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.