A level media coursework answer to question one of the evaluation

1. Evaluation Question One
Sam Warren

2. What is the question?
In What Ways Does Your Media Product
Develop Or Challenge Forms And
Conventions Of Existing Media Products?

3. My task was to create a trailer for a genre of film of my
choice. I choose to make a trailer to advertise a film in the
British Drama genre called “Young Breed”. The film was
inspired by a number of films such as: This Is England,
Bronson, Kidult Hood and Legend to name a few. As such
the trailer follows many of the conventions set out by the
trailers I have analysed that are for trailers in general and
also specific to the British Drama genre. The next slide
will highlight the conventions of both a trailer and the
British Drama genre. Unlike last year we tried to be more
creative and unconventional as we were more confident
in our abilities to create a product whereas last year I was
completely new to media and didn’t understand how to
use any of the technology or equipment and so I was just
focused on creating a working sequence.

4. Trailers British Drama
The trailer will always contain production company logos as
the reputation of a company will benefit from the success of a
trailer making people more likely to watch films that are of
that company’s name.
Brand logos will allow you to judge what type of film you are
watching for instance a Film 4 film is most likely going to be
British and so will have a dark humour and violence.
The film title is always feature otherwise people will not know
what film has been advertised and the trailer would be
pointless.
An age rating for the trailer such as green band or red band.
Alternatively the trailer will just feature the actual film rating
by the BBFC such as 15.
Introduce Characters
Some Social Media Links
Music and voice overs to build suspense and make the trailer
feel more exciting.
Should not exceed 3 minutes
Must have a release date so that the audience knows when
the film will be available to watch.
They are real life situations that can either be related to or
are based of a true experience.
Portray a journey of character development.
Intense social reaction.
A dramatic storyline used to drive the audience to various
emotions.
The biggest scene of drama is found in conflict between
characters which can include inner or outer struggles
depicting hardship and pain.
Audience can relate to the characters.
Uses climaxes and anti-climaxes within the structure in
order to more emotion within the audience.
A form of realisation at the end.
Violence is used in many British films as a way of
expressing the brutality of life, especially in films denoting
crime or in settings of a lower socio-economic background.
Alcohol is a drug that comes hand in hand with the
violence and so can be expected in films portraying
hooliganism and teenage life.
Britain can often be a dimly lit, glum environment and is
reflected in the way British Dramas use their lighting in low
key to portray this and to also create a grittier atmosphere,
which has become a staple of British films and what makes
them identifiable.
Sexism is used in British films as a way of empowering the
male characters whilst making the females seem more
vulnerable, adding to the emotion that the audience will
feel in a typical drama film.
Finally, a British Drama film will use British actors and
actresses, not just out of convenience but also because the
A list actors of Hollywood are to expensive for the typically
low budgets of British films which means that they have to
resort to lesser known actors from Britain.

5. How I Conformed To Trailer
Conventions
As stated in the table I made there are many essential aspects that cannot be
ignored in a trailer. This is why I conformed to the majority of the conventions
of a trailer other wise it wouldn’t be a trailer, instead it would be a show case
of an idea. For this reason I ensured that the green band rating and
production company logo was included at the beginning of the trailer as this
is traditionally where they are included.
As you can see, the
rating and production
company logos were
played within the first
10 seconds of the
trailer so that the
audience would have
an idea of what the
film may entail.

6. How I Conformed To Trailer
Conventions
The title was include in the last shot of the trailer and faded into view as a big
reveal of what the film is called. I thought that having the title at the end of
the trailer is better than having the title three quarters of the way through as
it is one of the last things that you see therefore it will stay in your memory
longer so if you see an advertisement such as the magazine front cover or
poster, the audience is more likely to retain the information of the trailer and
go and see the full film.
Here is a direct comparison of Young Breed
and This Is England show casing the point of
the trailer in which the title is shown. This
demonstrates that it is more beneficial to have
the title towards the end of the trailer as This
Is England became one of Britain's most
successful films grossing £5 million, despite
only having a budget of £1.5 million and
spawning 3 mini series on TV.

