Final Poster Design

Final Magazine Design

Final Trailer

Evaluation

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

Our Magazine	Real-World Examples
		Empire February 2011	Circular information bubbles are common amongst a lot of the different magazine covers that we looked at. We decided to include “Ultimate reviews of 2011” in ours because it is the January 2012 issue.
		Empire October 2011	We chose to include a film reel across the bottom of the magazine further emphasising the concept of a film magazine. A similar concept is seen in Empire magazine, where they place a strip of images and headlines across the bottom of the magazine.
		Total Film January 2012	We decided to place our web address alongside the price and issue number. Although we were challenging conventions this was ultimately the best place to locate it.
		Empire August 2010	The ‘+’ symbol is common amongst many existing film magazines. We chose a slightly larger size than the existing convention because we feel this has a stronger and more immediate impact on the audience.
		Empire January 2011	During out photo shoots we ensure the models’ eyes were always looking directly in to the camera. In this example from Empire you can see their model is doing the same. This engages the audience which will make them more likely to take notice of our magazine on a newsstand.
		Empire September 2009	In our headlines we used words such as “exclusive” to draw attention to the articles. We also made use of colour to create emphasis on specific words. This is similar to existing magazine covers.
		Total Film Summer 2010 Special	Our magazine title features a headline above it. We placed both of these so they stretch right the way across the top of the magazine. We only added a subtle layer effect to the magazine title, challenging the codes and conventions shown in the Total Film example. However, Empire titles tend to be flat colours.

Our Poster	Real-World Examples
		Wild Child	We chose to place the actress’ names all in the same case with emphasis placed on the surname. This is an existing convention but we decided to not copy the existing style exactly.
		John Tucker Must Die	Our actress was staring directly at the camera. This is another common convention seen in movie posters. Her facial expression is similar to that of the model on the cover of John Tucker Must Die.
		Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	We placed a five star rating on the cover to create excitement and trust within the audience. We have seen this on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It tends to be seen on high concept movies however we chose to use it on our rom-com poster. By challenging this convention we feel that we are providing our film with a greater sense of credibility, like that usually associated with big-budget blockbusters.
		Bridesmaids	By placing a rough release date for the film we felt that we would create greater hype and excitement for the movie. Bridesmaids featured the release date in an easy to read font and in a highly-visible location. We were influenced by this common convention.
		10 Things I Hate About You	Almost all of the movie posters we looked at featured logos of film studios and the technology used to create them (for example Sony or IMAX) in addition to information about the film’s directors and producers. We included similar text and logos on our movie poster. These conventions make it easy for the audience to easily recognise that it is a film poster.
		Easy A	The overall layout for our design was influenced by the iconic border around the Easy A poster. We used this as the base for our design because we know how successful Easy A has been, and then combined this with lots of other conventions from different posters.

Our Trailer	Real-World Examples
	Mean Girls We conformed to the convention of keeping the release date vague. This increase anticipation for the movie. Additionally, it is a teaser trailer so we did not want to release too much information about the film.
	Easy A The reaction shot in Easy A was a pivotal moment in the trailer. We conformed to this idea by including a similar reaction shot. The close-up emphasised the actress’ reaction.
	John Tucker Must Die The MPAA warning at the start of the trailer gives the audience information about the suitability of the trailer. As a film aimed at teen girls we decided that film would be listed as “Approved for appropriate audiences”
	St Trinians The establishing shot is common trend in teen rom-coms. We chose to follow this common code and convention in our work by using a panning establishing shot to showcase the exterior of our location.
	Wild Child We were inspired by Wild Child’s use a close up of shoes. However, we wanted to use dolly shot within the corridor to add drama and impact to the trailer. This challenges existing trends.
	Easy A Our credits page conforms strictly to the existing codes and conventions of a movie teaser trailer. We chose to add a small amount of pink to increase the strength of the film’s brand identity.

Radical feminists would argue that men are dominant in this film and that our female protagonist is being oppressed by the male character. However, we do not feel that this is an appropriate analysis of our work. We think a post-modern feminist idea is much more appropriate. Our protagonist is not a victim and is not being ‘duped’ by the male character. She is making her own conscious decisions.

Laura Mulvey presents the idea of the ‘Male gaze’ and argues that the viewpoint in Hollywood films is male; therefore, women are shown as passive objects. However, we also object to this idea because we feel our film has a strong, central female character and in this case – the male character is objectified and ‘passed between’ the female characters.

In this sense, we feel that we are challenging existing codes and conventions of Hollywood movies. Despite this, one shot in our trailer shows the female’s legs. In this case, she is the subject of the desiring male’s gaze and therefore we are still restricted by the codes and conventions of existing media products. Coe presents the idea of ' the tyranny of genre', where creativity is limited due to a strong commercial imperitive existing within the industry.