In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Representation
Representation refers to the way which media presents the “real world” through media text such as films, which is significant for the audience to distinguish the context of a product.
Our trailer “One Day” is a drama film, focusing on topics such as mental illness and youth. We show a clear representation of teenagers through their external appearance and behavior, portrayed in the media. Therefore our characters conform to the stereotypes in terms of image, friendship, and relationship wise. Particularly, the concept of growing up and figuring out how to be perceived in a way which society accepts and considers “normal”.
Throughout the trailer, we established the journey of Belle and her struggles from the past, which is not often addressed in society as teenagers are seen as care/worry free. It was important for us to accurately represent and discuss the prevalence of depression amongst teens today. Although there is numerous cause of the mental illness it’s a growing concern in society, which goes skewed and misunderstood. This conforms to the conventions in drama, as it tackles serious topics in a way it’s entertaining to the audience but also educational – similar to the film “its kind of a funny story".The character Craige subverts to typical representations of teenagers because he is portrayed in a very vulnerable manner and has a dark tendency, which would be seen in society as unusual behavior, causing him to attempt suicide, as he is unable to confide with his peers/ family.
This video contains the audience feedback after watching out film trailer for the first time.
“The over the shoulder shot made you feel more engaged in the trailer- I liked the panning from different camera angles -but could be more effective by applying more panning to the scene”. I agree with this statement after re-watching our trailer, to future develop our trailer we should construct a range of camera shots and movement to create more depth in the trailer and sharpen the narrative. “The music featured at the beginning of the trailer was quite emotional –which suit the genre of it”. After researching sound in drama, we carefully selected this music to inform the audience of the genre and to highlight the evaluated emotions of the characters. It’s reassuring to know the audience can identify the genre through sound. This signifies our use of sound was successful and a strong element in the trailer “I think the locations and costume used were conventicle to the genre but to improve the trailer you could set apart the protagonist and her friends, maybe through make-up like giving her dressing look”. I can see their viewpoint regarding this statement we could have made the identities of each character clearer to the audience. However, we wanted to ensure our characters maintained a realistic appearance, due to the nature of the film, therefore, used prevalent shots to imply our protagonist Belle.“For the editing, I think it effective with the fade and across back to the previews, however, could have used crosscut to a different location as well because it’s mostly based in the park. The point she made about the importance of locations is valid and perhaps we could have added more location to make the trailer appear more legit. But we used locations, which our target audience were familiar with to create a realistic atmosphere. “Could have included different places to give us an idea of where they are and what’s going on “It’s clear from the feedback we received that the lack of variety in locations is one of the weaknesses in our trailer, if we were to do this again I would consider the locations more carefully”. For the use of narrative of the women speaking in the phone it is effective as it gives us an idea of what’s going on, but maybe add more dialogue of the characters to make it feel like a trailer”. Purposely, we inserted the voice over of the emergency services during the argument scene, to suggest to the audience about the situation. On the other side, we could have added more dialogue to make the context of the film easier to understand “The music and titles make it a lovely trailer but could be better if they added more dialogue”. It’s clearly due to lack of dialogue some of the audience was not able to fully grasp onto the storyline, which is reasonable because after re-watching it, I could see why. Despite this, we wanted to present our trailer in a way where the audience could be actively involved. For example, coming up with there own interpretations of the film after watching the trailer without giving away to much of the storyline.“I found the build-up to the end interesting because you want to find out what happens to the character”. I agree the trailer leaves the audience with enigmas; I feel this is very effective because it keeps the audience wanting to find out more, therefore, persuading them to watch the film.
In conclusion, the audience feedback helped to clarify both strengths and weakness in our film trailer after receiving negative and positive factors. It was interesting to hear from a non-biased perspective about the our trailer production.
