This document discusses conventions of different types of media used to promote films, including teaser trailers, film posters, and magazine covers. It provides examples from the film Legend to illustrate conventions. The document also examines how the student's media products for the film Infraction challenge and follow conventions. It challenges gender conventions for the action crime genre by having female criminals as main characters, while generally following technical conventions for teaser trailers, posters, and magazine covers. Institutional conventions between British independent and Hollywood blockbuster films are also discussed.

1. EVALUATION
QUESTION 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Please have sound on for voiceover.

2. Conventions are the way things are usually done. In
terms of film promotion these are elements that
are usually featured in different types of marketing
products. Each promotional product and each
genre has its own conventions.

3. TeaserTrailer

4. Conventions of aTeaserTrailer
Other conventions of teaser trailers is that they include titles, not all teaser trailers will have
titles but most do even if it is just the name of the film or the time of year it will be released.
Most teaser trailers will have montage editing that shows lots of different parts of the film so
that they are not giving too much away, some teaser trailers will uses the shot from the film in a
different order to show something that is actually not included in the film. Some teaser trailers
will include music and voiceovers instead of using actual dialogue from the film, I found that
this was the case in teaser trailers for action crime films. Something I also found when
researching the conventions of teaser trailers is that teaser trailers touch on as many narrative
themes as possible to draw in a large audience, for example a teaser trailer for an action crime
film could show an element of romance which makes the audience think that romance is a large
narrative theme throughout the film whereas in actual fact that is the only bit of romance in the
whole film. Generally most teaser trailer will also start with their company idents this is usually
a logo or a graphic.

5. Conventions of aTeaserTrailer
Legend
Legend (2015) is the real film example that we have used
throughout the process of creating our marketing
campaign. Legend’s teaser trailer has a running time of
1:36 which is just over what I found the conventional
length of a teaser trailer was. In the teaser trailer for
Legend the pace begins slow and then gets faster which
fits with the convention of pace in action crime films.The
teaser trailer also includes titles, some might say the teaser
trailer for Legend has more titles than a conventional
teaser trailer.The Legend teaser trailer has montage
editing which fits convention, it also fits convention as it
has music and a voiceover but no dialogue.The teaser
trailer also begins with the company idents for Studiocanal
andWorkingTitle.

6. Convention of aTeaserTrailer
Infraction
With the general conventions in mind, our teaser trailer has followed many of the technical
conventions of that you would expect from a teaser trailer for an action crime film.Our teaser trailer
has a running time of 49 seconds which fits convention. Similarly to the teaser trailer for Legend our
teaser trailer starts slow and then the pace picks up and gets faster we also have title throughout our
teaser trailer like in the teaser trailer for Legend. Our teaser trailer contains music and a voiceover
which fits convention, it also fits the general convention of teaser trailers having montage editing.
We also created our own company idents, 'Black Print Productions' and 'Supremacy Pictures‘.
When looking at our teaser trailer we have tried to use the general technical conventions of teaser
trailers with a similar genre, but at the same time trying to challenge the gender conventions that
are usually associated with the Action Crime genres. In most Action Crime films the main characters
who are the criminals are men, for example Legend follows the story of the infamous KrayTwin who
are both male, we decided that we wanted to challenge this genre convention we did this by have
female criminals as our main characters.

7. The technical conventions that we have followed in our teaser trailer are those of the
setting, iconography, characters and narrative, we followed these conventions through
our mise en scene, for example we included a gun, money and multiple IDs this fits with
the iconography that is associated with the action crime film.We loosely fitted the
conventional characters that are found in action crime films, our main characters are
criminals but they would not be the stereotypical criminals that you would associate with
an action crime film because they are female. On reflection our teaser trailer doesn’t fit
the conventional setting of an action crime film, you would typically see a mansion, police
station or nightclubs but we haven’t included any of these. Finally we follow the
conventional narrative of an action crime film as our film is based around the lead up to
and the fall of one large event.

8. Institutional Conventions
British Independent v Hollywood Blockbuster
British Independent films are usually aimed at a much more niche audience that Hollywood
Blockbusters which aim to please the masses. British independent films have much smaller budgets
so you would expect the marketing product that they products to be not be of the high standard
that a Hollywood Blockbuster films marketing products would be. For example a British
Independent film is not going to haveA list actors and it is unlikely that they would have as high
tech equipment as a Hollywood Blockbuster. A British Independent film is unlikely to be able to be
promoted on well known film magazines such as Empire andTotal Film, they are also not going to
be able to exhibit their film posters in as many places as a Hollywood Blockbuster would. British
Independent films are likely to focus on a style of promotion that fits their audience for example
they might have created a film poster but it might be a digital one not print this could be then
circulated on social networking sites. Hollywood Blockbuster have a much larger budget meaning
that they have the capacity to grab the attention of the masses with large billboard posters and a
wider variety of advertisements.

9. Film Poster

10. Convention of a Film Poster
Generally the main conventions of a film poster are; the film’s name being the main focus,
an image that relates to the narrative themes of the film, a secondary image that adds
further to the themes of the film, the actors name/s this is mainly just included when the
main characters are well known, a billing block which is always in the same place and
includes the same information, and the tagline which also gives the audience a better idea
of the narrative themes of a film. Some film posters will show the date of the film’s release
and sometimes reviews are also included on the film’s poster.

11. Convention of a Film Poster
Legend
The film poster for Legend follows the general conventions of film
posters. It has primary and secondary imagesTom Hardy’s
characters stand out as the main image and Emily Browning’s
character is faded into the background which suggests that
although she is important she is not as important to the narrative
as the two men are.The actors’ names are above the films title
which indicates that they are well know actors.The films title
stands out against the image.There is a tagline and it also includes
commendation for screenwriters and produces which is less
conventional in film posters.And finally there is the billing block
that is in the conventional place.

12. Convention of a Film Poster
Infraction
Our film poster also follows similar conventions of
film posters that Legend does for example we have
our primary image/s which are one of the main
focuses of the poster, we also chose to include a
tagline like Legend’s poster did.We have a billing
block which includes our logos for our production
company and our film studios.We chose to include
reviews of our film which is something that
Legend’s official poster didn’t have. We chose to
have our actors names at the top of the top not
near the title as we wanted the title to stand alone
to emphasise it.

13. Magazine Cover

14. Convention of a Magazine Cover
From my research I learnt that there are six main conventions of a magazine cover the
masthead/ name of the film magazine, the main image which shows the reader the
feature of the issue, buzzwords that are there to grab the attention of the audience, such
as exclusive, the banner which gives detail about what is include in the issue, Anchorage
Text this is text that goes on top of the image, giving an idea of what the main feature/
article is about and the Barcode, Date, Issue Number.
We focus on Sight and Sound as this was the film magazine we thought best fitted our
film. Sight and Sound has its own house style which is the conventions of the magazine.
Some of the conventions of Sight and Sound magazine are; the white board around the
edge of the issue, the BFI logo, the red ‘plus’, the yellow bullet points at the bottom of the
cover and the barcode overlapping the boarder.

15. Convention of a Magazine Cover
Infraction
As well as following the general conventions of magazine
covers we had to make sure that we were following the
Sight and Sound house style/ conventions.We used the BFI
logo and the Sight and Sound title, we used our own font for
the name of the film and for the rest of the writing we made
sure we used a similar font as Sight and Sound to fit their
conventions.We have the main images that film magazines
in general have and we also used a secondary image of
London which is lesson convention of a film magazine. Sight
and Sounds convention of have the red ‘plus’ at the bottom
of the issue match the general film magazine convention of
having buzzwords to grab the readers attention.