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

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

An audience is informed about a new movie through technological convergence. For example, a song used in movies often has a music video which consists of scenes from that same movie. The audience is also made aware of a new movie by the use of you tube, posters on busses and billboards, social networking sites, websites and magazines.

For our project I had to create a trailer, a magazine and a poster. The purpose of this is to promote a horror film. We chose the genre of horror because as a group, we decided it would be more feasible than any other genre as we didn’t have a budget at all and had to make the most of our surroundings and equipment. We looked at other posters and magazines from other genres (comedy, romance etc.) and last year we had also learnt a lot about magazines as our project last year was to create three of the main pages of a music magazine. From this, we also learnt a lot about technology which made it easier to jump into a more difficult project like filming a trailer.

We also analysed a lot of trailers, magazines and posters from the horror genre to understand the conventions. For example, on my blog I analysed a poster for the film ‘The ring’ and I also analysed the trailer for ‘The Shining’ film. I also looked at movie magazines such as empire where it helped me to create my own magazine following the main conventions.

The major forms and conventions of film posters could include: A large title which attracts the eye, bold colours which stand out from the background, intriguing picture which would attract viewers to the film, persuasive language which might persuade the viewers to go and see the film, using the main character's name for promotion, and the certification will either to ensure that the right type of people are watching the film. An example of how different types of film (e.g. comedy, horror) poster use these forms and conventions to attract a certain type of person (e.g. teenagers, horror fans) would be a really scary horror film, which will use eerie images in order to appeal to horror fans. A successful film poster will accomplish attracting the target audience and persuade them to come and watch the film.

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