Understanding of real media conventions Essay

In your experience how has your understanding of conventions developed through creating your productions?

At AS, my group and I created a film opening of our own, relating to a specific genre and target audience which did not look professional due to our little understanding of real media conventions at that time. However, our understanding progressed dramatically at A2 where we created a music video, digipak and website to advertise our artist brand and image.
The concept of genre is substantial when creating a film or music video because it defines the style and sets expectations for the whole video and the makers can choose to either conform or subvert to the conventions of the genre. The main genres for film are: thriller, horror, comedy, romance and tragedy.
Carefully choosing a genre is important when creating a target audience because most of the time, the institutions want the genre/ video to be easily recognised and understood by it's audience so as many people watch the film as possible.
We carried our research into real media texts such as films like: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Juno and Mean Girls because they are all aimed towards teenagers, much like our own film opening. Looking at their media products such as advertising, we found that they used bright colours and interesting bold text on their posters, websites and front covers which inspired the colour and bold text on our own poster.
The mise en scene and narrative in our video are very important when creating the right mood for our audience because the lighting, costume, camera etc. tells the audience subconsciously what genre the video is.
We used these conventions in our video by using the costume to appropriately represent the characters age, for example Aubrey, the teenage daughter, wears a crop top with low cut denim jeans, trainers and a loose checkered shirt over the top with her hair let down and curly along with black eyeliner. This contrasts with Carol, the mum, who stays at home wearing a big dressing gown, pyjamas, slippers and her hair up in a bum with supposedly no makeup which shows how she is sensible and responsible compared to the care-free Aubrey. We also show Aubrey's age by making her hold and drink a bottle of alcohol showing the audience that she can be reckless, which is contrary to Carol's mug of tea she is drinking when her daughter comes home late. We found that no special effects are usually used in this genre of film so we decided we did not need to use any, apart from simple shots and cuts throughout.
However parts of our video subverts real media conventions as the lighting throughout remains dark and dingy instead of bright and colourful much like a typical teenage film. Also to reflect Aubrey's intoxication, at the start of the video we used a fading/double effect where it appeared like there were two of her, making it look like she cannot focus and her brain is lagging behind.
For the music video we made at A2, we also did a lot of research into the different genres of videos by artists we were inspired by, such as NAO, FKA Twigs, SZA, Jorja Smith and Dua Lipa which all included edgy outfits and bright colours in their videos with a strong female performer. We also carried out research into the performance, narrative and concept theories of music videos which helped us gain a lot of understanding about the meaning and structure of music videos.
We also did a lot of research into the websites, digipaks and tour posters of these artists as they have achieved a very similar look and target audience which we based ours around and have established a strong brand image which is easily recognisable to their fans. The genre of our video is a mixture of soul, funk and electronic dance so we did research into the conventions of each individual genre to see how we could incorporate ideas from each area and mix them together as well as creating our own twist with an essence of pop.
We conformed to the conventions of our genre in all three media products by using bright multi-coloured fairy lights throughout the video, webiste, digipak and tour poster which brought the feel of a pop and funk video, which contrasted with the dark purple and navy blue backgrounds which could be associated with electronic dance. The variety of outfits which our main performer wears also reflects the soul/funk genre with a modern pop influence to it.
As well as conforming to the conventions, we also challenged them by not including many references to soul performers, but adapting the star image into someone more of the pop genre, such as Dua Lipa who also takes inspiration from older, funk/soul artists with her fashion.
We have used a lot of digital technology in our research by using a Canon 700D camera to film the shots used in the video, using Blogger to show evidence of all of our research, using Photoshop and Word to edit the digipak and magazine cover, Wix to create our website and Adobe Premier to edit the music video.
In conclusion I have learned that using conventions from real media texts is very important when doing research and actually creating the finished media product as it is the best way to create the finished article into something as professional and accurate as possible.