7. How I Conformed To Trailer
Conventions
The trailer introduces the character of Shaun and the Dealer and Sarah, so it conforms
to the convention of introducing characters, but it also conforms to the convention of
using a non-diegetic voice over as shown in the sound file in the bottom left. This was
in order to give the audience a clue into the personality of Shaun and hint at why he
acts the way he does. We imported two detached songs into the trailer, the first being
Nicole by Gravenhurst, the intended response from this song was to promote feelings
of sympathy for Shaun with its sombre tone and slow tempo. The sound file for this is
in the bottom centre of the slide. The second song we used was called Epic Massive
Action Drums from the royalty free website- Purple Planet. We imported the music
into the action sequence of the trailer to speed up the tempo and juxtapose the slow
introduction to keep the audience interested and on edge. This sound file is in the
bottom right.
Voice over Nicole Epic Massive Action Drums

8. How I Conformed To Trailer
Conventions
The final convention that I conformed to was using the release date for the
cinema as again it would have been pointless to make a trailer if you are not
going to hint at when the main feature is going to be released otherwise the
audience may forget about your trailer. Therefore if we left out the date of
release the trailer wouldn’t be complete so it was imperative to include it.
Because we all had our own custom fonts we couldn’t
decide which one we wanted to use so we decide to use a
new font for the trailer. This font here was made by
combining two different fonts together in order to created a
battered and worn down look, similar to that found in our
ancillary tasks.

9. Unconventional Parts Of The Trailer
The trailer is on the longer side as trailers will be a maximum of three minutes long,
however they rarely exceed three minutes. One of the longer trailers I analysed was This
Is England, as that trailer was around two and a half minutes long and my trailer was two
minutes and fifty eight seconds long which is just in the maximum time however this
makes unconventional for trailer standards. However because drama films are heavily
reliant on story telling and not explosions like AAA films I wanted to make the trailer a bit
longer in order for more of the narrative to be revealed, enough so the audience is
intrigued into finding out more. In addition we made a decision to have shots in the
trailer that are in chronological order because when we asked our focus group in the
planning stage they wanted a trailer in non chronological order as they felt that they get
too much of the narrative from trailers in chronological order. This is unconventional for a
British Drama as it runs the risk of the plot becoming confused in the trailer however I
feel that we succeeded in the task because it gives you an idea of who the main character
is and his motivations from the short clips in the trailer.

10. How I Conformed To British Drama
Conventions
Being a British film we used British actors as we cannot afford
professional actors from abroad as it is a very low budget
production. Having unknown actors like in real British Drama
films helps the audience to empathise with the characters as
they may be able to picture themselves in the situations that the
characters find themselves in such as the references we included
to drugs, alcoholism and knife crime which is associated to
Manchester as a city.

11. How I Conformed To British Drama
Conventions
All British Drama films I analysed featured heavy violence and references to violence
as it is part of the themes that the films try to portray such as racism, drugs and the
gang life. Prime examples of this would be This Is England, Bronson and Kidulthood. All
of these films feature gritty and realistic violence in their films that isn’t over the top.
This is one of the driving forces of British films because it is what makes them hard to
watch in some cases as it can not be taken light heartedly due to the realism. This is
why it was important to conform to this convention as it is part of the identity of
British films and what makes them realistic.
The shot on the left is from my
production and is just before a
shot where the main character
glasses an enforcer and the use of
a weapon was inspired by the This
Is England trailer as one man
attacks another with a machete.
Both weapons are crude and
realistic making the violence
seem a lot more brutal. In the
shot where Shaun glasses the
enforcer I added a smash sound
effect to make the impact more
hard hitting.

12. Unconventional Parts Of The Trailer
I wanted to move away from the idea of portraying
racism in British films as it is dropped casually in
many films such as football factory and Adulthood
because of plot lines and the views that people hold
in reality. However I know that people younger than
our target audience will view the film and they may
interpret racism in films from the oppositional
viewpoint of the film which would be that racism is
ok. Therefore I felt it inappropriate to have these
themes in the film because there is already enough
discrimination without us adding to it.

13. Unconventional Parts Of The Trailer
For the purpose from of the narrative we didn’t conform to using
low key lighting throughout the film as we felt that use of high
key natural sunlight as backlighting in the education scene was
important because it portrays the hope of a better life Shaun has
through getting his A levels and it also represents the return of
happiness to his life as he begins to move away from his old life
and he meets Sara, as stated in our narrative.

14. End Of Question One