EvaluationIn what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge conventions of real media product?

By Ali Davies

CAMERAWORK

This is a screen grab of the focus throw we created in our trailer. The shot shows our male character (Ben Jones) in focus, revealing his hurt facial expression. The

focus then throws forwards to reveal Ella our female actress in the background. We felt that focus throws were not very common in trailers are were quite an unusual

piece of camerawork to include. Therefore we again challenged camerawork conventions of film trailers. Unusual angles are often used to show events or

characters, we used unusual angles to imply various things: To convey that is not a typical romance movie,

To ensure that our intense characters were portrayed with intense shots,To try the make it as naturalistic as possible.

Focus throws are not typically used to convey these aspects.

CAMERAWORK

This is a screen grab to demonstrate our camerawork skills. This shot shows a focus pull, the shot is also panning around to the right. The focus pull shot makes the lighting in the shot stand out. We felt that this effect gave the audience time to gradually be lead in to the full

action of the trailer and it also had a romantic feel about it with the lighting. The shot eventually comes in to focus revealing the record player, showing this as a visual motif in

our trailer. I feel that this gives the audience a sense of the genre too as it is an unusual and indie prop to use. Therefore challenging the typical conventions of romance trailers . Overall I think that most of the camera work in the trailer challenged the stereotypical conventions

of camerawork in romance trailers. This could possibly be due to the fact our trailer was from a realistic viewpoint on relationships.

GENRE

I think that this shot demonstrates that our film is an independent film. The use of the ‘sundance film festival’ logo is significant because it is a film festival

dedicated to independent films. Similar to the ‘uncertain regard’ , this also gives the trailer a sense of prestige as these are well known film festivals within the

independent film world, especially the sundance film festival. With this in mind, I think that because these logos are seen regularly in independent films, we did

use this convention. We chose to put these on this specific shot because we thought it gave a good sense of genre for the film. We felt that the shot showed a sense of an independent film and that it was of an indie genre. The prop of the record has connotation of a vintage scene. This is a convention that i think that

we challenged this convention

AFTER EFFECTS

We created a split screen in after effects to show the characters looking up at each other. We think that this challenges conventions

of trailers as split screens are not a stereotypical convention in trailers. What this footage represents is also challenging conventions of relationship stereotypes, the girl looks up first showing a interest

in the boy, typically this would be the other way round.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

We created light leaks to go on top of some of the shots, we put these light leaks on the reviews of the film, and also the title of the film. We didn't see this on any other trailers we saw, so we feel this

definitely challenged conventions of film trailers. The light leaks were placed only on these shots specifically to make them

distinctive and to ensure they stand out more. The font that we used for these reviews was also not a stereotypical font, most fonts are very bold and sans-serif. Our font is also unique because all the

letters are different sizes.

PROPS

This is a prop that was prominent in our trailer. The record player acts as a visual motif in our trailer. In independent films that are of

a indie genre, the prop of records and record players were common. Therefore we used this convention. If we compared to general stereotypes of romance trailers, the props convention

would be challenged.

NARRATIVE

The narrative in our film was probably the element where we challenged conventions of film trailers the most. Our film trailer had no diegetic dialogue and the only dialogue in the trailer was a voiceover at the start. We portrayed our narrative through screenplay. This was challenging to complete well however I think it was very effective and worked very well. I also think that the music in our trailer helped convey the narrative.

NARRATIVE ORDER

We did not show the storyline in narrative, chronological order. It is very common that trailers are not in chronological order to ensure that it shows the ‘best bits’ of the film, rather than the story itself.

Therefore this is a convention we followed. There is not much revealed through our narrative at all because we wanted to ensure

that the audience had a sense of intrigue towards the film and wants to know how all the shots come together.

Shot Length

The convention concerning shot length is that some visual images stay on screen for only just enough time for the audiences mind to realize what they are seeing. We followed this convention to build up the narrative from many different shots and angles. This shot

sequence shown above is a series of shots in the trailer we needed to do this specifically. The pace of these shots is very fast to build up tension in the argument that appears on screen between the

characters. We also felt that when the pace of the shots was slower, the use of no dialogue was not effective as the audience

expects to hear what the characters are saying when they can see the actors mouths moving for a longer period of time.

Overall

Overall I feel that we challenged most conventions of real media products.

There were however, some conventions that we followed or adapted slightly in order to make them unique to our trailer.