MEDIA EVALUATION QUESTION 1

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

The media products I have created are a theatrical trailer, film poster and magazine front cover. My film is called “Obsess” and the genre is action thriller; the inspiration for our film came from the successful action thriller films “Taken” and the “James Bond” franchise. I believe that my magazine front cover and film poster predominately use the convention forms of real media products. However, my film trailer develops and challenges conventions of real theatrical trailers.

Firstly, the protagonist “Ricky” is a conventional action hero. When researching action thriller films, Taken, James Bond and Bourne films the protagonists played by Liam Neeson, Daniel Craig and Matt Damon are all stereotypical action heroes. This is due to the fact they are all male, white, muscular and all have stubble. Ricky has the characteristics that follow Propp’s theory of a hero character. Ricky played by Ricardo Vieira is the main focus throughout all of my media products. For example, my film poster shows Ricky is looking down which connotes that he is thinking about what he is going to do next in order to save Chloe, his loved one.

In addition to this, there is an image of Ricky holding a gun, which connotes he is ready to kill in order to save Chloe. However, I do challenge the conventions of real media products as Liam Neeson, Daniel Craig and Matt Damon are all of an older age in comparison to Ricky. When casting, I decided to choose a younger male as our target audience is aged sixteen to twenty four year olds. Therefore Ricky is nineteen and fits into this age bracket, appealing to the target audience in a physical way helping to create longer term success for the film as Ricky is a unique selling point.

Furthermore, when casting we didn’t have a wide range of males available to play the character of Ricky. In order to make sure the actor playing Ricky would appeal to our target audience, we asked them through the use of a survey “Do you want the protagonist character to be a male aged 20?” fifteen out of twenty respondents answered yes so overall this meant that Ricardo Vieira would be effective to play the protagonist character. By including the protagonist in all three products, this conforms to the conventions of real media products, as when looking at successful action thriller films, the same image or similar images of the same actor is used making the film more memorable to the audience.

My film poster conforms the conventions of real model products due to the layout, title, main image and tagline used. Inspiration for my film poster came from the film “Taken” as when researching film posters, they included a film strip showing different action scenes that are in the film. Therefore I decided to go with this idea and include three images of scenes from the film putting them in a black and white effect. In addition to this the title of the film ‘Obsess’ is the biggest font on the page and is in the colour red, making the font stand out and the audience are able to identify this straight away. The tag line “They took his

girlfriend. Now he’s taking them”, this is conventional as the tag line in some aspect tells the narrative as well as creates an enigma for the audience.My magazine front cover conforms the conventions of real life media products. The main image is of Ricardo Vieira and the image has a sort of 3D effect making it seem as if he is jumping out the page, grabbing the audience’s attention. This is conventional as the main image is the first thing the readers will see when viewing my magazine front cover. In addition to this, all the taglines on my front cover links to the film “Obsess”. It is clear that this magazine is promoting the film “Obsess” in which Ricardo Vieira stars in as the banner states “Behind the scenes Obsess special” in red capital letters, making it clear to the target audience.

My film trailer develops and challenges the conventions of a real theatrical trailer as some viewers may find it unclear who the antagonist is, making the narrative unclear. In addition to this, due to the equipment we had available the sound effects and sound track did not work as effectively with the trailer. One of the main props we used is a fake gun which is seen in the trailer, when filming in public places we had to be careful when filming making it clear to the public it wasn’t a real gun. However, the trailer conforms the conventions of a theatrical trailer as it follows a similar narrative to the film “Taken” which is told through the use of shoots and inter-titles. Furthermore, when researching film trailers all included an establishing shot of the location where the film is set. We have included an establishing shot of Putney Bridge where our film is set.