In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

By Joel Hall

Film

Real media conventions

Throughout the trailer industry ever trailer has a "chopped" approach, allowing specifically placed clips of the film to be shown to the audience, showing them key plot points and characters. This has been set up through film trailers as these aspects are what the audience would actually want to know, this allows the audience to know if they want to see the film or not, because these plot points would allow them to see what the film was about.

Trying to emulate this as much as possible would allow us to create a well worked trailer, allowing the key plot points and characters be be obvious to the audience.

Developing conventions

Through the trailer we have developed the convention of voice overs, this was by having a conversation take place over the trailer. We chose to do this because we wanted to give the doctor(Heard in the voice over) a higher role in the film because he would be a theoretical backbone allowing the character of Chace to take reffuge and support from him. Although this cannot really be taken as a direct referrence from the voice over, a conversation is generally not heard as the voice over would normally describe or tell, for example a voice over may say "This is Timmy, He is no average boy because he found batman" or something allong those lines, which would allow the audience to know the main plot line, but no twists or turns.

This aspect allowed the film to have 2 different plot lines running adjacent to each other, the Doctor and Chace talking and the actual trailer and main plot lines. This allows the audience to listen to the voice over and gain different knowledge of the plot, but also watch the trailer and learn those key points which would be for the main film.

Challenging conventions

Looking through the narrative through our film, we jump straight into the trailer, this challenges the conventions of film trailers as a generally a majority of trailers follow an introduction from the producers and distributors. We have skipped this because of limitations at the time, we were not 100% sure on how to make introductions using Imovie because it lacks aspects of introduction animations.
Although this may not be an advantage because we lacked in animations, showing skill and knowledge of software, it is not a disadvantage aswel because the animation is is not 100% needed within the trailer as the audience does not need to know this as if they see the final full film the producer and distributor would be shown, which is a higher needed convention.

Magazine

Through the creation of the magazine key concepts and style models where kept in mind, we needed to keep the head lining words clear for the reader to view, this would allow them to actually read what we had wrote. The magazine would also need to be about the film and the surrounding media which all film magazines would cover as we still needed to meet the conventions of media magazines.

Real media conventions

Within magazines manipulated photos are prominent as making the person or image seem the best looking they can be, although appealing to audiences, making the brand or place seem a lot better as you can actually see the visual effects and detail within the picture. This convention would need to be catered to too get the best results from the pictures, allowing us to get the best looking picture the magazine will be better looking and we would have complied with the convention.

Real magazines allow the different aspects of the inside information to be shown on the front cover, this gives the reader the ability to understand what is going to be inside the magazine without actually reading it. This means the front cover would be laid out according to the information which would need to be shown; Key articles, main features, competitions, new writers or anything context based (in this case film, directors, actors movies). A real magazine will have to have key information which will be based on the main articles placed around the side of the cover.

A main picture is also a main convention, allowing the main feature of the magazine or new release to be shown on the front cover, getting people interested at a glance. This would be a main feature of which we would need to emulate because a magazine needs to be eye catching.

Developing conventions


We needed to fit the conventions of a normal magazine which would allow the reader to know that it is a magazine which they are looking at. These conventions would be a big center image, article titles, special features and a head line. We kept these conventions and put them within the cover page, allowing the them to merge together allowing the magazine cover to be recognisable for the reader who would only see it at a glance. We developed the layout convention by having the diffferent features more spread otu within the cover, usually seen from our Style model magazine brand, Empire, the tag lines and features are kept close together, we have kept the same aspects but have had them more spread out, allowing the background images to be seen and focused on.
This is a strength to our cover as the aspecst of the writing and pictures can be read and focused on individually with ease, making the cover easily read which would allow the reader to read it easily and quickly, which is a plus in todays society as people want instant gratifaction in reading magazines.


Our head line was"Director's Cut" This was chosen from other names such as "Final Edit", "Take 1", "Tracking Shots".
Since we were creating a film based magazine we needed to the title to be relating to film, this would be most appropriate for the magazine which would allow us to seem like a film magazine. the title would also allow the reader to know it was a film magazine because we would be using jargon which is related to the media which most people know about.

Challenging conventions

Clapper board

Around our title we have placed a clapper board striped line, this image realtes to the media which our magazine is realting too. This style of image is generally not seen by the magazine industry, this aspect also allows the reader to tell its a film based magazine because they would reognise the stripes as a recogniseable icon from the film industry.

Poster

With each film which is being created a poster(or more) will be created to promote the film, this convention is followed 100% by each film which is being produced, this is too give clues about the film plot, production company, actors and a clever image which would interest the audience.

Each poster needs to get the attention of anyone walking by or genuanly looking for posters, the more eye catching the poster the more people will look at it and want to go and see the movie.

Real media conventions
Film posters need to relate to the film. This statement is the biggest factor which governs film posters, if the poster does not relate then it will not work for the viewer because they will not know anymore about the film.
The poster will need to include the production companies names and brand, directors and any behind the scene guys who have helped in creating the film.
Release date is an important factor which allows the audience to know when the film actually comes out, this feature allows them to plan when to see it, and give them the key information about the film.


Developing conventions

We have kept our poster simple as we did not want to overcomplicate the poster for the viewer to read, this feature will allow them to get the key information about the film and take in the picture. This has allowed us to keep the image in the foreground of the image and not clutter it up with text for the viewer to read. This has developed the conventions because we have kept the information to the littlest, main information is the; title of the film, tag line, actors, release date and production names. This little information allows the viewer to see the main image which should interest them in the film.


Challenging conventions

Through the conventions of poster's we have generally not actually challenged or changed the style of poster, this is only because the poster is a small object which relates to the film. This view did not really allow us to change and challenge the conventions of poster creation.

The only challenge which we could have made to the convention is that of the palcement of the text, this aspect could be challenged because majorityivly the text is seen at the bottom of the poster, this allows the image to start at the top of the poster then as you read down you read the text, we have had the text at the top so they would know the name of the film before they see the image, this was they can relate the image to the name.

This although small I feel is not enough to actually challenge the poster as a whole, but does challenge the placement of the text within the poster.

- Joel.