•The media products that I created; teaser trailer, poster and magazine uses forms and conventions of real media products due to extensive research on real, professional products. This gave me a clear understanding of how my product should be set out and allowed me to understand the different techniques that can be used in media products. I decided that the genre of my teaser trailer would be crime with comedic elements. As a result I did a trailer analysis of 3 trailers in the same genre as my idea; these 3 trailers were the trailers of, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown. Via analysing these 3 trailers I was able to pick up techniques and aspects that help build this type of genre.

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

SOUNDAs I was analyzing each teaser trailer, I quickly realized that the choice of music and sound has a very big part to play in the construction of the genre. For example, in the Pulp Fiction trailer, there is a variety of different music that gets played according to the feel and mood of the scenes being played; if the mood is light and fun a more up tempo song will be played.

So, with this in mind, when I came to decide what music I was going to play over my trailer, I looked at what my target audience was mainly into and what my research of trailers had told me, from there I went on to picking the songs.My target audience was into rap/hip hop, so I decided to go for the latest rap/hip hop song out; I chose to use the instrumental of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s ‘In Paris’ song. CLICK TO HEAR THE SOUND

However, although my target audience was mainly into rap/hip hop, I wanted to add something different to the trailer and from my research I saw that there was a change of songs when the mood had changed i.e. like in the Pulp Fiction trailer, so I decided to use an instrumental of an old Nas song; Get Down, which had sampled James Brown’s “The Boss” song. This instrumental had a strong soul music appeal to it and it had a very light feel to it. I decided to place this instrumental after the new ‘In Paris’ instrumental, as the lighter scenes in my trailer where around the middle of the trailer. CLICK TO HEAR SOUND

From watching the Pulp Fiction trailer, I saw that when the music changed there always seemed to be some sort of noise or sound to bring your attention away from the tune that was being played before. As a result, I decided that in my trailer, when the songs where about to changed I would play a sound of a disc scratching, followed by a gun shot. CLICK TO HEAR SOUND

I also saw from my research of the teaser trailers that, it is common to use speech, however, I tried to keep the speech to a minimum as, from previous experience when doing my AS project, I came to find that speech is not picked up very well on the cameras and on the microphones the quality is not good, so, I opted against using too much speech in my teaser trailer.

MISE EN SCENMy teaser trailer again uses the forms and conventions of real media products via the mise en scene. From my research of the 3 trailers, I found out that props such as guns and money played a big part in the construction of the trailer and the genre. I decided to use props such as guns in my teaser trailer. The use of guns, allowed me, and made it easier for me to build the crime genre much more effectively and it allowed the characters in the trailer to be more dimensional.

Another prop I used, which I again say being used in the 3 trailers that I analyzed was, money. I used this prop widely, as it again helped me construct the genre better.

The costumes I used in my trailer, was also a result of what I had found out from my research of, real media products. However, I was also influenced on this decision from what my target audience had said. From my research of teaser trailers, I saw that in the genre that I was looking into making a teaser trailer in, it didn’t really have a set or conventional costume style; they just wore normal, in fashion clothes. For example, in the Jackie Brown trailer they wore normal clothes, such as shirts and jeans. I tried to incorporate this, and what my target audience had said, about clothes into what my actors wore. I came to see that my audience shopped from common stores such as JD Sports, so I was easily able to instruct my actors on what they should be wearing, as they were mainly wearing these things anyway.

I realized from my research that location also has a contribution in the construction of the trailer and genre. I spotted that in all the trailers that I analyzed, although there was a mixture of locations used, they all had scenes in dark locations e.g. in Jackie Brown there was a scene outside in a dark forest of some sort and in Pulp Fiction there was a scene in the dark were John Travolta’s character is driving and smoking. So I also tried to incorporate this into my teaser trailer.

