Emily Ventress
Candidate No: 2263
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Question 1
Main product: the trailer
Ancillary task: the poster
Incase you are unable to view the presentation above here is what each slide says.
Slide one
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Emily Ventress 2263 18339
Slide two
Genre/narrative
The genre of my product is a soap opera, these are known for their drama which is what I tried to reflect in my main product. Suicide, drug taking and drug dealing are the main themes in my trailer and would be in the first series of ‘Westview High’, these dramatic subjects conform to the genre, especially those normally targeted at teenagers as drugs are a more relevant subject to youths, whilst covertly informing them of the risks and dangers with drug culture. However as there are some quite dark moments in my narrative of Melody Blake (the student who commits suicide) being found by her friend, I thought the programme should be shown after the Watershed so the BBC would be airing ‘Westview High’ at 9PM, this is more challenging of the conventions of this genre, soap operas, as they are normally shown at the slightly earlier time of 8PM/8:30PM, this could affect the volume of viewers but it is important to teach and to warn young adults of these subjects.
Slide three
Representation
Gender-wise, I think I’ve kept pretty conventional with representations. Melody, an innocent young girl asks for drugs from Nathan, a manipulative drug dealer in the year above. Men and women are normally just as evil as each other in soap operas but men are stereotypically thought of as being more powerful than women probably because they’re normally physically larger and stronger than women.
My storyline is conventional in some ways being that drugs are often featured in soaps but not normally to the extent where somebody goes through with taking suicide through this medium.
Slide four
Sound
For the first 38 seconds, I am playing the keyboard set to piano mode. I learnt the start of Raleigh Ritchie - Stronger than ever online. The rest is the official original version of the song. This is quite conventional music for a soap trailer as it is quite emotive whilst also being quite dramatic. I also used sounds such as school bells and phone notification noises in my main product. These are also typical of trailers to make them more realistic and the school bell is also a technique Waterloo Road used a couple of times in their trailers to instantly give the feeling of a school.
Having no dialog at all in the trailer is quite uncommon and challenges conventional soap opera trailers.
Slide five
Editing on iMovie the trailer
Slide six
Editing, camera and composition
Editing: My form of editing was quite far from conventional soap opera trailers. I chose to have my entire trailer in reverse. This complicated things in places but I have found it really effective in the end and making my advert very memorable - the entire point of an advertisement. To have title screens is quite conventional in real media products similar to this but to have them in the format I did, with thin text writing and on a relevant backing such as lined paper rather than a block colour is more unconventional.
Camera: My camera work wasn’t as adventurous. I chose simplistic camera angles such as mid angles, over-the-shoulder, close ups and pans. If I were to do complex angles where the audience had to work out what they were seeing, then I put it in reverse ontop of that, it may have gotten too complicated.
Slide seven
Composition
Apart from Melody’s the viewer doesn’t see much of the other character’s faces at all. They see a glimpse of Jasmine’s (Melody’s friends’) and of Vic’s (the female using the vending machine). To create more mystery, the audience never see Nathan Mathewsonn’s face in all of the trailer, to see him you have to view the poster or TV listings magazine. Throughout the trailer we can always see what the person in the foreground can see e.g the vending machine, Melody on the floor, and the phone being texted on.
Slide eight
Mise-en-scene
Props-wise I used Tic-Tacs for the ‘drugs’, empty blister packets for the drug packets, two phones for the texting scenes, and 70p for the can bought from the vending machine. I did not put any make-up on my characters or ask them to wear any certain clothes as they needed to look like Sixth Form students which is what they already are. I used the existing lighting in the school to again make it look school-like.
Incase you are unable to view the presentation above here is what each slide says.
Slide one
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Emily Ventress 2263 18339
Slide two
Genre
My poster is quite dark themed, Melody, the character on the left of the poster (played by Molly Bishop) looks quite innocent with evil, pleased with himself Nathan Mathewsonn’s facial expression suspiciously in the background behind Melody.
It is quite unconventional for a soap opera to have made posters in general so my soap opera poster is hard to tell whether it is typical or untypical. Soap opera’s normal main way of advertising are trailers, word of mouth and consumer’s general knowledge of soap operas as they have normally been running many many years, it is quite rare for a new soap to come onto the soap market. During the soap opera series it may have humorous moments, it is not designed to be a comedy but if a bit of humour makes the show more relatable and easier to watch in places then comedic moments can be used.
Slide three
Composition of images
Nathan Mathewsonn (played by Harry Colgan) is behind and looking sly to show how innocent and unaware Melody is. She’s been drawn into a path which has very quickly spiraled out of control leading to her eventual suicide through drugs Nathan has supplied.
The information of the programme name, slogan, date of first episode, time it’ll be aired, channel and fake school emblem are all at the bottom. This tells the viewer all they need to know about the programme and if they want to find out more the youth-aged people’s first response will be just to Google Westview High where there will be more information.
Slide four
Layout and structure
The first thing the audience see is Molly’s (Melody Blake’s) face in the design hierarchy, design hierarchy is important because you need to viewer to be gripped by the first thing they see so they keep looking rather than looking away. Next you see Harry (Nathan Mathewsonn) behind and after that will be all the information at the bottom. The audience will probably see the ‘Kids can be cruel’ last as it’s hard to see with the dark red against black but this is deliberate as it makes it slightly sinister especially as you don’t notice it to start with.
