June 2011 Essay

Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media texts influenced the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples to show these skills have been developed over time.

For my AS coursework I worked within a group in which we created the opening to a thriller film. After receiving the brief we all decided to create a thriller as this was a popular genre with our target audience. We had to analyse existing products in order to see what the codes and conventions of a stereotypical thriller were. Firstly we narrowed down exactly what our thriller would be about and we chose Obsession and infatuation. We then used Google to search for existing products which focused on these. After looking through lists of films we decided to analyse Obsessed and Prom Night. Both were very different as Prom Night was a thriller but also could be classed as a thriller/horror hybrid and Obsessed was a typical thriller. We watched the trailers for these films and carefully analysed them. We made notes in key areas which were mise-en-scene, lighting, sound and editing. In order to create a successful thriller we had to keep to these codes and conventions as when an audience go to the cinema they know what to expect with a genre and that is what they want to see. In terms of lighting we found that it was very low key with dark colours and a lot of the scenes were either shot in darker rooms with low lights to create a mysterious and somewhat eerie atmosphere. We incorporated this with not so much the use of light as we were filming in a suburban house which only had artificial light but we used colour which comes into editing.  As we couldn’t work with the light as much when editing we decided to portray the flashbacks of the past in black and white to show bleakness and a melancholy mood and when the main character starts having sinister thoughts and we see her slowly decline we used a sepia tone which again portrayed there was a change. Also when editing we used fast cuts which was also seen in Prom Night when the protagonist is hiding from the man after her and it quickly cuts from her to him and this creates a tense atmosphere.

When looking at mise-en-scene we not only looked at props and backgrounds but also characters. We found in both Prom Night and Obsessed the main characters were both female. They were also what is seen as a typical ‘girly girl’ and blonde which we used in our thriller as our main character had blonde hair and wore typically girly clothes. The women in both were very different though as in Obsessed she was the one in control but in Prom Night she was being targeted and was a victim although they were both very emotional. We used this in our thriller as we made our main character very emotional, seen through crying and the sheer upset at the break up of her relationship. We filmed in my house which is a typical detached suburban house. This is similar to Prom Night as it is filmed in the main characters house and various locations to do with her life such as her school. We made sure we filmed in a location relevant to the story and my room was very girly with pink walls but messy to show what we consider to be a typical teenage room. Finally when analysing the sound in both Prom Night and Obsessed we found there was a constant sound track but when something was going to happen it got either louder or faster and when something was happening for example in Prom Night, Donna is looking in the mirror and the camera pans away when we see her looking in the mirror again the killer is standing behind her and the music crescendos which creates the fear factor and wanting to know what is going to happen next. We found a soundtrack of YouTube which we had to ask permission from the creator and used this as it was contemporary which would appeal to our target audience but also had an eerie twist which fitted in well with the thriller genre.

After finishing AS we went on to A2 in the second year where again I worked within a group and we had to create a music video with a song of our choice although it couldn’t be recent or have a video already. As for AS we chose a popular genre we decided for A2 we would choose a less popular genre of alternative music which was aimed more at an older audience. This challenged us and meant we had to analyse the codes and conventions carefully as they were specific and we had to make sure we included all of them to create a successful video. As our genre was specific we decide on three main artists to focus on who were James Blunt, James Morrison and Coldplay. For AS we only had to create the trailer whereas in A2 we had to create ancillary texts being a website and a digipak. For the website we looked at Will Young and Bruno Mars website and for the digipak we looked at existing album artwork for various artists. Firstly we watched a music video from each artist on YouTube and closely analysed these. We found that the lyrics of alternative songs are usually very emotive and deep and this is reflected in the video. We also found that there was again low key lighting and not a great use of colour. We did both these things in our video as we listened to the lyrics and made our video a narrative one following the story told through the lyrics but our personal take on what this could be seen as. In editing we used certain parts of the lyrics which contained powerful words and had them slowly appear on the bottom to emphasise the emotion in the video. Again in editing we changed the colour scale to black and white to again convey a sad depressive mood which reflected the song.

For the website we looked at Bruno Mar’s and Will Young’s website as although they didn’t quite fit in to our genre their websites were interesting to look at which is what we wanted. Bruno Mars used lots of different fonts and colour whereas Will Young’s was more simple which we decided to go for in terms of colour as we used photos of the artist which were black and white as the background and the only colour used was for the Twitter and Facebook links. This reinforces the brand and associations we have with this artist and song. We used a font which stood out on the page which we downloaded and we used this font on every page to again make sure the branding was kept the same. When looking at digipaks we looked at all different genres but especially Coldplay’s Parachutes album as this used a very simple image but was interesting and unique to look at and sold the band as well as the album well. We carried through the use of black and white colouring and similar fonts. We used professional photographs of the artist which Will Young used for his album.

In conclusion, my knowledge of existing products has influenced me vastly throughout both AS and A2 as we have had to remain within these codes and conventions to make sure our product was successful. In AS we only had the trailer to create which allowed us to only research in detail into two films which we analyse in depth and use these conventions and codes to create a thriller but in A2 we had the music video and ancillary texts which we had to analyse more products and make sure we stuck to a range of different codes and conventions for a video, website and digipak.