1A and 1B practice questions

1A: describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills have developed over time. 1B: Analyse a chosen product you've created against audience theories. 1A:describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills have developed over time. Within the past two years of my media course I have had to analyse different products in order to gain different ideas of the conventions of pre existing media products, the being for AS researching thriller film openings in order to have a good grasp on their conventions in order to make my own thriller opening as professional as possible. For my A" product I had to once again analyse the different conventions from pre existing media texts although this time from rock music videos due to my music video being the second media product I created. With the jump from AS to A2 I had to look more closely at the codes and conventions and make sure that I realized the difference between thriller conventions and music video conventions. For my AS product I created a thriller film opening, here I needed to analyse the different conventions of real media texts in order to help me improve my own opening and at the same time I was able to take different key ideas from the films in order to make my movie more exciting to watch and thus more entertaining for the audience so that they will keep watching and not lose interest. The films that were most useful to my production in terms of analyzing their conventions to add into my own product were films such as Indiana Jones, seven, shutter island and silence of the lambs. each with its own personal characteristic which made the movies both successive and enjoyable to watch, as such with analysis I decided to take various parts of the films and add them into my own opening with a slight change on each. With Indiana Jones we decided to focus the film around an object or artifact. We thought that with typical thriller films the codes and conventions usually have them revolve around either a specific object or person and with this we decided to use the object as a source of the plot with the characters revolving around the object rather then around each other. This analysis of the film allowed use to be more creative with the overall plot of the opening and allowed us to make it more mysterious and enigmatic for the audience. With silence of the lambs we went into more detail of the iconic interrogation scene, this was due to our research showing that the scene went well with the audience and was known to be an iconic part of the film which would be long lived.We were creative when using the idea of a interrogation scene as we decided to have the current events more mysterious as with classic thrillers however we also we wanted to make ours seem more enigmatic to the audience and so we decided to alter the classic scene to make it more of a dark room with the interrogators face covered and the shot being scene from the interviewee, this way making it seem more confusing for the audience and making them want to watch on. With shutter island most of the film constantly adds mystery to the plot and makes the audience watch on, with this in mind and shutter islands dark setting and use of editing at key moments we decided to make the text scenes be added in with smoke to add the enigmatic effect which is the key conventions of thriller films this idea was also backed up with our analysis of the film seven with how the opening depicts different images coinciding with the texts in order to make it seem more mysterious just as we did with the smoke effects alongside the text. Within my product for AS I feel that I researched throughly into the different conventions of thrilller openings and I have continued this onto my A2 work by making thorough research for my rock music video. Reasearching the conventions of different music videos differed from thriller openigns grealy in as well as researching the types of videos used to portray the lyrics of the song I had to also look at the different conventions of rock music videos in terms of different camera shots to best represent the theme of the song and at the same time flow well with the actual song used itself. For my analysis of rock music videos I looked into different rock bands with them being both recent and older bands in order to see the main appeal behind different music videos, for this I analysed different videos from bands such as 30 seconds to mars, fallout boy bon jovi and of course sum41. To research the different codes and conventions of these bands I took most influence from their music videos and also their official band websites as these would allow me to see the different themes that come about within different rock bands and how they are portrayed in real life. With analysis for different shot types I focused on fast moving music videos such as the kill from 30 seconds to mars and american idiot and Jesus of suburbia from the band green day. analyzing the different shot types helped me see the conventions of fast pace media music videos and this would play key as my idea for our group video would focus on the character running around and so would include many different fast pace shot types. The main video used however for inspiration was bon jovis 'its my life'. With its fast cut shots and use of running towards a goal I felt it linked in well with the lyrics of the video and at the same time gave me an excelent idea that conforms to similar rock videos for example blink 182's video 'whats my name again?' where as with the bon jovi song the band members were also running around the town in order to get to a destination and make it entertaining for the audiance to watch. Over the past two years I feel that my analysis of conventions of different products has imprived and as such I can now analyse pre existing products in more detail and relate them more in depth into my own products. Analyse a chosen product you've created against audience theories. the product that I feel more related to audience theory would be my thriller opening, within it I am able to relate it to such theory's as audience gratification theory, reception theory, magic bullet theory and so on. I feel that my product relates to the magic bullet theory by how it is the theory that people receive information without any realization and as such within my thriller film opening it could be said that with the use of the artifact and symbols on the interrogation desk the audience would clearly know that the film is going to somehow revolve around the artifact without being directly told that it would. Another example of this occurring within my opening would be how the audience clearly knows that the main character has amnesia and is unclear about his past. this is clear before the character explains he has no previous memory. My product also relates to the audience gratification theory by how it offers the audience a chance of escapism and through this they are able to escape into a supernatural thriller which seems more interesting and exciting then the real world thus gratifying their need to escape from everyday problems and routine. Another audience gratification theory that my thriller film opening relates to would be two step flow theory and how with the argument that information in the media is received by firstly simple individuals who pay close attention to the mass media and its messages and then having the second step being the opinion leaders passing on their own interpretation in addition to actual media content. This can be incorporated within my film opening by how during individual thoughts being given by viewers the opinions varied but were slightly similar however with group feedback it seems the dominant members opinions were constructed and then copied as the opposition leaders passed on their own ideas. Overall I feel that my created media product works well with some key audience theory's and with this it shows how we have implemented the theories to make the thriller film opening more appealing to the target audience.