The importance of media texts from both my coursework projects was that the media texts that already exist follow a set of conventions that conform to particular genres. These conventions are very important as it builds a relationship with the audience and allows them to consume a film with ease as they know what to expect. For example a convention for the genre horror is gory scenes therefore when a person is paying to watch a horror they know this will be included.
To complete this successfully in my own work I had to identify the convention for my first year AS horror film openings. These were the narrative, props, locations, sound and characters. Firstly from completing the research task of creating a presentation from the software Microsoft powerpoint establishing the conventions of genre I came to a conclusion in my planning what ones I will use. However prior to this I had created a main influences presentation on the software Microsoft powerpoint where I researched a variety of film openings on Youtube. This allowed me to get a better understanding of what the most popular conventions are used and how affective each one is.
Firstly the convention of the narrative theorist Todorov was used in the films 'Cabin in the woods', 'Woman in black' and 'Sinister'. I incorporated this theory into my film opening conforming to this convention. This is because the narrative is very straight forward and has been proven to be very affective as its used in even more examples than I looked at. I used this convention in the following way as I began with the teenagers hanging around in a park having a conversation about the horror stories they have heard. The atmosphere was very chilled and this was shown with the straight cuts and longer lengthen shots to create an equilibrium through the ease in the mood. Furthermore I then chose to construct and edit a flash back this was shot at night time using the technical button 'night vision' this gave the dis-equilibrium a haunting and frightening atmosphere. I also directed the character 'Riley' to act as if she is trapped and isolated from her friends by screaming for help and crying for panic. Behind her was 'Scarlett' the doll singing in her ear 'Ring a roses' the nursery rhyme and giggling. The shots were very fast paced and jumped from each character through close up shots and camera movements of zooming. The last stage forming a new equilibrium was bringing the opening back to normal time where the teenagers were again hanging around in the park and laughing off that they don't believe the rumours that they have all said previously. I feel that by using the theorist todorov made my planning for shots much easier as it gave me a standard layout of how the film opening was going to be shot and edited.
Another convention that I conformed to was the location that I shot the horror film opening. From previously researching into main influences the locations that I found were in 'Cabin in the woods' the woods was the main location, in 'Chucky' a haunted mansion with woodlands surrounding it was the main location and in 'Woman in black' a victorian mansion was the main location. Therefore to make a successful film opening I decided to shoot with woods surrounding in the location as this showed my influences that I had researched I followed as it created a creepy affect. However to challenge this convention I chose to mainly film in a park. The reason I decided to challenge this is because it exposed vulnerbaility of the nature of a children's park and created it to be a very scary and frightening place to go play at. I showed this location through the shot types of a pan shot as this established the location before the action had began to happen. This was a main convention that was shown in all my influences I looked at and the basic establishing shot was one the of the first shots that I learnt in AS therefore the framing for this shot was very familiar to me.
In addition another convention that I was influenced by from media texts that already exist was the characters. The media texts that I looked at was in 'Sinister' the victim of the opening was a child and his mother who was a female and in 'Woman in black' the victim were children. Therefore the teenagers that I used in my horror film opening conformed to this as they were seen a victimised in the horror film. This was highlighted mostly in the flash back with the teenager 'Riley' and all of her friends missing. This identifies the enigma code of where are they? have they been killed? or are they isolated from Riley?. This shows a code that I have used in my horror film opening that was influenced from media texts that I have looked at. Furthermore in the horror film opening 'Woman in black' the 'bad character' was a female and I found this very affective. Therefore by making 'Scarlett' the doll a female shows my influence from this media text and how the conventions of my characters were followed.
In year 13 for my A2 coursework I had constructed and edited two adverts advertising sportswear, a sponsorship and online pop up. To do this I had to identify a number of key conventions that the genre of sports adverts contained. These were semiotics, narrative, location, shot types. Firstly the extent in which I conformed the narrative of sportswear adverts was a lot. This is because from researching on youtube media texts the narrative that was used in the Nike, Adidas and Asics all have an irregular structures that don't conform to a particular theorist as the shots were very random and appeared in a fast and explosive pace to grab the attention of their target audiences. Therefore in both my adverts I followed this irregular structure and focused on the framing of the shots to advertise the sportswear in the best possible way. This was done by a variety of close ups, medium shots, repetition of shots, zooming and slow motion. These shots were all placed in the order in which it flowed best and showed a more striking view on the sportswear.
I also decided to conform to the locations of sportswear adverts and this is because the media texts that influenced my extent of conforming to this
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