1) Scripted reality TV shows like TOWIE portray unrealistic lifestyles to appeal to teenage audiences, with characters wearing designer clothes, living in mansions, and driving flashy cars. 2) These shows conventionally use non-diegetic music in trailers and a variety of camera shots like establishing shots and close-ups to engage viewers. 3) In a parody of TOWIE, the document writer chose to emphasize the convention of applying excessive makeup and fake tan to male characters for comedic effect.

1. Matthew Slater

2.  Scripted reality TV shows such as The Only Way Is
Essex (TOWIE) are exactly that, scripted, real life
situations.
 Conventionally, females in TOWIE wear designer
clothing and the males in TOWIE are well groomed
and appear tanned. Both male and female, to appear
aspirational to the target demographic of teenagers.
 Furthermore, props that are used usually tend to be
expensive and ‘flash’ or ‘bling’ for example, the Cars
they drive, and the jewellery they wear. All this is done
to draw in their audience and portray their status.

3.  To reinforce their status they must live in big houses,
this appears to me to be another convention of
scripted reality TV shows. Although not all of us live
in big posh houses; so the audience obviously aspire
to be like the characters in it.
 Conventionally, there is a lot of non-diegetic sound
used throughout these scripted realities and their
trailers, usually chart music; this must reinforce the
storyline.
 Scripted realities try to use as many different camera
shot types as possible, from establishing shots to
close ups, est shot to set the scene for the target
audience and CU to show emotions on the characters
faces.

6.  In my parody, I chose to use & develop the
convention of make-up we chose to put a
mixture bronzer, foundation and fake tan
on the guy’s faces, to develop this, we put a
lot of it on, to make it look humorous and
to add emphasis to the parody.
 I chose to use the convention of non-
diegetic sound over my trailer because this is
what was done in the trailer I mimicked. I
chose the Ellie Goulding ‘Anything Can
Happen’ song because in one of the trailers I
watched whilst planning, the characters said,
“anything can happen”.
 I also chose to match the convention of a
variety of shot types in my trailer, I would
have liked to develop this convention and
gone for using tracking shots in my trailer,
however we didn’t have a tripod dolly with us
while we were filming.

7.  I modelled my front cover on the Fabulous
magazine. I chose this magazine because of it’s
simplicity yet effectiveness. Also because it is a
classy magazine not a messy magazine with 10
features scattered.
 I chose to use the MS convention of male stars
on the front cover of the magazine. I also used
the convention of minimal features because in
my opinion this works well as it makes people
want to read more of what’s inside.
 I challenged the convention of the master
being behind the star’s head. It appeared to me
whilst researching this magazine, only big celebs
go in front of the master; and to me, TOWIE
stars aren’t ‘big celebrities’ however much they like
to think they are.

8.  After researching The Only Way Is Essex ancillary
products, it became clear to me that there was
conventions of TOWIE ancillaries were
glamorous and featured the main characters
that appeared in the soap.
 I noticed that none of the ancillary products
contained any television branding. I chose to
challenge this convention and put an ITV 2
logo on my poster; thus adding branding to
the product. This worked for me because it
added the branding which was my initial
intention, others in my group chose to use the
logo as well, however it looks neater to me to put
it in the bottom right hand corner where as they
put it in the middle of the page.

9.  Conventionally, the stars of the soap appear
on the ancillary products. Originally, I
wanted to challenge this convention and
go with an image of a basket of make-up and
fake tan, however shop security wouldn’t
allow me to do this when I asked
permission, so I decided to use this
convention; I Developed on it by only
using 4 of my characters instead of 5 or
more which are traditionally used on these
products. I chose to do this so it didn’t look
too crowded, I wanted to keep it as clutter
free as possible.