Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Codes & Conventions of our film ‘VERSES’ - genre

Social Realism Coming Of Age

Film examples

Social Realism & Coming of Age

Social Realism  is a realistic portrayal of British Society; a genre of film that refers to topical issues alive in the Modern Society which is represented by different ideologies. This genre uses unknown actors with usually a heavy focus on social class and the urban areas of the characters living state.

It refers to our film 'VERSES' because the supporting role, Adam McKenzie's background is a lower class compared to other characters. The focus of our film is that of people aged 17, which is commonly used in Social Realist films.

We researched into Social Realist films such as This is England, Billy Elliot, Trainspotting, Fish tank and Kidulthood. All helped us understand the typical codes and conventions of the social realist genre.

Coming of Age focuses on psychological and moral growth of a protagonist who is growing from youth to adulthood. Personal growth is the most important characteristic in this genre as it relies on emotional responses and dialogue, rather than action.

The roll of a Coming of Age film is usually based on a story of a typical teen, which relates well to our film and shows that we have used the conventions that the audience would expect to find in a coming of age film. In ‘VERSES’ our main character is a teenager called Declan Mulligan who is deciding what to do with his future.

We researched into Coming of Age films such as Submarine, The Breakfast Club, Tomboy and Toast. All helped us understand the typical codes and conventions of the coming of age genre.

Teaser Trailer as a Genre

Short sequence of clips or just one clip

Time limit between 30-90 seconds

Made whilst a film is finishing being created. Aim is to ‘Tease’ people, by releasing them months before the actual film.

Normally only made for big-budget and popular themed films

Convention Why

Montage Many images from a film (or in some cases, ones that don’t make it to the full length movie) are shown rapidly to the audience so they can see a glimpse of the film and decide if they want to watch it.

Studios As a teaser trailer isn’t very long, certain things are definitely shown. The film studio will make sure that the companies involved in the film are mentioned, some times more than once, and that the title is shown.

Anti-Narrative A lot of teaser trailers don’t show a storyline that the audience piece together. It’s usually a montage of shots and details of actors and studios involved, to tease the audience for the full length trailer. Gives a very brief insight of what the film is about, choosing the best parts to grab the audience.

Open Meaning Like the anti-narrative, a teaser trailer is usually full of enigma codes and leaves the audience wondering what happened and they want to know what happens in the film.

Voiceover Usually done by a deep male voice telling the audience what the film consists of. Some times done by the main character to make the film feel more realistic. For a teaser trailer, they tend to only inform, telling you it’s ‘coming soon’.

Experimental As there isn’t any need for a proper narrative, teaser trailers can be completely different, whatever they want to attract an audience.

Challenging the

conventionsOur teaser trailer predominantly follows the codes and conventions of our genres (social realism and coming of age), but there are some areas that we changed...

As we had multiple genres to think about (social realism, coming of age and teaser trailer), there is a possibility of conventions clashing.

In our teaser trailer, we followed the important conventions: Unknown actors; teenagers; day to day life; school setting; career issues; within the time frame; montage.

There are some conventions that we didn’t follow: there was no voiceover; the focus isn’t on sex, drugs and alcohol; there’s no true rebellion; no violence is in the film.

By having some of the conventions not shown in our teaser trailer, we show how all can’t be used in a teaser trailer as it’s only on average a minute long.

Target AudienceOur film 'Verses' is aimed at young adults, both male and female aged 16 to 24. We have chosen this age range because the characters in our film are similar ages, which means that the audience can relate to

them more due to having similarities throughout their life and same interests. The majority of the characters in our film are males, which will attract the male audience because they will be able to see

similarities to at least one of our male characters to themselves. Our film will also attract females, as the film’s emotional side makes them sympathise with the characters and girls tend to like ‘tear-jerkers’.

Male Female

Young teens Age 16 - 24 Target

Audience for ‘VERSES’

We took these photos of our

target audience. Showing both male and females from

the ages of 16. These people are

all at college which is the same for our protagonist Declan.

Our Target Audience

Overall throughout the whole process of our teaser trailer for ‘VERSES’ we feel that we have generally obeyed the forms, codes and conventions of a real media product.

We have produced a teaser trailer that is a little over a minute long; showing a montage of images that would attract our target audience as they can relate to our

protagonist's situations and has shared UK production companies. Having social realism and coming of age genres, we used urban areas for our film’s setting,

unknown actors to play the characters, day to day life to keep the realism and career issues that may effect our protagonist’s life. Our media product used and developed

the conventions of a real media product throughout the stages for production (research and planning, filming, editing and evaluation). It also challenged the conventions as we didn’t stick to all the codes and conventions of the genres

because we felt not all were relevant to our film.

To Conclude...