Conventions

Conventions are a set of rules that are to be followed in order for the type of media text you are creating to be recognised by the target audience for what it is. They can be either followed or broken down and moulded into something similar, but are usually just followed in order to be identified for what they are. They are sometimes broken, however, and can be turned into a bricolage with other conventions from other subgenres in order to invent something that is a refreshed version of what others have previously followed, as audiences will tend to grow tired of producers of their genre constantly reusing the same material over and over again in each consecutive movie. An example of a bricolage would be crossing over the monster genre with slasher to create a monster/slasher hybrid. Over the course of my two year course I have tried to meet the expectations of my audience but be unique and give a refreshing version of the common conventions.

In AS, my brief was to create a music magazine. To complete this I had to identify the common conventions found in real music magazines in relation to the layout and structure, which involved placement of the masthead, cover lines, images, and so on. I analysed exemplar magazines such as ‘VIBE’, ‘Complex’ and ‘XXL’ (associated with the rap subgenre) as they are the magazines associated with my target audience, and what conventions the target audience would recognise on those magazines is what I should put in my own. Conventions such as the dominant image were iconic in the subgenre I planned to recreate as this was the convention which the target audience would be able to recognise easily as the model for the image would be someone famous, asserting their dominance in that particular genre through aggressive poses or flashy jewellery, connoting a form of respect in that target audience’s community. I used conventions like this in order to authenticate my magazine. This, however, did not show my understanding of conventions as the only reason I used them was because they were in similar places as the ones looked at in the real music magazines.

In A2 my task is to create a horror teaser trailer. My genre is supernatural, and in order to recreate the subgenre I had to research the conventions found in the supernatural genre, such as the subtext of priests, low key lighting, religion, and child possession. Horror movies such as The Exorcist and Carrie provided excellent insight as to what conventions the target audience will expect. The low key lighting provides anonymity for the antagonist and pent-up suspension throughout the trailer, the use of religion provides the haunted individual/collective with a sense of false security, as they will expect all their problems to be solved by the (usually masculine) religious figure, and the use of child possession gives parental viewers a frightening feeling, as they will be terrified by the fact that someone’s child was possessed by an evil spirit and made to be out of control, and would wish for the same to not happen to their own child. I wish to incorporate these sort of conventions into my trailer to give it a more meaningful idea, as without them my supernatural trailer wouldn’t be supernatural, it would just be a badly produced one minute clip.

In conclusion, I believe that my skills in the use of conventions has improved massively as I am able to identify key conventions, break them down, and apply them to my own piece of work. I also understand how to mould different conventions from different subgenres and turn them into a bricolage. I have acquired the knowledge needed to use conventions for my own media text in full.

R&P skills

Research and planning is a skill because as you continue to do so the understanding and skill in the use of resources to collect data and formulate ideas develops throughout. My researching and planning skills have developed greatly over the two years mainly due to technology and the use of internet. The purpose of research and planning is to gain a better understanding and clarity towards the product I am making, and it is paramount to widening the spectrum of one's creativity as I am able to think of new ways to tackle the practical side of my project. R&P is also key to learning conventions and themes associated with the project, and what the target audience wants that project to be like. 

For my preliminary task all I had to do was search Google Images for exemplar photos of the college magazine I had to recreate and examine the template/layout of them and figure a way of executing this in my own way. I had to copy exactly what was on the template due to my lack of knowledge and understanding of the conventions included in a college magazine, and this dramatically hindered my creativity as all I was doing was copying the positioning of all the conventions. This lack of knowledge means I cannot further my creativity anymore than what I know of for the task.  

For my AS music magazine my research and planning was 50 times more thorough than my preliminary task. I had to learn conventions of a music magazine, basic camera shots, but magazines in order to study the layout and conventions, then use Weebly to record my findings and further my research to the point of comparing magazines with each other. Then I had to create drafts for each part of the magazine and find other students to model for my magazine. The software use was incredibly helpful in strengthening my research, using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop, Weebly, Presentation applications to strengthen the presentation and craftiness of my work. I also drew up draft copies. This was quite difficult as it was the first independent task I had done before, but it helped develop my creativity and analytical skills massively as I understood what conventions went where and what could or couldn't be done. I also partly understood what certain things connoted and denoted. 

