"Explain how significant were the Conventions of real media texts in your development of creativity across your two years of production work."
Conventions in real media texts have a purpose and are used as a form with a set of rules, they can either be followed or broken. By following conventions lets say for a magazine front cover, you are making it recognizable for the viewers. However if you break these set of rules, you are creating something unique and different to what the audiences have seen before, this can be a good thing or a bad thing as there is a risk of confusing the typical target audience. By keeping to the same conventions, your creativity can be limited and restricted and the audience could become bored of it. To uniquely and clearly break conventions, we must understand them to begin with or else the new way of creating a product will not have as much meaning and will not show any specific, suitable interpretation for the viewers.
The media product I created in AS was a music magazine, to complete this to its full capacity I had to have an explicit understanding of structural conventions in order to know what was commonly used on the cover of a music magazine. For example, the positioning of the masthead would always be at the top of the cover, in large writing to draw attention to it and to allow people to understand that this was a magazine. My chosen genre of music was rock, therefore I had to research the typical genre conventions of rock to make it appealing to the target audience for example, I learned that in rock magazines such as Kerrang! the masthead had cracked, red font to signify rebellion and warning. I realized early on from looking at real media texts like Kerrang! and NME that conventions portray meaning to its audiences, enabling them to recognize that the magazine was taken from a specific genre. Although to really understand them I needed to be able to adapt them and give them more meaning, which I do not think I had deciphered just yet. Furthermore, images used in these magazines showed the celebrities in groups of around three or four with one person in the center at the front, this denoted that there was a clear hierarchy within the band. In my product I used one dominant image of an artist dressed in a plain, black t-shirt and a red, plaid shirt with black trousers. I made sure the colour black was used significantly, as well as the colour red, in my first year I knew these two colours were largely associated with the rock genre and wanted to really put across my understanding of what type of mise-en-scene had to be incorporated into the magazine for it to be identifiable.
In my second year I had to create a horror teaser trailer on a sub-genre of my choice, I chose slasher. In order to make this product, I had to know both structural and genre conventions even better than before. Therefore, as my understanding had dramatically developed I was able to create something much more professional and conventional. I conformed to many structural conventions such as; shot duration, title slates, stock horror scenes and mise-en-scene. In the trailer, I had a number of cut/fade to blacks which are commonly used in horror films, I understand that these are used to abruptly shock/scare the audience and are extremely important for an effective trailer. Moreover, as my sub-genre was slasher, the mise-en-scene showed a lot of blood and phallic weaponry like knives (which connote forced penetration), this meant that viewers are automatically able to see that the film they will watch is in fact a slasher due to the genre conventions. These type of conventions are perfectly fine to break and adapt, they enable you to be a lot more creative when thinking about what to include in a trailer. A film that breaks genre conventions is Get Out; rather than using a white female victim (final girl) they used a black, male to play the protagonist. This was done clearly and understandably and did not confuse its audiences.
In conclusion, I feel that I have developed my skills and understanding of typical conventions to the extent where I am now able to now break them. I have learned that you cannot break all conventions as your product will not be a well thought out project but more of a jumble of different conventions that have become confused and lost in the genre. By adapting new conventions, you are able to create something brand new that viewers will still be able to interpret as that specific horror or rock genre and still enjoy the uniqueness of the product. As I took different conventions from magazines and trailers, I produced a bricolage of well thought out creativity.
Conventions in real media texts have a purpose and are used as a form with a set of rules, they can either be followed or broken. By following conventions lets say for a magazine front cover, you are making it recognizable for the viewers. However if you break these set of rules, you are creating something unique and different to what the audiences have seen before, this can be a good thing or a bad thing as there is a risk of confusing the typical target audience. By keeping to the same conventions, your creativity can be limited and restricted and the audience could become bored of it. To uniquely and clearly break conventions, we must understand them to begin with or else the new way of creating a product will not have as much meaning and will not show any specific, suitable interpretation for the viewers.
The media product I created in AS was a music magazine, to complete this to its full capacity I had to have an explicit understanding of structural conventions in order to know what was commonly used on the cover of a music magazine. For example, the positioning of the masthead would always be at the top of the cover, in large writing to draw attention to it and to allow people to understand that this was a magazine. My chosen genre of music was rock, therefore I had to research the typical genre conventions of rock to make it appealing to the target audience for example, I learned that in rock magazines such as Kerrang! the masthead had cracked, red font to signify rebellion and warning. I realized early on from looking at real media texts like Kerrang! and NME that conventions portray meaning to its audiences, enabling them to recognize that the magazine was taken from a specific genre. Although to really understand them I needed to be able to adapt them and give them more meaning, which I do not think I had deciphered just yet. Furthermore, images used in these magazines showed the celebrities in groups of around three or four with one person in the center at the front, this denoted that there was a clear hierarchy within the band. In my product I used one dominant image of an artist dressed in a plain, black t-shirt and a red, plaid shirt with black trousers. I made sure the colour black was used significantly, as well as the colour red, in my first year I knew these two colours were largely associated with the rock genre and wanted to really put across my understanding of what type of mise-en-scene had to be incorporated into the magazine for it to be identifiable.
In my second year I had to create a horror teaser trailer on a sub-genre of my choice, I chose slasher. In order to make this product, I had to know both structural and genre conventions even better than before. Therefore, as my understanding had dramatically developed I was able to create something much more professional and conventional. I conformed to many structural conventions such as; shot duration, title slates, stock horror scenes and mise-en-scene. In the trailer, I had a number of cut/fade to blacks which are commonly used in horror films, I understand that these are used to abruptly shock/scare the audience and are extremely important for an effective trailer. Moreover, as my sub-genre was slasher, the mise-en-scene showed a lot of blood and phallic weaponry like knives (which connote forced penetration), this meant that viewers are automatically able to see that the film they will watch is in fact a slasher due to the genre conventions. These type of conventions are perfectly fine to break and adapt, they enable you to be a lot more creative when thinking about what to include in a trailer. A film that breaks genre conventions is Get Out; rather than using a white female victim (final girl) they used a black, male to play the protagonist. This was done clearly and understandably and did not confuse its audiences.
In conclusion, I feel that I have developed my skills and understanding of typical conventions to the extent where I am now able to now break them. I have learned that you cannot break all conventions as your product will not be a well thought out project but more of a jumble of different conventions that have become confused and lost in the genre. By adapting new conventions, you are able to create something brand new that viewers will still be able to interpret as that specific horror or rock genre and still enjoy the uniqueness of the product. As I took different conventions from magazines and trailers, I produced a bricolage of well thought out creativity.
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