In What Ways Does Your Media Project, use Develop or Challenge

Forms And Conventions of Real Media Projects?

Media Evaluation

Once again research was vital to identify the forms and conventions of action thriller. We decided to take a safe route and did not question or challenge the codes and convention, as it would over complicate the whole process of making this campaign, which happened in our initial trailer. This genre is a simple genre, which leaves the audience in awe rather than in questioning.

Research

In order to identify these conventions of our genre, we have done research on several trailers; film posters and magazine posters that also helped us adopt these forms and conventions and even challenge them. 

In all action thriller cases there is a male protagonist, in our case Jason played by our actor Agon Koshi. We have chosen Agon Koshi as he has the capabilities of performing various acts. The name Jason comes from Greek methodology and Jason was a hero, the leader of Arganouts. This name also reflects on our character, which the audience will appeal to the audience, as they are lead by this character. Like many other action hero's 'James Bond' or 'Bryan Mills' of Taken the audience follow the journey without having to question his actions, which shows trust, the same type of trust we have created in our character Jason Bayford.

Also like most trailers there is a breaking of equilibrium after a sense of balance with the death of the female character. The process of research simplified identifying these conventions as we watched many trailers online.

Breaking of Equilibrium A significant use of forms and conventions that can be

seen in our trailer is the narrative structure that adapts both the theory of Vladimir Propp and Todorov. Our trailer consists of both elements such as the breaking of the equilibrium and a family member missing which is the death of Megan. With a broken equilibruim (Todorov) then comes an Interdiction, where Jason gets warned not to take on such task, however he still does, and a typical expectation of the protagonist from the audience. By taking in these two narrative theories we have both stuck to the classical Hollywood narrative and a more complex and historical fairytale.

Todorov -

An action thriller text also includes various powerful shots such as a close up, mid shot etc. and other methods of presenting their mise en scene and characters. The use of voice-overs and L-cuts is predominately used in trailers as it simplifies everything to the audience and therefore we have also opted the same technique to present our characters and narrative. A major and most known convention of a thriller would be the use of suspense through rising composition, the most powerful tool of creating suspense and tension and fully used by all trailers, also other factors that originate within the chaos of the film, in our case the death of Megan. Also all trailers include the main reason of why the protagonist gets into his strides to rectify the past, for example in 'Faster' it starts with a voice over and then an L-cut where we find out that his Brother has been killed. A simple way of notifying the audience why he is on his quest.

The technology we have used enabled us to adopt a professional image throughout the trailer that also allowed us to play around with the image tone, colour and image focus which gives it a cinematic look. Like many modern trailers the subject is always in focus and everything else that is of lesser significance is blurred out which allows the audience to concentrate on what is being presented to them but also consuming the minor details that they do not instantly remember when watching it the first time. As the audience is now a pro-sumer we have left a few things in the background. Major film companies are increasingly ‘unintentionally’ leaving minor details for a more committed audience. There is a whole community online that produce pod cast’s analyzing various media texts, such as IGN Rewind Theater.     

The pace of our trailer also opts a classic trailer in many genres, slow at first and suddenly breaks as an equilibrium is broken, after that the whole trailer steadily increases in pace, this can be especially witnessed in action and thriller trailers.  Our method of changing the pace was the speed of cuts and choice of music. Slow happy music with longer running shots, which are then replaced, by a faster and more aggressive music and quicker shots and cuts, changing the whole atmosphere of the trailer without confusing the audience.

In terms of Magazine covers we have followed all basic forms such as the actor having eye contact with the reader. Our initial magazine did not have our actor facing the audience; many were critical about this, as it did not feel like a professional magazine cover. However after our audience research we changed our picture to the usual convention of a magazine. I have looked at many magazine covers including Empire, were all actors were looking at the audience and had a background suited to their movie, e.g. ‘Kick Ass’ had a cartoon comic style based background and font and ‘Tron’ had a Grid as a background. We have opted the same style, as we did not want to take risks with presenting our campaign. In the case of film poster we have had many inspirations such as the ‘Inception’ poster and ‘Taken’ and 'The Prestige'.

One aspect of our trailer can be compared with the Movie of 'Pulp Fiction' when a happy composition is juxtaposed with murder and while he kills him he speaks the words of God. We have adapted a similar rebellion as his gun is shown at the beginning of our trailer as there is a sense of equilibrium but guns kill and don't bring good prosperity.