Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Codes and conventions are the predictable forms and techniques used by the media to communicate certain ideas or to convey a desired impression. These techniques are perceived through symbolic, audio and technical. The convention is the established way of doing something.

EnigmaOur trailer follows the convention of the typical enigma in a horror film trailer of ‘the final girl’, a common trailer regards to include that a horror film doesn’t make an enigma clear in their trailer, we followed this convention when editing our trailer to add more hesitation to the audiences perception and to add curiosity for them to find out the answers to the open questions that we left out in our trailer, we done this by separating scenes of shots with other shots and adding them in at different slots throughout the trailer, this was called discontinuity editing/montage.

In our trailer the main doubts that we left with the audience were:

Will the boy find out how his sister got put in a coma?

Will he be able to save her in time?

What was the girls past?

By placing enigmas in our trailer it led for our target audience to want to watch the whole film after watching the teaser trailer.

Character RolesVladimir Propp was an inspiring professor that founded the idea that in every narrative structure are certain characters roles. His theory has influenced all film makers into producing prosperous narratives in films and their trailers. We followed the convention of using certain character roles in our trailer within mise en scene in our trailer and whilst editing to change the effects of lightings and contrast.

In our trailer we used the following roles– Villain - opposes and sets challenge– hero-seeks and faces challenge– princess- reward, object to be saved.

In our poster we decided to have pictures of both the hero and the villain, this was to emphasis the significance of the characters and to also portray that our trailer was an action seeking film. In the trailer we recognised the hero, villain and princess, this was crucial that we done this so the audience begun to grasp an understanding on the reality and feelings towards each character individually before they viewed the film.

There is the ‘princess ‘ from our trailer and also the ‘princess’ from the film taken which was an film that we followed and was inspired by when making our trailer. We used different shots to show the view of the princess that needed help from different angles. This captivated the audience to recognise that she needed help. We deliberately used a close-up of the hand where in taken they also used a close up to show her facial expression to set the narrative and character role in our trailer.

ThemesWe followed the convention of having a theme for our trailer, this was to develop and expand the detail and stretch the trailers capabilities to a wider target audience. The concept of a theme in a trailer is to acknowledge what the film is actually about and based upon. Themes that we shared in our trailer were portrayed as teenage crime and society as we see it today, exposing secrets, lies and deceit.

Is society a threat or simply a figment of our twisted imagination? We done this by using teenagers as characters in our trailer, we also used opposing questions in the trailer to entice the audience to solve the missing enigmas creating intrigue, through shots of teenage events and a desire to watch the film.

GenreGenres are not fixed categories, most films are hybrids which are a selection of genres put together, our film was a action thriller. This follows the codes of conventions of a film, an example of this is love actually which is a romantic comedy, this is a completely different genre to our trailer but is still a hyrbrid. Neale 2000 stated that some genres have a distinct setting. However we didn’t follow the codes of conventions of a film due to the setting of our trailer, as the lighting was bright and in the day it was hard for us to portray a action thriller film, in most action thriller films the lighting is darker to create a sense of fear and suspense. We failed to do this due to the time of day we were filming so tried to adjust the colour and brightness whilst editing to show and make our genre more obvious to the audience in the trailer.

A genre gives us the knowledge of emotion that we will experience in the film. It was important for us that we encouraged a emotional response from the audience towards each individual character. Genres can give off a adrenaline and immediate pleasure to an audience. We the public go to see a film, to get a emotional response. (Clover 1987) critics argue that we watch our deepest desires and fears being played out. I agree with this and whilst making our trailer to show an unprecedented need for the unfolding truth of the narrative. This relates back to the symbol of our narrative through the use of ‘the book’, this is shown in our trailer, poster and magazine cover maintaining consistency and significance.

The book