Media evaluation

1. IN WHAT WAYS
DOES YOUR
MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE
CODES AND
CONVENTIONS OF
REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?

2. Our trailer is from the teen crime drama
genre, and in order to make it as
conventional as possible we looked at a
series of real and successful media
products to mimic their features and
characteristics to create a successful set
of film promotional products of our own.

3. We noticed a lot of teen drama
trailers began with an emotional
and thought provoking
monologue as a voiceover (like
Precious, and Freedom Writers
and The Perks of Being a
Wallflower), which introduced
the protagonist and their
situation. We used this
convention in our own work. We
also featured the Lionsgate logo
and the MPAA screen in our
own work because we saw that
a majority of teen dramas were
produced by Lionsgate so by
using their logo, our trailer
would be easily recognisable as
a teen drama and also be
classed with the other
successful movies produced by
Lionsgate.

4. All the teen gang dramas we used
as examples, mainly featured actors
who were black as that was the race
that was stereotypically associated
with gangs. Using this convention,
we casted an actor who resembled
the actors in other teen gang films;
tall, black and well built. However
the antagonist in teen gang movies
like ours in traditionally also black.
We challenged this convention by
casting a white actor- equally as tall
and menacing looking, but of a
different race. We thought by doing
this, it would give our film a small
twist without making it
unrecognisable as a gang drama.

5. The music traditionally featured in a teen gang
trailer is rap music- more specifically, American rap
music. While we wanted to be conventional, we
thought it was more important that we follow the
convention of a British film trailer. So we
challenged the convention of using rap music and
used grime music instead, which is more suited to
British gangs.

6. On our poster, we decided to
use red and white text to
contrast with the dark
background. These colours
would conventionally suggest
that our film is one from the
horror genre which could be
misleading as our film is a teen
gang drama. Teen dramas
normally feature blues, whites
and greys or bright colours
mixed with black (depending
on the subject of the film) but
we thought neither colour
scheme was appropriate for
the dark and violent nature of
our film so we challenged this
convention and used red,
white and black instead.

7. For the poster image, we used the
Kidulthood poster for inspiration. We
liked the grey tones and the use of a
cloudy sky to create a depressing and
gloomy vibe for the audience so we did
the same (but on the magazine cover
instead). On the Kidulthood poster, there
are seven characters being featured.
While we liked the idea of having more
than just the protagonist on our poster,
we thought any more than three
characters would make it look like a music
band poster and not conventional of a
film poster at all. So we looked at other
posters and conformed to the convention
of having just 2 characters on the poster-
the antagonist and the protagonist.