1A Essay

Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answers to show how these skills have been developed over time.

For my AS coursework I had to create a film opening working within a group for our chose genre which was a thriller. We had to create an opening which was no longer than 4 minutes and conform to the conventions of our chosen genre. In year 13 for the A2 coursework I worked with a different group and we had to create a music video within our chosen music type which we picked a less popular genre of alternative as we wanted to challenge ourselves.

For the AS coursework we firstly chose the genre of thriller then we had to watch some exisiting products to understand what the conventions of a stereotypical thriller were. We watched clips on YouTube from the films 'Obsessed' and 'Prom Night'. We focused on five main areas to analyse which were mise-en-scene, sound, editing, camera work and lighting. When watching clips from both films we firstly looked at mise-en-scene which included setting, character and costume. In both Obsessed and Prom Night the protaganists were young and female and blonde. We therefore chose the person to play the main character which was me to conform to this image as this is what an audience would typically see. The main character of Prom Night, Donna is a young teenage girl and most of the film is set in her home or her surroundings, we decided to film our opening in a suburban house in my bedroom which is pink but also messy to show the feminine side but also the 'messy' teenager view.

We then moved on to look at the sound in both films, throughout there was a soundtrack which when a significant event occured there would be a cresendo of some sort to emphaise what was happening. In Prom Night there is a scene where Donna is looking in the mirror, the camera pans away for a split second and when it comes back to the mirror the killer is standing behind her, the music then hits a cresendo creating fear but also suspense. We wanted to use diagetic sound to create a atmosphere as we were only creating an opening we couldn't show much in the four minutes but we used a continous soundtrack which created a somewhat tense mood as it followed the protaganist throughout and the actions she was taking.

The editing and camera work of both Prom Night and Obsessed was similar with the use of shots especially long shots and over the shoulder shots. We used an over the shoulder shot at the end of our opening showing the protaganist preparing to walk out the door with an unknown substance in her pocket. Long shots were used in Prom Night when showing the killer watching a potential victim we then used this when showing a flashback of the couple arguing as if somebody was filming it themselves. The lighting in both films was very low key and a lot of Prom Night was filmed in the evening or dark rooms. We used a lack of colour instead of low key lighting as this was hard to achieve in a house with artifical light and the sunlight from outside. We changed the colour to black and white to show flashbacks of the past and we used a sepia tone to show the state of distress the main character was having.

For the A2 coursework we created an alternative music video for the track 'Never Again' by Meaning in Masterpiece. We had to analyse the conventions of existing videos, we looked at 'Chasing Cars' by Snow Patrol and 'The Scientist' by Coldplay. We found that alternative songs contained a lot of emotion and this was consequently shown through the videos.

Looking at the mise-en-scene we found that the setting in Chasing Cars was mainly outdoors, we therefore used the setting of a park to film a majority of the scenes as this created a scene in which he was alone walking down a long path emphasising a lonely and melancholic mood. Also in the videos they were mainly male domianted although we only had one character he was male and the female in the video was the focus but of the lyrics. As for AS we only had to create one product in A2 we had to create ancillary texts which were a digipak and a website. For the website and digipak we had photos taken of our singer Jake Black in a park surrounding sitting alone by a lake looking out in the distance which is a simple idea similar to Coldplays Parachute album cover.

When editing our product we changed the whole video to black and white although both of the existing products were not in black and white we wanted to convey the emotions of loneliness and sadness and acheived this through the use of black and white. Also at the end of the video we used a rewind to show the protaganist having to choose a path to take, although this again wasn't seen in either Coldplay or Snow Patrols video we were influenced by the way they represent the lyrics in their video as going back to choosing the path reinforced his struggle. We used long shots and mid shots similar to the ones in Coldplays videos which we were influenced by it as we wanted to have a solid narrative throughout so the audience could identify with what was happening. We realised the importance of analysing these conventions more in A2 as in AS although were creating a thriller we ended up creating a hybrid of a thriller.

In conclusion throughout both AS and A2 the analysis of real existing media products was important when creating our own product because we had a brief that we had to keep too and by looking at exsiting products we could see what we needed to include in order for us to create a successful product.