Evaluation!! - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For my media coursework, I decided to create a package that would advertise a romance film; this includes a teaser trailer, a poster and a website. The teaser trailer that my group have produced includes a number of typical codes and conventions from a real romance film. However we also felt it was important to develop and challenge some of these conventions as this would keep our target audience interested and not make them think our storyline is predictable. We decided to use the same length for our teaser trailer as all of the other typical romance teaser trailers as this is important so the audience knows it’s a teaser trailer not the main trailer. The main reason for a teaser trailer is to tease the audience into them wanting to watch the film. This is done by showing little bits of the storyline but not enough to give everything away; for example, using Todorov’s theory, we usually see some of the equilibrium, disruption and reconciliation to keep the suspense and the attempt to repair and reinstatement of equilibrium are left out of the teaser trailer as this will make the audience want to watch the film to find out what happens. I feel we have successfully done this because we haven’t shown how anything ends, however, I would have liked to show a little more so the teaser trailer is a bit clearer but we would be making our teaser trailer too long for it to be a teaser and we would also be in danger of giving too much away. Our storyline develops and challenges the typical conventions of a romance teaser trailer as we have added in a lot of distressing clips of drugs etc. and it has death (of Chloe’s father) in the plot. You wouldn’t usually find these things in a romance film as they are normally all focussed around love and relationships but we decided to add a twist to our storyline to make it different and unpredictable from other romance films. This will also help persuade our target audience to watch the main film as they will want to find out what happens. A romance film is usually set in a town or city where there are lots of people. However we wanted to challenge this convention and set our film in the countryside because we felt that this is what we had more access to and it also look more romantic (when they are walking in the park etc.) Having a female protagonist is conventional for a romance genre film and we used this to make our trailer and storyline more appealing to our target audience. We also felt that having a female protagonist meant that our target audience will be able to relate to the main character in the story. We have also used the same convention of having a setting in the female protagonists’ bedroom because we felt that this was important to make the storyline make sense and it is a typical setting for the friends to be getting ready to go out. We developed this setting to make it look more romantic by having low lighting in the bedroom. Again we challenged the typical conventions of a romance film by filming some scenes in a grave yard. This will shock the audience because they will not be used to seeing a grave yard scene in a romance genre film. However it will still make them want to watch it to find out why this grave yard scene is necessary in the storyline. I felt that it was important to develop this setting to make the grave yard look less scary because then the target audience might get confused with the genre as a dark grave yard would typically be seen in a horror film! This is why we decided to shoot the scene in day light. The dark side of Chloe’s life subverts from a stereotypical romance film as you would usually see all happy scene’s with maybe a couple of break ups in the middle of the film as the disruption; not as dark as we have made our storyline! We wanted to develop and challenge this convention as we thought it would make our film stand out from the others and would made it more exciting and less predictable. We used the same conventions with the lighting as I found that the typical romance genre films are set in the day time because this portrays a happy and joyful film. We decided that this is a good idea for our film as we didn’t want it to be too depressing with the drugs in the storyline etc. This is why most of our scenes are set in day light and we used natural lighting for this. However as I have mentioned before, we developed this typical convention as we used low lighting in the bedroom to create a romantic feel. The main props that are used in our teaser trailer are drugs; this is to fit in with the storyline and to suggest that Chloe is going to take them. We decided to challenge the typical props that are usually seen in a romance film because we felt that our plot isn’t like the typical romance genre. Usually the audience would see a necklace or something to resemble the couple’s love but in our storyline, the couple is having problems and the male doesn’t love the female so we decided not to add this kind of prop into our storyline because it would confuse the audience. Hair and make-up is kept natural throughout our teaser trailer as this challenges the typical conventions of a romance film because you would usually have parties where people get dressed up. However we felt that it was important to show our characters natural faces because of the events that are happening, you wouldn’t dress up to go on a walk or to take drugs. Keeping things natural also shows that the characters are comfortable around each other suggesting that the couple have been together for along time. The soundtrack that we used for the teaser trailer follows the same typical conventions of a real romance soundtrack however we have developed this because our song has some sad lyrics where as you would usually find happy lyrics throughout a romance song. I think it was necessary for us to pick this song because it clearly shows that the film has some happy bits in but also some sad bits too. The song is a very powerful and emotional song and it helps to connect the audience with the trailer. We challenged the typical convention of a voice over on our teaser trailer as we felt that having text come up within the shots was more dramatic than having a voice over. We also felt, as a group, that if we had a voice over then it would make our trailer sound and look unprofessional as we couldn’t get the typical low voice that is used in so many trailers for all the different genres. We decided to use the same typical convention of having the production company flash up at the start of our teaser trailer as this introduces the company and the film before anything happens. It also lets the audience know what company made this film and in a