they were looking for a magazine to buy.
I challenged some conventions in regards to the amount of coverlines
that were on the page. I limited the
amount of information that was actually on the page so that the audience would
be more drawn into the main image, rather than wonder what is going on around
it. I did this because I wanted the
audience to mainly be captured by the theme behind my film and so that they
would be more inclined to wonder about the background of the characters and the
storyline of the film itself.
I think that it is fair to say that I used,
developed and challenged various forms of convention to a significant extent in
order to create a suitably professional media product, that appeals to the
majority of drama film watchers and hits my target audience of 16 – 24 year old
females.
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