EVALUATION QUESTION

In what ways does your

media products use, develop

or challenge forms and

conventions of real media

products?

When looking at the development of our theatrical poster, it was

important to look at what inspired the creation of our poster. We

looked at numerous film posters that were similar to the kind of

poster we wanted to create. Whilst looking at these posters it soon

became very apparent that there were typical forms and conventions

of real media products in regards to the type of film we were creating.

I realised that there were some media conventions that were

important, and had to be used in our poster.

"Repetition and recognition leads to expectation and anticipation "(G

Burton 2000)

Typically, the type of drama film we are creating would usually be set in an urban area and will have very dull and grey lighting although sometimes the use of sepia light is used to highlight how dark it is. Posters of this type of film genre often incorporate the location of the film in the cover. A typical example for this is the poster of ‘SHANK’ the location of the film is highlighted at the back. We took inspiration from all these three films, as they were very much the kind of film we were trying to create. From the second image, we used the way they have a black and white background but their characters were still in colour. This was hard to achieve as we performed the hard task of cutting around every character, and putting a new layer of the picture on top of it. We used the way the character were placed from the first image, but also incorporated the back ground of the third image.

Our media product develops forms and conventions of real media products. We share a lot of similarities with the film examples we used as inspiration for our product. The use of the bold title is something which demonstrates the development of real media products. This is because, although the font of the title is very similar to our research, we use a much darker colour, as well as bolder writing. This improves our media product as it captivates the target audience due to the fact that the font, which could be perceived as sophisticated; is contrary to the behaviour presented in the trailer.

Regarding the location of our picture, we followed forms and conventions. The background

setting of graffiti in our poster shows that our characters live in areas that are associated

with poverty, knife and gun crime. This helped us as it was easier for an audience to

establish what kind of film this is, and what to expect from the actors. It also helped us when

choosing the black and white effect for the back of our poster.

In our theatrical poster, we use the same idea as other media products in regards to the

positioning of the characters. The characters are all placed in a row and most of them are

standing, with the same facial expressions – this was to emphasise the dejected nature of our

trailer. Our film poster is very similar to other posters that we used as examples, however,

we have incorporated additional features in order to further engage the target audience. For

instance, the colourful clothing of the characters is very eye-catching and attractive.

Additionally, the writing at bottom of our theatrical poster demonstrates the use of real

media conventions as it is a common feature that is used in a majority of films.

CHALLENGES

We wanted our media product to be unique and I feel that the

way we designed our theatrical poster in some ways does in fact

challenge real media conventions. Our characters are very much

in colour, and their colours are very bold and bright unlike the

other examples shown. However, the use of the black and white

background does make it different from the other film posters

and more unique as it shows that there is still an element of the

same theme, but it develops the idea that they used in the

creation of their own film posters.

CHALLENGE

First and foremost we challenged the idea that the

main people in drama street kind of films are

predominantly males.

We used an all female casting squad. Although,

with the way we dressed them and their facial

expressions, they were obviously not ‘typical’

females.

FINAL POSTER