Slide five
Fonts and typography
‘Westview High’ is in a Graphic Autodesk’s Optima ExtraBlack font, I wanted something thick and chunky so it would be easy to read but also be appropriate to go on the emblem. ‘Kids can be cruel’ is in a dark red as red comes with connotations of blood, danger, stop and other negative things so that relates. It is also in the same typography as on the trailer title screens to add to the continuity. It isn’t as big as the other words so you don’t initially notice it. The BBC One logo is the normal BBC One logo, I’ve made it white so that it fits with the other information and having it quite large is effective as the viewer quickly knows it’ll be on a main channel and where they can view it.
Slide six
Mode of address
Although the poster does not directly address the audience with any use of language like ‘you’, Molly (Melody Blake) and Harry (Nathan Mathewsonn) is looking directly at the viewer so this is instantly a mode of addressing them. Using ‘term starts’ rather than ‘series starts’ adds the school-link, telling the audience quickly where the programme is set and what sort-of age it is targeted at. This also demonstrates to the audience how I’ve thought about how I’ve wanted to portray the information to the viewer, it isn’t as typical.
Slide seven
Colour scheme
My colour scheme of this poster isn’t vast as it is predominantly black, white or one of the grey-shades in between. Colour is introduced through the Westview High emblem and the ‘KIDS CAN BE CRUEL’ burgundy slogan. This draws attention to these areas, clarifying that ‘Westview High’ is a school by seeing the emblem and giving an insight into the sort of students there by having the threatening slogan.
I added a solid black to transparent fade at the bottom, this was to help the audience read the text better as it was quite hard to class as legible against Molly’s black and white striped t-shirt.
Ancillary task: the listings magazine front cover
Incase you are unable to view the presentation above here is what each slide says.
Slide one
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Emily Ventress 2263 18339
Slide two
Genre
TV listings magazines can feature many genres as they feature many different programmes, the largest programme featured on the cover is Westview High which, as stated before, is of the soap opera genre so will predominantly feature drama in the series(es). However the other programmes featured on my TV listings magazine is The Replacement, a psychotic drama miniseries, Broadchurch, a crime drama, and EastEnders, a long running soap opera, all are British and all are available on main channels. TV listings magazine covers tend to stick with mainstream channels as if they start to advertise channels you have to pay for or are only available on selective providers, such as things on Sky, Netflix etc. they’ll shorten the list of people interested. They also tend to stick to promoting British programmes/series this helps the British industry and a lot of the American popular shows and series do tend to be those on the specialist channels like Sky.
Slide three
Layout and structure
Layout is important with listings magazine as it often has to hold a lot of different stories all trying to advertise themselves. For this reason I followed the layout plan I had made in my planning, I stuck to a conventional layout of 2-3 people on the cover with adverts for other shows dotted around the sides. .
Slide four
Composition of images
Much like the layout and structure, I composed the images like how they were in the template I’d made in my planning to have Molly (Melody Blake) in the foreground, Harry (Nathan Mathewsonn) behind and Pixie (Jasmine Webber) at the back, this is typical of TV listings magazines. It is less common of TV listings magazine covers to feature three people as opposed to two but they do sometimes feature three so this won’t be shocking to any viewer for three people to be in big on the cover. However it is conventional to have the heads’ of the characters sticking out of their bordered box at the bottom - this is which I cut out Paula’s (the lady on the left’s) head to pop out of her orange bordered box and I also cut out DI Alec Hardy’s and DI Ellie Miller’s heads in the Broadchurch bubble.
Slide five
Fonts and typography
The ‘Secrets to Suicide’ is a bold, clear to read font. This is good as it is the first thing the viewer would read on the listings magazine so if it was in swirly fancy writing they had to work out they would loose interest. All writing on the TV listings magazine front cover has been outlined so all words are more clear to read. On The Replacement section I used words such as ‘Death Plunge’ to add drama and as that is the sort of language listings magazines tend to use. On TV Choice there is often a paint smudge in certain colours fitting with their colour scheme, for this one I used pink and used it to be where I could describe the main title in more detail. As pink is quite a harsh bold colour I used a white text to neutralise it more and make it easy to read.
Slide six
Mode of address
Again, Harry (Nathan Mathewsonn), Molly (Melody Blake) and Pixie (Jasmine Webber) are all looking directly at the camera, which is conventional of TV listings magazine, this directly takes the audiences’ attention. It also addresses the viewer by the rhetorical question of ‘Is Trish hiding something?’
Slide seven
Colour scheme
To keep with the colour scheme of TV Choice magazines I kept to similar colours. Their backing is always a lighter blue withe the red and white logo. I chose yellow for my big ‘Secrets to Suicide’ title and a pink paint smudge for the ‘Melody’s at breaking point’. The orange, pink and yellow smaller sections around the edges are eye catching with the colours but not overpowering the main programme of Westview High. I kept the price and price design the same with the bold colour in the middle, black and white ‘only 55p’ writing and a white border to the many pointed star.