Conventions Essay

In your experience, how has your understanding of real conventions developed through creating your productions?

Over the 2 years of media, we have been given 2 products to create. In our first year (Year 12) we were created a film opening. In our second year (Year 13), we created a music video.  Both of these products contain different media conventions. My knowledge and use of these conventions have developed significantly over these past two years. Before Year 12, I had a basic understanding of conventions, such as what makes a genre, but not anything substantial enough to use it in my media products.

In Year 12, we produced a film opening. We started this task from scratch and had to choose a genre within our groups. We choose the genre of Teen Drama. The genre had to be clear within our film opening so that it attracted the correct target audience (teenagers and young adults), and that it was an enjoyable and interesting watch. Because of it being a Teen Drama, we had to include some stereotypical conventions of that genre. For example, having relatable young characters and a relatable but interesting plot line. We completed this convention by having members of our group (including me) to act and be the main characters. This allowed the characters to come across as everyday teenagers and this would attract our target audience because they want characters it be relatable and allow them to connect or empathise with the characters on a personal level.  The plot line of our film opening was a missing girl and her friend’s search to try and find her. This plot line is nothing extraordinary but is not an everyday occurrence in most of our target audiences lives. This is what made the film opening appealing. Within our film opening we also used enigma codes which kept the audience engaged and trying to guess what would happen next. These enigma codes were questions such as “Why are they showing photographs of the friends being burnt?”, “Why has the girl gone missing?”, “Did she run away or was she kidnapped?” Enigma codes like this add to the plot line and attract audiences and allow the audience to enjoy the film opening and want to watch more. In Year 12, we did not really challenge the conventions of our genre. We did not challenge them because we wanted our film opening to be a success and I liked the safety of conforming to media conventions to achieve success.

In Year 13, our use of media conventions changed dramatically. We did use some conventions but we also challenged conventions swell. Our music video was of the genre Indie Rock. This music genre is not as popular as genres such as Pop or R&B, which meant we would have to work harder to attract an audience. Some examples of the main conventions of an Indie Rock music video are: psycadelic, slightly aggressive, bright colours. We decided that we wanted to implant all these examples in our music video. We decided to include these convention because not only did it fit in with the theme and band’s image we had created but it also made the video fun to not only film but to also watch. We created these conventions through camera shots – for example we used a lot of close up shots and tracking shots to show the confrontational, chaotic feel to video. The characters we created within the video were very confrontational – singing, looking, screaming directly at the camera. We also had the characters to dress in wacky clothes and dance erratically which added to the pyscadellic atmosphere. We used bright make up and we also created a set made of pink sequin fabric and cut out faces from magazines to achieve the bright colours. On Premier Pro CS6, we also used the colour correcting tool to brighten the shots therefore making the colours more vivid.  Whilst we did conform to the main conventions of the Indie Rock genre, we challenged the main conventions of music videos in general. We did this by having the two members of the ‘band’ both being female and not being sexualised. We decided we did not want to include voyeuristic angles of the characters unlike the ones you see in both videos. We wanted this video to empower women and to highlight that women can be as strong and have a strong, confident presence as men do.

Overall my skills of using and manipulating conventions have improved a lot since the beginning of year 12. I have learnt the basic conventions within different media products and learnt how to use this to my advantage. I have also learnt that I can challenge and manipulate these conventions to create a finished product that I am proud of and get my message across.