1. Q1: In what way does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real
media products?

2. Forms and conventions:
Form is the basic structure of a text, for
example the trailer that we looked at in class
which had a mixture of montage and continuity
editing used in it. Conventions are things that
are commonly found in most texts, for example
things like "coming soon", the
titles, fonts, taglines, colour schemes and an
introduction of the characters are all
conventions of a teaser trailer and poster

3. One way in which the teaser trailer uses these
conventions is the colour scheme. We have used a
basic colour scheme which consists of mainly
pinks, blues and whites. This colour scheme
continues throughout all 3 products which helps
people tell that the three products are linked. The
colour scheme also helps define the genre to the
audience. This is because you would be able to tell
that the film is going to be based on a boy and a
girl due to the blue and pink colours that we have
used. This also gives an impression that the main
characters are quite young as they are brighter
shades which could denote that the film is based
around characters in their teenage years.

5. Another way in which the teaser trailer uses these
conventions is the introduction of the main characters.
This is because we use the same 2 characters (Lily and
Aiden) feature predominantly in all three products that
we use. It also helps the audience see what the genre is
because of how the characters are dressed and what
they look like. For example in the poster and magazine
cover, Lily is carrying books and is made out to be a
'geek', whereas Aiden is dressed in a hoody and more
casually and is made out to be a 'popular kid'. The fact
that they are standing back to back could also denote
that there is some sort of conflict between the two
characters. When we first meet the characters in the
video trailer the colour that goes with them is the colour
that would stereotypically go with that gender, for
example pink with Lily and blue with Aiden.

7. A third way in which the teaser trailer uses these
conventions is the font. The fonts that we used
were all very similar throughout all 3 media texts
which, along with the colour scheme signifies that
the three products are all linked together. The
fonts we used were 'bubbly' kinds of fonts which
could give the impression that the films genre is
going to be about younger people. Keeping this
font the same all the way through each of the
products helps the audience know that they are
all linked together as the continuity throughout
shows that they are promoting the same thing.

9. As our teaser trailer is heavily influenced by films of our
genre, for example "It's a Boy Girl Thing", it doesn't
really challenge the main conventions of a Teen Drama
film. However there are some ways in which the trailer
develops these conventions. The first way is that when
in our trailer we introduce our main characters, they
get singled out from the background and put into the
foreground. This makes them stand out more so you
can tell easily who the characters are. This developed
the main conventions because in the teaser trailers we
watched in our research, none of them used the same
technique as we did to introduce the main characters
which shows that it is a unique way of portraying the
characters which proves that is not a conventional
factor of our genre.

10. Another way that our teaser trailer challenges
the conventions of our genre is that in "It's a
Boy Girl Thing" the background is static and
the font moves around whereas in our teaser
trailer our background moves and our font
stays static. This challenges the conventions
because it contrasts our main influence (It's a
Boy Girl Thing), and is a different way of
portraying the titles.

11. A third way our teaser trailer challenges the
conventions is the way our characters are
portrayed. For example stereotypically the boys in
the film have sports cars and are part of the
football team whereas the females are normally
cheerleaders and the films are based on
love, whereas our film has not got a main theme
of love and the characters contrast each other.
Teen films normally have an established actor in
their films (i.e. Lindsey Lohan in Mean
Girls), whereas our film doesn't. This is because
we were on a low budget and are on an
Independent film company.