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

products?

Eleanor Monk

The genre my group chose for our film campaign of a teaser trailer, poster and magazine cover was Social Realism, as we liked the idea of focusing on specific issues such as drug use and gang culture, and we felt as though we would be able create a professional overall product, using natural lighting, ourselves as actors and local urban environments as settings. To get an idea of the forms and conventions of this genre before finalizing our storyboard and beginning our project, I researched existing examples of Social Realism media products, such as the trailer and poster for ‘KiDULTHOOD’, and the magazine covers for ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘Attack The Block’.

By analyzing the teaser trailers for ‘KiDULTHOOD’ and ‘AdULTHOOD’ we were inspired to use several techniques and conventions associated with the Social Realism genre, including camerawork, titles, costume, setting, props, positioning, lighting, editing techniques and sound. The top shots are from our ‘Transition’ teaser trailer and the shots below are from ‘the teaser trailers for ‘KiDULTHOOD’ and ‘AdULTHOOD’.

The costume of ‘Kevin’ in our teaser trailer is similar

to that of the main character of

‘KiDULTHOOD’, to give him the same urban and intimidating persona.

The font, size and colour of the titles in our teaser trailer were inspired by those used in ‘AdULTHOOD’ for dramatic effect and to build suspense

in a way conventional of teaser trailers.

We used high angle shots similar to those used in the trailer for ‘AdULTHOOD’ to

show power and antagonistic nature in a character, important in

Social Realism film.

Before making our teaser trailer I researched the conventions of teaser trailers using the one for ‘Dreamgirls’ as an example and created a Prezi on the topic.

This was a point of referral and meant that we stuck to teaser trailer conventions, such as a climaxing soundtrack, short duration, montage editing, mysterious character identity, a distribution company ident at the beginning,

titles, close up shots of props, a main title towards the end by itself and a ‘COMING SOON’ title at the end.

Close up shot of significant props

The Prezi I made on the conventions of teaser trailers

Distribution Company Ident‘COMING SOON’ title towards the

end of the teaser trailer

Through researching and analyzing the magazine covers for Little White Lies magazine’s Social Realism film ‘Attack The Block’ feature and EMPIRE magazine’s Social Realism film ‘Trainspotting’ feature we were able to get inspiration for our ‘Transition’ magazine cover. I gathered the conventions of EMPIRE magazine covers by creating a mood board of EMPIRE magazines, and from this we created our own magazine cover, abiding to the conventions of Social Realism and EMPIRE magazine.

The EMPIRE magazine mood board I created

The ‘Trainspotting’ EMPIRE magazine

cover that we used as reference

Our final ‘Transition’ film magazine cover

Through looking at this specific EMPIRE magazine cover for the Social Realism film ‘Trainspotting’ we were able to create a magazine poster that was

conventional of both the Social Realism genre and EMPIRE magazine covers. These include, the white title across the main character, the low key lighting

photograph to create a sense of unease and mystery, the working class costume, the conventional EMPIRE heading behind the head of the figure, the

blank background to contrast with the bust text and imagery, the yellow and red text colour theme and the sub features of other upcoming films.

EMPIRE ‘Trainspotting’ magazine cover Our final ‘Transition’ magazine cover

To prepare for the making of our groups Social Realism film poster as part of our film campaign for the film ‘Transition’, I created a mood board of existing Social Realism film posters for reference. We then chose the poster that we thought

related to the narrative, theme and style of our own film and used it as a basis for our poster, being the ‘KiDULTHOOD’ poster. I analyzed the poster and was then able to begin work on my groups film poster, aware of the conventions of

Social Realism and film posters.

The Social Realism film poster mood board The ‘KiDULTHOOD’

PosterOur final ‘Transition’

film poster.

The similarities between the poster for Social Realism film ‘KiDULTHOOD’ and our own ‘Transition’ poster conventional of the Social Realism genre include the contrasting sky

and urban backdrop, the white text over black to make it stand out, the intimidating positioning of the characters, the contrast colour editing, the black gradient at the

bottom, the working class/urban costume of the characters, the violence representative of the baseball bat prop and the slogan positioned above the title. These are

conventions of the Social Realism genre, and along with the billing block, website link, release date and film review abide to the conventions of a film poster.

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