Explain how significant the conventions of real media text in your development of creativity across your 2 years of production work

Conventions are needed in any type of media because they have purpose, when following convention it can make your work successful because you are following guidelines to what in the past have made that type of media profitable. However sometimes they can also be broken which is a risk but in some cases for example casting an unknown actor for a huge film e.g. the hunger games could have let the film down however it did the opposite so it depends. In addition to convention making the films successful by following rules there is also audience expectation; conventions are repeated so the audience become used to stock characters, scenes or props for that specific genre. However when a media goes against the norm it now becomes original as it isn’t following the conventions but again can be a risk as the audience may not recognize or enjoy it because of the lack of audience expectation.

In my AS, my brief was to create a Music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread for any music genre; I choose Reggaeton (Spanish rap). To complete this I had to identify conventions in music magazines relating to layout and structure; the masthead was also on the top of the magazine in bold bright colours so that it could attract the attention from the audience in addition to where the masthead was being placed I realised that. I also identified that the masthead was normally in Spanish so I changed my masthead to Patriotico (Patriotic).

Another convention I had to identify was the use of images and text. The main cover image had an iconic figure on the front of the page looking directly towards the camera to have that interaction with the audience. In addition to this a majority of the time the iconic figure was related to the type of music genre the magazine was e.g. Q had Liam Gallagher on it so for my magazine I had a Latino person on the front cover.

Additionally when researching the conventions for my genre of music Reggaeton, I realised the colouring for the magazine was bright with colours juxtaposing a rock magazine. In addition to his there was always a mention of the artist’s country.

In my A2 production exercise, I made a trailer and to do this I identified a number of key conventions from the Horror genre. One of them being the narrative structure I viewed many trailers realising that I didn’t need to include a resolution for the trailer because then it would defeat the purpose of being a trailer.  Moreover I identified the Horror Mise-en-scene which always included low key lighting; this we interpreted in our production where we filmed a majority of the scenes at night. There was also blood in the trailer either from the antagonist or protagonist which we have in our trailer coming from the antagonist hands when they are drenched in “blood”. Our location as well was inspired from cabin in the woods; forest area isolated, getting lost being on the agenda for a horror trailer. 

Furthermore in our trailer we have stock scenes of the protagonists running away from the antagonist, scenes of one of the protagonist screaming  and the protagonist entering a ruin where there is a do not enter sign all of which are conventional for the Horror genre and will be recognised by the audience.

Throughout the two years I feel like I have developed as Creative producer in my understanding of digital technology and the theory behind the media. I also have a deeper knowledge of the skills in breaking conventions of real media text and knowing when it is appropriate to do so allowing the work to be successful. In my production I feel like I met the audience expectation in both production however for AS it didn’t look like real magazine because of my limited ability of editing at the time.