Evaluation- In what ways does your product use forms and conventions of real media products?

Trailer

For our trailer we mostly used forms and conventions of real film trailers instead of developing or challenging them. Many film trailers use voiceovers to tell the audience information about the storyline or the film in general. We used our voiceover to give the audience insights into the storyline (for example, when the narrator says "Paul and Lucy were the hottest couple in town") and to convey information about our film (for example, when the narrator says "Working Title presents All You Need Is Love" it conveys the production company and the title of the film).
The shots we created clearly conveyed the romantic comedy genre. All films of the romance genre feature shots of happy couples and this is something we frequently did. For example, the shot of Paul and Lucy holding hands and walking down the street happily and the shot where Stella and Paul are sitting closely on the sofa together. We used shots that conveyed the comedy genre too; these had to be humorous. For example, we did this when Paul looks in the mirror wearing his Beatles glasses. We also used shots we had learned about last year such as point of view shots (when Paul looks in the mirror), medium close-ups (when the shot pans up and reveals Stella in the shop), long shots (when Paul and Lucy walk down the street holding hands) and medium shots (when Paul and Lucy are talking on the sofa). We took shots from different angles (for example, when Paul and Lucy are talking on the sofa) to convey both of the character's facial expressions so the audience gains a full understanding of the situation. This is a convention used most film trailers.

I have never seen a film trailer without music so using music was an obvious convention. We used music to convey what was happening in each shot. We play 'She Loves You' when Paul's friend plays this song to him creating diegetic sound. We play 'Help' when Paul is going crazy about the Beatles and this conveys that he needs 'help'. 'When I Saw Her Standing There' is played when Paul meets Stella which suits the idea of them meeting for the first time. Finally, 'All You Need Is Love' is played to convey how Paul only needs Lucy's love and this is more important than the Beatles to him. This song also plays when the title appears reinforcing its name.
Our trailer features two idents which are used at the beginning of the trailer. Our first ident is a green screen saying 'The following preview has been approved for all audiences'. This ident is shown in many trailers, usually trailers found online on websites like YouTube. It conveys that the trailer is appropriate for all audiences and there is nothing inappropriate for young audiences such as explicit language or nudity. Our second ident is the traditional Working Title ident found at the beginning of any Working Title films. This conveys the production company of the film. Knowing the production company of the film can determine to the audience whether the film is likely to be good or not as well-known production companies can usually be trusted. Working Title has created fantastic British films such as Bridget Jones' Diary and The Boat That Rocked, a romantic comedy and a comedy, so this would immediately give the audience a great first impression of our film. We extracted these idents off YouTube but if we were creating a legally distributed trailer we would not be able to do this. We would have to ask the production company's permission or create the idents ourselves. If we were to do this project again it is likely that we would create our idents ourselves using programmes like Motion to further develop our skills.
All storylines in films have a particular structure. It begins with an incentive moment, a complication, a climax, a dénouement and finally a resolution. In our film, the incentive moment is when Paul is introduced the Beatles and begins to like them, the complication is when Paul becomes obsessed, the climax is when Paul meets Stella, the dénouement is when Paul realises he misses Lucy and the resolution is Paul going back to Lucy. Due to our film's storyline fitting in to this structure, this makes it a conventional romantic comedy.

Poster

When creating my film poster I used many conventions frequently found on film posters such as the title of my film ('All You Need Is Love'), the slogan ('There's nothing you can do that can't be done'), an image of the main characters (this introduces the audience to them and their costume/facial expressions conveys their personality) and credits (these feature the actors/actresses, who directed the film and who edited the film but not all the people involved were featured on this to make the poster look more tidy). I used these conventions because they are the most important factors of a good film poster.
Some less frequently found conventions that I have used are a Facebook link, the film's BBFC certificate, an appropriate colour scheme according to the genre and a gradient background.

I put a Facebook link on there so that Facebook users can find it and 'like' the page. Considering there are 800 million active users on Facebook, by getting people to like this page this can raise huge awareness due to users' friends being able to see what pages people like.

The film's BBFC certificate conveys information about what audience can see the film and this also determines the target audience. The colour scheme of my film poster is red, pink and black. The black contrasts with the rest of the colours making text such as the title and the credits stand out. The pink and red clearly conveys the romance genre of the film. I used a red gradient for the background of my film poster as red has colour symbolism of romance.

Film poster for This Means War. Differentially, this poster uses a gradient background for a purpose; to create a darkness and mystery around the characters.

 I feel that the gradient makes my film poster look less professional visually and it makes the poster look plain. I would of preferred to take my own photo using a DSLR camera. I would of taken a photo of a park (where much of the film is set) or London (the location of the film). By taking my own photo, this would make my film poster look more original and it would also convey the setting as well as the characters visually. Taking a photo to use as the background would also be following conventions as some film posters do this too like these:

Magazine

For my film magazine I used many conventions of film magazines and female magazines. Trying to reach a good medium with the two genres was difficult at times as they are very different. Female magazines focus more on gossip whereas film magazines focus on the background information and the success of films. As the task set was to specifically make a film magazine, I used more film magazine conventions than female magazine conventions. However, I feel like I managed to class my film magazine into the two genres successfully.
Specific and frequently used conventions that I used included a masthead ('Take One'), a slogan ('The only film magazine for females'), a barcode, the date the magazine is published (4th January 2012), the price (£3.95) and the website (www.takeone.co.uk). The masthead has to stand out as it is the name of the magazine and like a brand; it needs to be clear and memorable. The image of the actresses is aligned in front of the masthead too so that both actresses' faces are visible and this is a convention frequently used on magazine covers. The slogan is what makes the magazine sound independent to other magazines; my film magazine is officially the only film magazine for females and therefore this makes it stand out against other film magazines. A barcode is only used for scanning the magazine in stores and therefore is not a factor when it comes to being appealing but it is still a convention as all magazines have it (except some subscription copies of magazines where they sometimes remove the barcodes as they are unnecessary). The date the magazine is published is important when working out whether the magazine is a recent issue or sorting through past issues so it is more of a convenience than an appeal. The price of my magazine is a convention because all magazines have it in view so that the customer is aware of the price of their purchase. My magazine price is in small font so it is less obvious considering my magazine is quite expensive. If my magazine was cheaper, I may of advertised the price more by making it larger like some other cheaper magazines:

Star and Company magazine are usually very cheap so they advertise their price in large lettering and block colours to get potential buyers' attention.

The website of my magazine is also shown to encourage the audience to go on my magazine's website. This is done on most issues of Total Film magazine. By getting people to go on your film's website you receive more views and the more views you receive, the more companies will want to advertise on your website. Companies sponsor popular websites in return for advertising which creates profit for every company associated. 

I have circled the adverts on the Empire and Total Film websites. They are found everywhere and they are usually relevant to the website they are advertised on. Due to advertising on relevant websites, these companies are more likely to get their target audience's attention.