real film, if it was a well known company this would draw the audience into watching the film right from the start. However as ours is a made up company this wouldn’t happen but if we were going to make it we would use a well known production company. We were limited to what edits we could put into our teaser trailer due to the limitations of the software. This means that our editing is very plain however, during my research I found that a teaser trailer typically uses a lot of straight cuts or jump cuts throughout. This means that we used the same conventions for editing as a real romance teaser trailer, but we would have liked to experiment with different editing techniques such as jump cuts etc. The speed of the edits are also extremely quick as this is what the typical conventions are for a romance teaser trailer. We decided to use this convention as it helps to build up suspense and makes the audience want to watch the film. There are many ways in which my website follows the same typical conventions as a real romance film website, however there are also some ways in which it challenges and develops these codes and conventions. The colour scheme throughout my website is the same as my poster and our trailer. I decided to use this typical convention as it helps the audience make a textual link between all three I created an ‘enter page’ for my website because during my research I found that a lot of the romance websites I looked at had an ‘enter page’ to make the audience interact with the site and it introduces the film as well as the website. I also created several ‘mini pages’ onto my home page because again, this is what I found most of the romance websites did. This helps the pages link onto one another and is easier for the audience to navigate around the site. However, I have developed some of these mini pages by adding in links to other websites like ‘Amazon’ so my target audience can easily purchase some of the merchandise. The images that I chose to use for my website show the different emotions in the film. This shows that I have developed the typical codes for images on a real romance site because you would normally see all of the characters smiling etc. However I felt it was important to show the different emotions as our storyline isn’t all happy and cheerful. I developed this idea further by having the drug images in black and white to make a textual link to the trailer where each of the drug scenes are in black and white. I have used the same font for the name of the film ‘Love Drug’ to create a textual link between all three media texts. However I have not used this same font for the rest of my website. I decided to choose a plain font for the names of the pages etc. because this is what I found most real romance genre websites had. It makes it clear and easy for the audience to read the website and navigate their way around. I managed to develop this text because some of the text I wanted to stand out more than the names of the pages so I added a ‘glow’ to the text that I wanted to stand out. The background of the ‘enter page’ challenges the typical conventions of a romance website because you would usually find an image of the main protagonists from the film but I felt that I had a lot of images from the film on the ‘mini pages’ so I felt that I didn’t want to give any more of the storyline away; also this way, it leaves the audience wanting to enter into the website to find out more about the film. I have created the same questions being asked for my target audience as this creates the same enigma codes across all three texts and again doesn’t give too much of the storyline away. My poster follows a lot of typical conventions of a real media text. I thought it was important to follow these as my target audience will immediately recognise that it is a poster for a romance genre film. I found, (through my secondary research) that a lot of romance film posters use 1 main image as the background. This is so the audience can focus on the main protagonists and it prevents the poster from looking too busy and confusing. I decided to use this convention as I didn’t want my poster looking ‘tacky’ or complicated. I have made it clear who are the main protagonists in all three of my media texts because they are the only characters shown on the poster and on the website, they are in the majority of the images; also in the teaser trailer they are shown the most and the lighting and camera angles are focussed around the two main protagonists (especially Chloe.) I chose to have my characters looking directly into the camera (direct mode of address) to draw the audience’s attention into the poster and to make them feel part of it. Becky has a blank face to show that her emotions in the film are up and down and she doesn’t know how to feel. However I wanted Giuls to smile to suggest to the audience that he is happy in the film, this will then create questions in the audience’s head asking why is he smiling and she isn’t? This should make the audience want to watch the film to find out. I also developed the idea of having the two main protagonists as the background by merging the two faces together to suggest that there is a different side to both of the characters. I think this is an effective idea as it is unusual and not what my target audience will be expecting to see on a romance poster; this should make them want to watch the film to find out what the other side to their personality is. The text is mainly at the bottom of the page as this is where I found most of the text during my research. This is so the audience see the image first before anything, even though the image is a background I still wanted it to stand out more than anything else. The title of the film is in red to create a textual link to all of my media texts. Red also connotes love and romance which suggests the genre straight away to my target audience. I chose to put the ‘Coming Soon’ in red to catch the audience’s eye and I made sure that this was the only colour on the poster so that my colour scheme of red, black and white runs throughout all of my advertising pieces. This challenges the typical conventions of a real media poster as you would expect to see a lot of colour and emotion etc on a poster but I wanted the film to remain a mystery making the audience want to watch it. I also chose to put the names of who is starring in the film at the top of the page so the audience can clearly see who they are. If they were real, famous actors that had starred in lots of other romance films then this would attract my target audience even more as they would link the actors to other films they they’ve liked, however, because this isn’t a real media poster I couldn’t do that.