Question 1

In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge

conventions of real media products?

My poster, out of all three pieces of media, challenges conventions the most. I decided to challenge the conventions of the horror genre after my first piece of audience research. The people I had asked outlined ideas about having an unconventional poster – but only if was done well, to me that meant creating it in a unique way, but still having the key features that a conventional poster would have, and therefore doing what posters are meant to do; catching the audience’s attention. From all the posters I analysed, I found the Scream 4 and Saw posters to be most appealing. The main image was of just one thing – an object of importance in the films. I found that this looked more appealing than having the character on the poster; the audience would see the character in the trailer or magazine cover anyway. By using an image of something relevant or important to the film/trailer, my poster creates a real sense of enigma, more so than maybe having the character on the poster. Creating this convention was something that I wanted to stick by. I also used the conventional colours black and red. Something I had noticed when analysing the posters was that white wasn’t used a lot. I decided to use white because firstly it symbolises purity, something that is relatable to children, the antagonist in Rosie Black is a teenager therefore it sticks with the theme. Secondly, it is aesthetically pleasing and when placed amongst other posters which use predominantly darker colours, it will definitely stand out. I used conventional things that are on posters; tagline, masthead, date and institutional logo. By doing so, I balanced the conventional with the unconventional and thus made the poster recognisable for what it is rather than making it look too different.

My magazine is quite unconventional, mainly due to the image I used. Where in the magazines I analysed, there was a clear, unedited image of the character, but instead I chose to distort and edit my image. This was because I wanted to represent the theme of the trailer; Rosie Black has a split personality and she sometimes ‘loses her mind’, and therefore has a warped outlook. By editing the image so heavily, it creates a sense of distortion of reality and fantasy. One convention that I stuck by was having the character looking straight out at the audience; this breaks the diegesis of the film and the characters ‘sphere of action’. This allowed me to connect with the audience, while still having conventional media language alongside it. The conventions I used were masthead, cover lines, flash button, barcode, issue number and date. To make these conventions look different, or seem less conventional I edited them in different, eye-catching ways. All the typefaces were hand-drawn; not only does this create continuity with the poster and trailer, it gives the magazine an authentic look as by drawing the typefaces in specific ways I could get the actual effect I wanted rather than choose out of readymade fonts. I developed the flash button to look more suited to the horror genre, instead of using a simply circle which wouldn’t look ‘edgy’ or scary enough, I drew a shape which looks as though the page has been ripped, creating a much more successful look than just having a normal shape. Again, I used conventional colours; red and black, creating a bigger continuity between the media texts.

The most unconventional thing about the trailer is that there is only one character seen, Rosie Black – who is the antagonist and protagonist of the film. Rather than having all the characters featured, by just having Rosie, the trailer portrays and successfully represents the emotional aspects that – if the film was made – would be extremely important. Like my magazine cover, at the beginning of the trailer Rosie looks directly at the camera. By breaking the diegesis in two of my media texts, I have not only created a sense of continuity but also connected with the audience on a deeper level. While analysing the magazine covers, I found that I was drawn to those where the characters were looking at the audience, breaking their ‘sphere of action’. Therefore, this idea was brought into the trailer. The hand drawn typeface is used again for the inter titles and title of the film, in the trailers I analysed, they had simple typefaces, but the one I made is quite elaborate. The main convention is the face paced editing, done to resemble the racing heartbeat. The trailer wouldn’t be as successful as a horror themed trailer without this.