In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge and conventions of real media products. By Paige Woolford

For our A2 Media Studies coursework we had to create a teaser trailer (of any genre we wished) which is being broadcasted onto a video sharing site: YouTube and create 2 ancillary tasks to go a long with it (in this case, a film poster and a magazine cover) with similar features of the other original products. Before I could create the product, I started to research and learn about the different products that were available, as seen here on my blog: Secondly I had to plan out what I wanted ideas I wanted to have, also seen here: Lastly in pre-production I created them using software like photo shot, premier pro and indesign. On the next slides it shows the products I created.

Film trailer: Film trailers are used to make audiences known of new and upcoming films and create a build up to the film which is why this is a good way of advertising – these can also been seen by many people and can be found in variety of places such examples are IMDb, YouTube, and blogs.

Film Trailer The film trailer, magazine and film poster includes characters from the movie for the advertising purposes. Before creating my own products, I watched and analysed trailers of the horror genre, for example: A nightmare on elm street, Final destination and 28 days later – theses trailers share similar conventions of a horror film. Using my own knowledge of real media conventions and micro- features. I used a convention from the trailers to create a dark colour tone to create an eerie and scary atmosphere.

Film trailer My first step to creating was making a storyboard. This had many different boxes with information telling the shots and angles I wanted. Over time I got bored of similar shots, so I cut some out and changed the storyboard to something I wanted. This helped me form a rough idea of what I wanted when I started to film. I wanted to break some conventions of real media products, my trailer includes ‘zombie’ characters which moved both slow and medium speed, and I kept this because I had a range of the characters changing to what I wanted, these characters also changed the way they act differently from the trailer I’ve watched.

Film trailer The types of micro-features used was important to me, because I wanted to keep the audience on edge and keep them attracted while trying to build a scary atmosphere, for this I used the camera with a tripod which gave me a steady shot. The uses of fade ins & outs helped build tension between the trailer and audience, these ideas came from Final Destination and 28 days later, I was impacted from looking at the trailer to help me build my own story line and trailer. I used a similar convention of a ‘chase’ scene to create some tension and using cuts when editing, I felt that this would make the audience want to know what happened to the characters and draw them in.

Film poster Before I started editing my trailer, I started on my film poster, this was the first product I created. At first I did some drawings which helped me decide what layout I wanted first. I had to organise certain meetings with my characters to get the right photo I wanted, during this process, I decided that I wanted different colours to create a scary atmosphere, such as dark greens and black along with red which symbolises blood and danger. I also wanted to have the different photo to the magazine because it would become too repetitive. The font used for the title and ‘coming soon’ are shown as the letters are melting away which links to the theme of zombies.

This is my picture of the film poster, as you can see it has the name of the film aswell as a ‘Coming Soon’ which is used to show the film that …. I have many effects and edited the photos to look darker and dirtier for example the look of ‘sweat, mud and dirt’ on the legs and clothing of the person which may have challenged real media products as they aren’t as gritty I didn’t challenge any conventions on the film poster expect maybe the use of colours as there is hardly any colours used because I wanted it to be dark and eerie for the audience In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge and conventions of real media products Here is the draft version of my film poster, as you can see it has the typical layout with ‘Name of film’ and a feature of ‘Coming Soon’. There wasn’t much that I challenged or developed Here is the draft version of my film poster, as you can see it has the typical layout with ‘Name of film’ and a feature of ‘Coming Soon’.

Film magazine I challenge the layout of the film magazine because I didn’t really like the original layout of the other magazines because it’s information was too together although it’s a good idea, I wanted to see what it would look like if the product changed. I also added a QR code which would be seen on the magazine too, which would send the ‘buyer’ to the blog about the trailer to let them know more about the product. Which is challenges the real media products, because you don’t really see much of the codes on products. For my magazine front cover, I used the same conventions of real media products, for example; mast head, side articles, barcodes and key image. I used a different character for my magazine from the poster. I then used some photo shop to edit and change the picture. The picture I used, is of low key lighting and was taken outside with trees and bushes in the background, to give it an effect. I compared my magazine to some other film magazines covers to see how realistic my magazine looks and if it would be industry standard.

This has some features of a real media product – it has similar style and layout of similar which shows that I haven’t In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge and conventions of real media products I have developed the skills and knowledge of real media magazines. I have added such features of my version of a production studio and a QR reader which may also challenge the conventions because it isn’t like the other products. I have used similar colours, such as reds and yellow as well as black as well as bold font which stands out to the audiences who would buy this item.

Conclusion I would say that I have achieved some what of a horror trailer by using the same conventions but also trying other ideas aswell. I think I should have planned more ideas that I could’ve used to break some more conventions.