In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

- Discuss your research into trailers and their conventions. Identify (and link to) specific trailers that influenced your own work. Emphasise what

you have found out rather than how you conducted your research.- Discuss your research into the ‘theory of trailers’

- Discuss how/why your film relates to the conventions that you have identified. Try to identify areas where you have followed conventions

and areas where you have challenged them.Don’t ignore conventions just because you think they are obvious.

Where you have departed radically from conventions, try to give some sense of the reasons behind your choices.

- Although you should be mostly concerned with technical conventions, you might also be able to explore to to what extent your trailer conformswith genre expectations, to what extent the representation of characters

conforms with or challenges stereotypes andto what extent are the narrative theories of Prop/Todorov/Levi-Strauss

etc etc relevant/interesting in relation to the narrative of the trailer. Is it possible to even consider your trailer as a narrative??

- You should follow the same steps for your film posters and magazine covers.

Film PosterBeginning research for my film poster, I researched all sorts of romantic comedy genre films and the posters to go with them. My main influences was ‘The Holiday’, ‘Mean Girls’, ‘Leap Year’, and ‘Burlesque’. They all contain some sort of separation in them. I liked this idea because the story line was that of John Tucker Must Die. The main character- Chris was playing someone called ‘Hiles’ and his job was to act like he was king of the school and as if everybody absolutely worshipped him, (as in the girls) and he plays four at a time, causing the girls to fight. That’s what I tried to show in my poster. Chris is in the centre of the poster with two lines either side of him, with two of the four girls either side of the lines, looking at one and other. I suppose the way they are positioned you can sort of see that they’re looking at him from up above possibly planning revenge or something on him? Laura’s (right hand side) face says a lot as well. She’s clearly not happy and that’s what I was looking for in this photo session. I like that Chris’ body language and facial expressions show that he’s cocky and ‘king of the school’. He’s also in the centre because he’s being represented as the ‘player’ and he’s in between all of the girls so I thought that was the best way to show that he’s tied in the middle of them all. Lauren (left) is shown to be the mellow one, her face isn’t as strong as Laura’s and it reflects on her personality.

I also added in the conventional ideas of a traditional film poster such as who the film is starring, the film title of course, a rating from a newspaper, the credits of the film featured at the end of the trailer, the copyright company, age restriction, and ‘all rights reserved’ text and such. This made it look authentic and realistic, even though the layout is lacking slightly. I think I could have done better in my film poster as I’m experienced with Photoshop, and I know I had better ideas. Looking back on this now, I dislike the colours used for the background of the writing, the fonts used, the layout of the poster and the placing of the text. Although saying that, I am happy to explain why I did what I did and how I did it, and what influenced me to do so. I decided on the name of the film when creating the film poster also, which came from the film ‘Something About Mary’ if that wasn’t obvious already. I used Hiles as the name of the character because it’s a very unique name, and it sort of turns the conventions around a little bit. You usually see something like ‘Dave’ or ‘Pete’ but I thought it would be fun to create a weird and wonderful character. It’s a little bit out of the blue and when I read it, I automatically think of films like ‘Superbad’ or ‘Pineapple Express’, because they’re quite parody-like films. But this poster doesn’t reflect a parody, it shows a romantic comedy aimed around the high school age. I see it as something like ‘The Holiday’.

These are all posters that I researched into and took ideas from. They’re all separated in some way or another. The Holiday has the same sort of idea as mine, it’s separated by photos etc. The Ugly Truth is a black pole, Burlesque is the title, as is Mean Girls. I liked the idea of separating the characters because it shows the friendship/relationship between them all. Obviously looking at my poster, it shows that the girls are looking down on Chris in disappointment/shame and he’s walking out of the building thinking nothing is wrong, and he doesn’t know that the girls know that he’s played all of them at the same time. It’s quite a typical high school story line, but I’m hoping the audience is targeted correctly through this poster. I think I could have laid the poster out a lot better than this now looking back at it.

I still have all of the typical poster conventions included in my own poster, just in an unorganised fashion. I’d of liked my poster to be a lot more high-school like rather than it looking like it’s aimed at adults like The Holiday. It looks a lot more romcom than just comedy, which I’d of liked. Considering I based my storyline of my trailer on John Tucker Must Die I think I should have stuck with a poster a lot like that one, rather than cheesy romcom love stories, as it was more comedy than romance.

John Tucker Must DieI wish I’d have based my poster a lot more on this type. My storyboard was a lot like this one and I wish I’d of kept it linked. When I look at this I automatically think ‘high school’, ‘American’, ‘predictable’. When you look at this it’s really obvious as to what type of genre the film is, what the story line is going to be, and who is what type of character on the front. Firstly, the title says an awful lot. John Tucker is obviously the main character and he’s placed directly at the front of all the girls, so he’s clearly got the most power/authority. You can tell out of the girls which one isn’t involved in the ‘clique’- far left. The way she’s stood shows that she’s timid and vulnerable, and her facial expression doesn’t look comfortable or totally thrilled. The rest of the girls look like they have attitude and aren’t afraid to show it off. Hands on hips, short skirts, bellies out and feisty facial expressions. John Tucker’s facial expression shows that he’s thinking obviously with his hand up to his face, and he’s leaning his head slightly to the right, possibly thinking ‘which girl do I pick?’.