For my A2 film trailer I have to base it on existing genres, take certain elements from a few and mould them into one. I had to study many horror trailers and movies, analyse what certain things meant, what subtext was, etc. More outlets for research were used, such as YouTube, and after this, I had to upload it all to weebly. This took my research and planning skills a step further as I increased the amount of tools at my disposal. The purpose of creating the trailer is to realise that the hidden meanings were deeply rooted in modern and postmodern society. Certain objects and characteristics could mean something important in relation to the hidden meaning, and also in relation to how certain sub genres affect their audiences and why. This definitely shows developement over two years as I am now able to find the subtext buried in layers of conventions of media text and interpret it to the relevant of society today. 

Creativity essay

Without creativity human beings would be a very dull species, we wouldn't have made the necessary evolutionary steps made to progress over the many years we've been on this earth, and postmodern society as we know it right now would not exist. Creativity is an innate ability to use your imagination and create new things from it by picking apart things you've experienced and witnessed in your daily lives that gave you inspired you in a positive/negative. It is something that us as humans cannot go 100% without. However, originality is something that extremely rare at this day and age. Back in modern society, people were able to create new things, concepts and ways of thinking due to the fact that they were able to put pieces of experiences and what they've witnessed together and come up with an original concept. However, in postmodern society, we've reached a point where all original ideas have been used up and now we can only reuse those ideas and reinvent them into something newer and more exciting. Technology has helped exponentially in how we as humans are able to be creative, and express ourselves fully. Gadgets such as phones, computers, etc have increased our ability to be creative as it has added new elements such as social media platforms, such as instagram that enable us to enhance our beauty, or facebook, which gives us the choice of becoming an entirely different person on social media to the one you are in real life. In a way new technology and gadgets have enhanced the ways in which we are able to communicate with and understand others and the different ways of thinking in the world through the worldwide web, due to the fact that we are able to gain more knowledge on how they work so we can be inspired to create something, as we can communicate with those half a world away, but he also limited communication to those around us as we tend to become addicted to our technology and forget about those around us. Burn and Buckingham said “If creativity is not inherent in human mental powers and is, in fact, social and situational, then technological development may well be linked to the advances in the creativity of individual users”. I interpret this as the fact that most of us no longer have the ability to be originally creative but due to the technological advances we can be creative through the means of others' creations and use that to further develop our inspiration and creativity in order to make something new. It's not impossible to be creative, as it is innate, technology brings it out. The first ever project I done for Media Studies was a preliminary task which involved me creating a college magazine cover. This task was very basic and not creative at all as I had little to no knowledge on how to create a magazine front cover, so I had to copy the template used by a previous student in order to create my own. This was not creative at all because all I was doing was copying the exact layout of the magazine, and posting text and pictures where the previous student, creating an identical copy of what was already created. I had no idea of how to create my own unique version, so I had to leech previous ideas. This was at the beginning of the AS year, and as the year progressed I had accumulated the skills to enable me to create my own magazine cover. The final magazine cover I created was completely different from the first one I had done. The concept was different, the genre was different, the position of conventions were different, the font was completely different and the pictures taken were also different. My reason for creating the cover the way I did was due to inspiration I had garnered from similar magazines of the same genre, researching online on which conventions went where, and analysing various main stream magazine companies. Similarly to the AS preliminary task I completed, over the course of the summer holidays I was given the task of working in a group of 4 and creating a horror movie trailer. This task was t necessarily difficult as during the final weeks of college I had learned what genres of horror there were, certain conventions, what certain themes and objects connoted, we analysed many movies in class, and created the concept of our trailers and how they would be executed. However, the final product itself had certain horror elements but wasn't a horror movie as there were elements from other genres which overpowered the horror in it. However, from that experience I was able to understand what to do and what not to do when creating a horror trailer, and from then till now I have gathered and researched the knowledge needed for me to create my next and final horror trailer.