1. In what way does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and
conventions of real life media texts?
2. 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 atTrainspotting,
The Football Factory andThe Firm.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Finally, our trailer included violence, alcohol consumption
and reference to drug taking. From the three films I looked
closely at (The Firm,Trainspotting andThe 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. I think we challenged the convention with our main
character having two sides to his personality. A lot of
characters, especially inTrainspotting 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.