The slogan beneath the title is a big give away to the genre and storyline as well. ‘Don’t get mad, get even’ shows that when you look at the girls’ faces and see their attitude, that they’re out to get the boy. They look like they’re sort of ganging up on him behind his back which is possibly why John Tucker’s stood in front. The far left girl in the film, is new to the school but you don’t know that just from looking at the poster, however it’s clear that she’s not really in with the other girls, as she’s pushed to the left in the corner, even though she’s actually one of the main characters. It looks like she’s an outcast so she’s portraying her character quite well.

The second poster I found was this lower back tattoo type. The girl’s hand is in the shape of an ‘L’ which stands for ‘Loser’ in America. It’s a typical thing to call somebody, just by watching American sitcoms and films I’ve noticed that they say it a lot. This poster shows the title in a tattoo form, on the lower back of a slim, curvy and tanned girl. She’s typically quite airbrushed as well which shows the fact that it’s a comedy, typical American and set somewhere sunny. She’s wearing underwear which also shows that it’s set in school; plainly because of the amount of ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ there is in recent American films, you know automatically what it’s about. This image reminds me of films like ‘American Pie’. Very stereotypical. I like to think that I challenged this convention by making the poster look a lot more adult-like and sophisticated. I also like how mine looks English. It doesn’t typically look American or fake, it looks English due to the uniform that the students are wearing in the picture, the weather doesn’t particularly look too sunny and it’s not set on a beach or anything so you automatically assume that it’s British.

FeedbackHere is the link to another audio file on Youtube, of Laura and Eden answering questions about my film poster. Please view this copy of my poster rather than the one on the video because Youtube has made it fuzzy again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej8YzLWnnhcI have put this video on my blog just in case it doesn’t work on powerpoint.

I had originally planned to use a different poster. I created a poster under the influence of the Juno poster previously but I didn’t think it represented the genre well enough so I started again with a different approach. It was a lot like ‘Superbad’ and ‘Trainspotting’ but I didn’t think it was obvious enough that it was also a romantic comedy, not just comedy. Now I wish I’d have stuck with this poster as it would have been a lot more successful but I still think it doesn’t represent the romance element of my trailer enough.

I used the stripy background from the Juno poster because it made a good layout and put things into perspective for me. It was easier to lay out the names and text, and easier to place the images of the characters. I have Chris in front on the left, and so does the Juno poster of the male lead. I used the cut out idea because I think it makes a good film look unconventional. You can tell that when you look at the Juno poster it’s going to be a comedy, straight away. I was hoping that it was the same with mine. I have the names across the top in the same fashion.

I took this cut out idea from the Superbad opening because I think it’s a good way to portray the genre of the film. Superbad has a lot of slapstick comedy featured in the genre and I like to think that I included some in my own trailer, therefore I want to interpret that into my poster. It also leaves you questioning ‘what type of film is it?’, even though it’s clearly nothing like a horror/thriller/sci-fi. You don’t know if it’s going to contain any romance, only judging by the cut out characters. I think the cut out poster of mine looks a lot more high-school type, like the John Tucker Must Die poster. It’s obvious where it’s set because of the school ties, what the age group it’s aimed at is because of the character’s ages- they all obviously in their teens, so you automatically know what type it is. It sort of reminds me of the ‘Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging’ poster because of Lauren’s expression is like one of the girls in the ‘clique’ behind the main character. It’s also quite like the ‘Trainspotting’ poster, the cut out idea and the block colour. I did a variety of different colours and each one kind of changed the genre a little bit. I think the Trainspotting poster is quite aggressive looking, and the film is set in the 80’s and it’s about a heroin addict. So I decided to change the colour from orange and that gave me ideas to experiment with new colours and backgrounds.

I think the Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging poster is quite unusual because it’s randomly placed and the background looks like it’s been hand-drawn. You automatically know it’s aimed at younger girls purely from that, and the fact that the girls on the front are all very young. The layout is quite unusual as well, although the main character is placed right in the centre of the poster, the rest of the characters are placed so that they look like they’re coming out of the painted line, the same with the boy behind. The cat’s above her head so it looks like she’s thinking about him/her, and it doesn’t have the traditional conventions such as the credits, copyright label etc across the bottom- just the age restriction. Trainspotting however, has all of them. It’s an unconventional poster because it doesn’t lookg like a film poster to me. When I look at it it reminds me of a campaign poster, maybe to give up smoking or something? I don’t see a film poster to begin with but you have to read the text to then realise that it’s a film poster, whereas Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging has that factor- it looks like a film poster and you automatically know the genre and audience that it’s aimed at.

These are the six different colours I experimented with in Photoshop. The first one- orange was where I realised that it looked a lot like the Trainspotting poster, except my images looked a lot more like images rather than a complete cut out. I realised what that film was about and thought that this poster didn’t really represent slapstick comedy or romance the way intended, so I changed it and put a glow around each character to make them stand out more. I think this challenged normal conventions because it’s not like normal film posters where the guy and the girl are looking all happy on the front. It reminds me of Mean Girls still from the body language and expressions. I like the layout of it though, the way the bar goes around the back of Chris’ head and the title fits in quite nicely. After thinking about all of these colours I decided to stick with red, but it still looked a bit bare, so that’s when I researched more into film posters and found Juno. So the stripes were introduced and then I found it a lot easier to incorporate more text etc into the stripes. It all fitted quite well but then I decided against this poster as it wasn’t portraying the romance aspect of my trailer as there is quite a bit. I think looking at both posters, I need a happy medium of both posters because the final poster is very sophisticated and that’s not the aim I was going for.