The text on the the trailers that I analyzed, was also an aspect of the real media products that I brought into my own product. I especially took inspiration off the way Pulp Fiction had aspects of its story line flash up, on the trailer. I decided that this will be a good way of letting the audience know what is going to take place in the film, and I thought that the similarities between my trailer and the Pulp Fiction trailer, will enhance the genre of the trailer, and viewers will grasp the understanding of the trailer easier. So, as a result, I decided to go, with big, bold, red lettering popping up on the screen and giving away aspects of the film story line e.g. crime, loyalty; much like that of Pulp Fiction.

For my Poster, I again followed the forms and conventions of real media products, that I previously analyzed. I analyzed 3 film posters, again in the same genre as my product; crime. The 3 posters which I analyzed were, the Reservoir Dogs poster, Leon poster and Pulp Fiction poster.When I looked at the Reservoir Dogs poster and Leon poster, I saw that only the main actor/s names are on the poster. I decided to adopted this style as, it meant that my poster would be following the conventions of a Crime film poster.

I placed the main actors names underneath the film title, in a small font and different color form the title. I wanted to do it like this as, it takes the spot light off the actors names and puts it on the film name directly.

When looking at the 3 posters, I also established that the credits were mainly in a very small font, in a black color box at the very bottom of the poster. This did not seem unusual to me as, I have seen this in many film poster, so I did not challenge this convention, contrary, I developed it in my own poster, and put my credits in a black box at the bottom of the poster and made them a very small font; 10pt.

I decided to put my film title, slightly lower than the middle of my poster, and to the left a bit more. I chose this as, from my research of real media I saw that film titles are usually in the middle of the poster, at the top of the poster or at the bottom of the poster. However, I felt that my film was suitable to be a bit different as I thought that this would give the film an extra edge and would help it break the mould of the conventional crime film.

For the film title, I used the drop shadow and outer glow effects in order to make it stand out and make it eye catching.

During my research of posters. I learnt that only the main actors are shown in the main image of the poster e.g. Jean Reno in the Leon poster and Uma Thurman in the Pulp Fiction poster. As a result, I decided to continue with this convention and only use my two main actors, in the man image; Huseyin Tozanoglu and Urim Restelica. I placed my images on the right hand side of the poster, as I picked up this technique from Reservoir Dogs poster, a real media product that I was analyzing. The images take up a good amount of the poster; I could of perhaps made them slightly small images. My only concern with the images are that they, are of a mediocre quality as I have taken them straight off the video. If I was to do this again, I would have taken my images in a professional studio.

My magazine cover also uses the forms and conventions of real media products. And studied the work of 3 film magazines; Empire, Total Film and Sight & Sound. However, despite analyzing these 3 magazine covers, I decided to follow and depict as closely as I could the conventions of Total Films magazine covers.This magazine cover, was the cover I used as my inspiration when creating my cover and, I took aspects of this cover and put it into my own work.

I tried to base my masthead on the Total Film masthead. I saw, in general, that the masthead is at the top of the magazine cover in big, bold lettering. So, I decided to keep with the convention and place my masthead at the top of the page and used bold lettering ‘Gill Sans Ultra Bold’; however, I kept a small space on top of the masthead for a strap line. Firstly, I decided that my magazine was going to be called ‘FILM’ however, I came to recognize that, this will not fit with the Total Film masthead look that I was trying to achieve, so instead, I named my magazine ‘Pixel Film’. I chose the word ‘Pixel’ as it has connotations to do with camera and film.In order for my masthead to resemble the one of Total Film, I decided that I would place the word ‘Pixel’ into the letter ‘F’ of the word ‘Film’; much like the word ‘Total’ is in the letter ‘F’ of Film in the Total Film masthead.

Like the Total Film masthead, I also allowed my masthead to fit with this convention, and get obscured slightly by the main image. This gives the magazine a more professional look, as this technique is adopted by most magazines all over the world.

However, this maybe because magazines such as Total Film are widely recognized around the world, and it may not need people to see the full masthead as they probably know what magazine they are picking up anyway. And this technique, may not have been appropriate for a start up magazine like mine.

PROFESSIONAL PRODUCT VS MY FINISHED PRODUCT