30 minute timed essay - Conventions of RMT

"Explain how significant were the Conventions of Real Media Texts in your development of creativity across your 2 years of production work."

Conventions are rules to follow for a good structure or foundation of the media text. Sometimes they are broken because following the conventions makes it limited and a carbon copy of real life examples. Breaking the conventions also makes the media text unique. lso, conventions are so common that the audience expects it in our horror trailer so sometime it's best to follow. Also, conventions have subtext or deeper meaning behind the media text.

In my AS, my preliminary task was the college magazine. I barely used any examples of college magazines to understand the conventions but I still had some conventions. For example, I had a masthead, main coverline a strapline, dominant image and a secondary image. However, each of them have no meaning underlying because at the time, I didn't learn much about conventions which is why it wasn't good

Later in AS, I did my music magazine which was based on the genre hip hop. Now that I started learning more about the purpose of certain conventions and how they differ depending on the genre you do, I purposely made my magazine lloked the way it was. Even though it is hip hop,  I broke some conventions by making it black and white on the dominant image. Normally, in a hiphop magazine, the magazine is in actual colours. But to make sure that people know it is a hip hop magazine, I made sure my model wears a chain and have the text in bold and strong font. Also,I included red in the boost which is apparent in hip hop magazine. Also, I made suremy model has an intimidating face and isn't skinny to show masculinity which is apparent in hip hop because hip hop is predominantly male

In A2, I did my Year 13 summer trailer; to do this, I identified a set of conventions for certain subgenres. My summer trailer is a slasher horror and we added certain conventions of a slasher. For example, we made the victim a female that is a damsel in distress and the antagonist is a male that has a mysterious identity (because he appears as a silhouette in the trailer). The antagonist was way taller than the female which makes it apparent on the binary opposite. 
Later on in A2, we're now making our final trailer which is again a slasher; the antagonist now has a mask and wears a boiler suit. Also, the trailer has a final boy featuring in it which can be considered as breaking the conventions because it is normally the final girl to battle the antagonist. There are now low angles and high angles of certain shots to emphasise on certain characters's positions. The antagonist is a male which is also a convention in slasher to show the binary opposites of gender as some of the victims are females. It makes males look overpowering as most of the victims die.

To conclude, my understanding on conventions has gone better over the 2 years and I've been able to apply it to my recent work although some conventions were broken.

Research and Planning Essay

I developed my research and planning over the course of 2 years by understanding the formula of magazines and how they are edited and structured when looking through all the really good magazines to enhance the creativity that I come up with. My understanding of the roles of each convention do and how most are required (e.g. masthead, main coverlines, straplines) has become better over the period of time.

For my AS preliminary task, I had to do a college magazine. I had to look at some college magazine on the internet to get an idea of what to do since this was my first task. It required basic skills. such as putting the dominant image in the middle, did each convention and so forth. I didn't do that much because at the time I didn't learn that much so this limited my creativity - I couldn't do what I really wanted to do with the lack of knowledge in terms of editing at the time.

Later on, I did my music magazine. I learnt more about Adobe Photoshop and InDesign and how they operate. This allowed me to make a magazine which was way better than the college magazine as I can now portray my creativity better. I cropped out the model in the image and copied it to make the masthead appear like it is on the brick wall in the background. Also, the I changed the image into black and white by typing minus 100 on the saturation panel as well as grayscaling it on Photoshop. This was inspired by the NME magazine with the UK Rapper Kano on it; on the double page spread, the whole spread is black and white including the dominant image. This was a good effect because it shows the gritty and grimy feel of London since it is such an urban place. On InDesign, I made sure all the conventions consisted of some sort of black and white combination to further emphasise on the theme. Also, I used the same font because I wanted it to be quite minimalist. I developed an understanding of Photoshop/InDesign which allowed me to flourish my creativity as it now has deeper meaning behind everything I do. But it is limited in terms of creativity; I only had to do a music magazine and nothing else.

After this, I am now creating a horror film trailer. Even though my AS music magazine has developed it still had some limits. In a horror trailer, I can now do much more in it than a magazine because so much subliminal messages can be implemented. When researching and planning, I've stumbled upon a lot of trailers such asthe Conjuring 2, Friday the 13th 2009 and many more. There's much more to do for a trailer. My group and I have to consider the location, the costume/makeup, sound design, shotlist and editing the trailer with the sound design as a whole. So creating this allows for more creativity to be shown and portrayed. Editing a trailer is much more complicated than editing a magazine so that means that we have now developed our skills over the course. But it still has itslimits. We are required to do a HORROR trailer, not an action or romance film trailer so it can't be abstract.

To conclude, over the course of 2 years, I have went from creating a basic college magazine to a horror film trailer which requires way more thought into it since so much needs to be considered in order for it to be a really good trailer. In addition, the software we have to use for a trailer is much more complicated (Final Cut Pro) than InDesign or Photoshop. But the more indepth it is, the more creative you can get so it opens doors for innovative content.