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

During the research stage for the trailer I learned that some of the conventions of film trailers were institutional logos, build up to climax, special effects and specific narrative structure e.g. equilibrium to disequilibrium. I also gained the knowledge that institutional logos appear at the start of the trailer and last for up to 3-4 seconds each. In majority of the trailers there were about two to three institutional logos. In addition when watching various trailers I saw certain institutional logos appearing more frequently but with slightly different designs to set up the mood and atmosphere for the trailer. One convention of a trailer is institutional logo, I have used 3 institutional logos in my trailer.

As well as this I discovered that some of the archetypal sci-fi film character types are aliens, robots, artificial intelligence etc. Although such characters are not present in my sci-fi trailer, instead together with my group decided that with new emerging market for teen sci-fi films, I particularly wanted to challenge the stereotype of having a male protagonist by having a strong female lead such as Sophie. For example in many sci-fi films like the Martian, Transcendence, Dawn of the planet of apes, the protagonist who saves the world is indefinitely a male.

I also looked into the popular iconography of the sci-fi genre and found a frequent reoccurrence of high-tech gadgets and special effects. I have developed the popular iconography of sci-fi films with the use of the time travelling necklace the protagonist uses. Furthermore I have used editing techniques such as fast forward, time lapse as special effects to suggest the time controlling ability of ‘Sophie’. I also found that the narrative about ‘overcoming obstacles’ was the most popular narrative for sci-fi films. Therefore I used this research in my planning to portray a narrative in the trailer to show the protagonist ‘Sophie’ to be overcoming obstacles of her own. In addition, I developed this narrative further with the ‘time travelling’ focus to excite the audience, especially the target audience.

Some of the generic themes I have implemented in the trailer, magazine cover and film poster is the theme of time travel. In the trailer, this was done using editing tools such as fast forward. In the magazine cover this was suggested through cover lines and in the film poster the theme was shown using the kaleidoscope effect on the clock to show time distortion. Another theme that is implemented in the trailer is ‘revenge’. In the narrative the protagonist is going against her Grandmothers wishes and going back in the past to avenge her mother’s death. Implementing these themes has led to the trailer being more alike the sci-fi genre.

Some of the forms and conventions of film poster are film title, main image, tagline, billing block etc. I have included all these elements in my film poster to allow my poster to look professional. For my main image, I used an image of the main protagonist, because during the research stages I noticed that majority of film poster included a main image of the main actor. I also added special effects to my poster by using the kaleidoscope tool in Photoshop and using the screen effect to overlap the two images and bring to life the idea of time travelling using the tag line.

The film trailer has challenged forms and conventions of real media text product. For example unlike the archetypal sci-fi films, my film trailer doesn’t include very stock character types of the genre such as Aliens, robots or android. Furthermore during my research I noticed that many sci-fi films had strong male leads. We wanted to go against this trend and as a result made our protagonist a strong female teen. I became more confident in this revolt, when during the research I found that majority

of our target market like similar genre films such as the ‘Hunger Games’, ‘Maze runner’ and ‘Insurgent’ which is like adventure sci-fi films targeted at the younger teen market. In addition our film genre is a sci-fi hybrid, this genre has been developed in our trailer to allow the content to be more relatable to the target audience and current time period.

However a sci-fi film convention that I did not conform to was the use of CGI and special effects. This is due to the fact that there was a limitation on the technology to achieved high quality and great SFX. Although I did have access to the green screen, it would have been very difficult to achieve a professional overall look without the trailer losing its mood and atmosphere. Therefore through the process of looking at the advantages and disadvantages of using this technology, I and my group came to the conclusion to not employ this convention. However in my trailer there are other forms of special effects such as reverse, instant replay, fast word, slow motion which have been used to depict the time travelling ability of the protagonist.

Some of the forms and conventions of magazine covers are masthead, cover lines, bar code, issue date, price, main image etc. I have used these conventions in the construction of my magazine cover. For the magazine cover I have mostly followed the generic forms of magazine covers to allow my cover to look like a professional magazine cover. Generally the main image of the magazine cover is the main actor of the film that is being promoted. For example of the Total film Martian magazine cover, Matt Damon was the main image. I have gained knowledge from these popular magazine covers and used an image of the protagonist as my main image.

The masthead usually fills the width of the cover e.g. Empire, Total film and Vogue. However there are other magazine covers e.g. Sci-fi magazine which has its masthead on the left corner. Other forms and conventions that I conformed to are price, issue date and barcode. Applying this to the magazine cover made the overall final product look more professional.

I have also incorporated quite a few cover lines, I have further developed this convention by making the cover lines more attractive to the target audience. For example I have included cover lines such as “Jennifer Lawrence…the new generation of strong sci-fi women” This cover line will attract the target audience which are teenagers and mostly appeal to females but also a significant amount of males. In addition the cover line addresses a topic which female audiences would be interested to purchase the magazine and read. Furthermore I have imitated the convention of using hyperbolic words in my magazine cover to attract the readers the eyes. For example I have used alluring words such as “Exclusive, Secret, Newest, Special” etc. and font formatting tools such as bold, underline and italics to draw more attention to the cover lines and increase the likely chance of the viewers being interested in buying it. As well as this I have added a sky line above the magazine cover with names of famous sci-fi films such as “Divergent and Hunger Games” which target the similar audience that my film trailer is targeting therefore it would be beneficial and effective for the magazine cover.

Another form and convention of a magazine cover that I adapted was the slogan, the slogan I have is “The world’s most interesting magazine”. Similar to other magazine front covers, this slogan is near the masthead and therefore a continuum to the title “Supernova”. A more recent form and convention that I have added to my front cover is the website address “supernovaonline.com”, by including this under the masthead, it gives the magazine seem like a legitimate front cover.

The main cover line is one of the largest text on the front cover after the masthead. It is important because it relates to the meaning and reason behind the main image. I used big font size and bold

formatting which bright colour to attract the viewer’s eye and included hyperbolic words. Underneath the

The main cover line of my magazine cover was a ‘Special feature’ about ‘an exclusive talk with the star of r3’ and I put the page number underneath to help the readers refer the page, similar to how most magazine covers were laid out. The use of words such as ‘special’ and ‘exclusive’ captivate the reader and make them interested in the story inside.

Overall, I have also made sure that the main image of the protagonist of R3 is in the centre and not distracted by the writing. At first it was difficult to get the right balance, as I didn’t want the writing to overpower the main image and vice versa, however after trial and error in the editing process I was able to achieve the final product with constructive criticism from peers, target audience and teachers. I also have a colour palette for the front cover, the colours I used are yellow, white and blue. Before coming to the conclusion to use these colours I had experimented with other colour schemes such as ‘green, black, white’ and ‘blue, white, grey’ however the most positive feedback was given with the ‘blue, yellow and white’ colour palette.