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

1. INWHATWAYS DOESYOUR
MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP
OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?

2. Teaser Trailer Format Conventions
 The company ident at the beginning of the trailer is a convention seen in all the
different teaser trailers I have researched. This creates a brand image for the film,
making it easily recognisable.
 Our company ident is very simple with a pink background and a circular logo.
The idents we researched and took inspiration from are all simple and only appear
on the screen for about 2 seconds, thus ours is shown at the beginning of the
trailer for 2 seconds. (Our ident is on the left and the other two are ones we took
inspiration from).

3.  A conventional duration for a teaser trailer is roughly between 0:50 to 0:80
seconds as it is conventional to be a fast pace. This is because you don’t
want to give away too much information away to the audience. Our teaser
trailer is 0:55 seconds long which is within the conventional time of teaser
trailer lengths.
 The editing style is montage editing- this includes a fast pace with short
clips. The shots we included in our teaser trailer are about 2 seconds
long, creating that effect of a fast pace.
Teaser Trailer Format Conventions

4. Teaser Trailer Format Conventions
 A teaser trailer typically has text graphics to entice the audience and make them ask
questions about the narrative. We used text graphics in our teaser trailer to follow
this convention.
 One of them was ‘Based on thousands of stories’ which is the same slogan we
used on our poster. This creates a feeling of realism to the audience.
 The second text graphic ‘Will she get her revenge?’ makes the audience question
the narrative, enticing them to watch the film to find out what happens.

5.  We took inspiration from the teaser trailer ‘A Girl Like Her’ and ‘Cyberbully’ which
helped us understand key conventions in a psychological teen drama. We followed
the sound from ‘A Girl Like Her’ and used a sad music track in the background to set
the tone and mood of the film.
 There isn’t normally much dialogue in a teaser trailer, however it is conventional to
have a voiceover in a teaser trailer to get across key narrative points and help the
audience to understand the themes.
Teaser Trailer Format Conventions
 We followed this convention by adding in 4 voiceovers throughout our
teaser trailer. They are from the perspective of the main character,
Casey. This helps give away small bits of information to the audience but
not giving away too much so it makes them want to watch the film to find
out.

6. Teaser Trailer Format Conventions
 At the end of a teaser trailer, is is typical to have release date and some social
media promotional pictures such as Twitter or a website link for the film. We
followed this convention by having a release date as well as a hashtag and
website link to act as promotion for the film. For this, we took inspiration from ‘The
Duff’.
 Having the key characters featuring in the teaser trailer helps the audience to
establish their relationships, thus understanding the narrative better. We decided to
include the 3 main characters in the film.

7. Poster Format Conventions
 For our poster we took inspiration from ‘A Girl Like Her’ and ‘The Duff’ as they
both have similar narratives and therefore will attract the same target audience
as ours. We decided to use a similar brand identity with both our magazine and
poster products.
 We achieved this by using colours such as pink and purple as they give the
audience an idea about the themes in the film and will attract the right audience.
We also used the same fonts througho0ut the three products to create synergy.

8. Poster Format Conventions
A convention for a film poster is to have a billing block at the bottom,
other information about social media sites and release dates may also
be included. As you can see, at the bottom of our poster we added in the
release date.
We created a billing block to place at the bottom of the poster to follow
this convention. (below)
On the other posters we followed, they had a slogan from the film on the
poster. We adhered to this convention by adding in the slogan ‘Will She
Get Her Revenge?’ and ’Based On Thousands Of True Stories’.

9. Poster Format Conventions
 A typical convention of a film poster is to have the name of the film as well as a
main image filling up the majority of the page. For the layout of our poster we
looked at a couple of real media examples. We then took all these into
consideration before placing ours.
 Another convention is to have a release date. We adhered to this convention by
adding it to our poster. For most posters it is placed near the bottom, to on ours it
is underneath the billing block.
 The main image we used is of the main character. We followed this convention as
its important for the audience to see the facial expressions and so the audience
can associate with the character.

10. Magazine Format Conventions
 Film magazines typically include different adverts and promotions on the sides as
well as inside stories involving other celebrities to entice people. We thought this
was an important element to include. However, we did not include a barcode as
although this is a convention, it did not appear on the magazine we were basing ours
on.
 We had a clear brand identity for our poster and magazine, by using similar
colours and fonts. This is an important convention, that we followed. Using these
pink/purple/blue colours helps attract a relevant target audience who would want to
watch the film.
 A typical element included on a poster which also appeared on ours was the date as
well as a website for the magazine company.

11. Magazine Format Conventions
 The main image on the magazine front is typically the main character(s). We
included the 3 main characters on ours to allow the audience to get an idea of he
narrative by seeing the body language and facial expressions on the characters
faces.
 Magazines will have a house style which is when they follow the same layout/
design for each of their different magazines. We made sure we designed ours to fit
the house style of Studio magazines by using the same colours and layout.
Using these specific colours also helped to portray the genre across to the
audience. It also helps to attract the right audience who would then be interested in
watching the film.

12. Genre Conventions
 A typical genre convention which we adhered to was that it is set in a high school
location. We looked at films such as ‘The Duff’, ‘Cyberbully’ and ‘A Girl Like
Her’, which all follow this convention.
 There are also typical stereotypes which the characters will have the role of.
These include ‘jocks’, ‘mean girls’ and ‘nerds’ etc. Our trailer followed this
convention as we had the 3 main characters playing the role of the ‘bullies’ and a
‘nerd’.
 The narrative of teen dramas usually follow a theme that is relatable for young
people. Therefore the narrative typically has a theme that involves social media,
bullying, family issues, relationship/ friendship issues nor school issues. Our
narrative follows the theme of bullying. We used this as it is extremely relatable
for young people and therefore will attract that audience.

13. Institutional Conventions
 A Hollywood Blockbuster film will attract large audience through their
advantage of being able to advertise through expensive methods such as TV
adverts and billboards. This is being they are part of a big, well-known
company that can afford to do so. They will also benefit from being able to have
famous actors which will attract a large audience.
 Being a British Independent film, they will not be able to afford TV adverts as
they will not be part of a big company. their main method of advertising would be
through social media as this is a cheap way on reaching that specific target
audience of teenagers. They will also struggle due to the fact they won’t usually
have many famous actors in their films.
 Our teaser trailer follows conventions of many Hollywood Blockbuster films, such
as ‘The Duff’, ‘A Girl Like Her’ and ‘Mean Girls’. However, I think this film would be
more suited to be a British Independent Film. This may be because the film
does not feature any famous actors.