Evaluation Question 1In what way does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real life media texts?

At A2 I chose to do a film trailer as my main task and a film poster and a film magazine cover for my ancillary tasks. In our group we decided to chose British film drama as our genre as it was completely different to what we had done previously at AS. I researched the typical conventions by looking at previous film posters, magazine covers and films to look at designs to give me inspiration. I looked at Trainspotting, The Football Factory and The Firm.

Conventions From my research into existing films I found that the typical

conventions were as follows: Firstly, drama films can into consideration real life situations and

use realistic characters, settings and story lines. The purpose of a drama film is to get the audience to feel

emotionally engaged by the story being told. Throughout the film you will see how a character changes or develops as a person during a certain time period within the film.

There is also a lot of intense social interaction between the characters.

In addition, the audience can relate to what they are watching as the stories often include conflicts of real life hardships or difficulty which many people face during their life time.

There is often climaxes and anti climaxes so that the audience remain emotionally attached to the story.

Drama films often end happily. There is often a lot of violence between the characters. Heavy use of both alcohol and drugs.

How I conformed to conventions Firstly, I conformed to the conventions by including a film

age rating using the green band at the beginning of the trailer. I noticed that in a lot of the trailers I researched that this was very popular as the majority of the films include a lot of violence and drug abuse. This therefore makes the audience aware of what they will be watching. Furthermore, in our trailer we included the logo of the production company that we chose to use, which was Film 4. We included this as it shows the audience who has produced the film and therefore, when a production company like Film 4 is shown on a trailer, it is more likely to attract people to watch as they know the film is going to be of high quality. It is more likely to attract the cult audience who often watch films produced by Film 4.

How I conformed to the conventions

Moreover, we included a voice over in order to follow the conventions of the trailer. The voice over is used so the audience has understanding of the characters and what is happening in the different scenes. In addition, we included non-diegetic sound in order to create an atmosphere and to build up suspense. For example, we included two pieces of non-diegetic sound, the first piece being a slower tempo to create more of a down cast feeling. The second was a higher tempo piece to really build up suspense, relating to what is happening in the scene.

How I conformed to the conventions In addition, I noticed that the majority of

the British film dramas had British actors in it who were not as well known as some of the more popular actors. As we didn’t have a budget we could only use unknown British actors. However, using actors who aren't well known gives you a closer relationship, making you able to relate to the characters.

How I conformed to conventions Furthermore, our film trailer included the

important information all trailers include. This includes the title of the film so that people know what the film is called. Moreover, it includes the release date of the film so that people know when it will be out in cinemas in order for them to go and watch it. The font for all our subtitles was an important decision as we wanted to create something that fitted in with the young but violent trend. Therefore, we decided with the font in the screenshot as we thought that was best suited.

How I conformed to conventions Finally, our trailer included violence, alcohol

consumption and reference to drug taking. From the three films I looked closely at (The Firm, Trainspotting and The Football Factory) they all included violence, however they were more gang violence than one individual, however, from our audience feedback, we noticed that our audience preferred to have just one main character instead of a gang.

How I challenged conventions Our film trailer goes against the typical convention of

having all the scenes in chronological order. We decided to do it in non-chronological order due to our audience feedback in which we were informed they would prefer it in non-chronological as when it is in chronological order, a lot of the plot is given away. Whereas non-chronological you don’t know what is going to happen next. Furthermore, our film trailer is much longer than your standard film trailer, with it being 2minutes.58 seconds. Most film trailers are often just over 2 minutes, however, our trailer is intended to reveal a bit more of the story line in order to get people to understand what our film is about, which I think would be quite difficult in just 2 minutes.

How I challenged conventions Furthermore, a lot of the British Film

dramas include racist remarks, for example in Adulthood. However, we felt that was completely unnecessary and there was no way that was going to be included. I think racial discrimination in more modern films is being removed, so therefore we felt we had included enough violence and drug abuse to combat that.

How I challenged conventions I think we challenged the convention with our

main character having two sides to his personality. A lot of characters, especially in Trainspotting tend to have the same immature and violent personality throughout the film, whereas our main character has two sides. He is often bad in terms of violence and drug taking, however, he works hard at school and has that deep emotional side to him, for example when he goes to his mothers grave.