convention final

Conventions Essay
“Sometimes, working within constraints produces the most interesting work” (Branston and Strafford), How have you used real media conventions to produce interesting or effective coursework productions ?

"Sometimes, working within constraints produces the most interesting work", I feel this means that by working within limits e.g. not enough technology ,money and convention means that you have to think alot more about ideas and try to make the work as successful as possible within these limits which can produce the most interesting work. In this essay I will discuss this idea and how I have used real media conventions to produce interesting and effective coursework productions.
A lot of the conventions of a thriller we followed quite strictly these were using dark, shadowy atmosphere , flashbacks , creating suspense and filming within a everyday setting to create the sense of something abnormal happening in a normal environment. Whereas in my music video we followed less conventions more strictly these were matching lyrics to visuals and by matching visuals to music, we did follow others but mainly adapted them aswell. In my thriller film we created these conventions by using filming mostly in the dark and in enclosed spaces to create a negative, dark shadowy atmosphere. We used flashbacks editing them in black and white to connotate the difference from the usual film and we creating a morally ambiguous character of whom you never saw their face but came to understand -film noir(se7en) and we used realistic settings by filming it in a town and work environment to create a sense of the 'unusual' occurring within a normal setting .In my music video we followed the conventions by feature of lyrics and visuals being related to illustrate amplify the lyrics , we did this by putting the lyrics on icing in the cake in the moment in the music and by using a repetitive motif of a poster being held up to the length of the word everytime it came up.
We used music and visuals being related to illustrate and amplify the lyrics we did this by telling a story on what the lyrics are basically are about and focused are whole music video on this , we used this specifically with 'theirs a spanner in the works you know you gotta step up your game to make it the top you know you know , gotta lot of competition now you gona find it hard to cope with living on your own you know you know' and we represented this by showing this action with a guy who's the spanner and the competition taking the girl and showing the guy on his own representing the lyrics in a story. We used two conventions of Pete Fraser aswell the first being the tempo/pace of track being matched to the editing by cutting to the beat changing the speed of the film clip to the tempo of the music.
We also used many images of guitars, drummer and the singer and his mouth to emphasise certain parts of the instrumental playing as well.

By following the conventions less closely to A2 it shows that I have progressed in my thriller film
we were not as confident with the knowledge and the consequences behind taking risks, so we followed them a lot more closely, In my music video although we followed all the conventions we also adapted them a lot more as well which allowed more room for individuality and less generic and unoriginal material. It is a lot easier to create a product in which you know the conventions will be more effective as has been previously targeted to the audience than by adapting conventions and trying to make them your own . By researching into the conventions i think it has made our product more interesting as we have been able to think of ideas from conventions that we may not have thought of before.

However we did adapt some conventions in our thriller film such as the eery music of a thriller film, but adapted many more in our music video such as the idea of voyeurism and examples of intertexuality. We adapted the convention in our thriller film as our music was not the usual eery on-edge music but a more upbeat track with a fast beat , I thought this would emphasise the normality of the everyday setting in which you see the film to make the sense of abnormal even more surprising. For the Genre of our music video we had to look at a more specific set of conventions to go with our music genre alternative/rock , the genre is quite different and some conventions such as voyeurism and focus on main artist are not used as strongly. They feature alot more on concept base using their own music video style and iconography and some performance based but mainly on instrumentation and band and venue compared to the selling of just one solo singer. We challenged the conventions of our music video by cutting some parts not to the beat of the music to create a syncopated effect, we also used the idea of intertexuality but not obviously by using a set example , just some of the original ideas we got were not from music videos. We also used the voyeurism to sell the character and star image motif rather than the actual artist. Compared to our foundation portfolio by challenging the conventions we have progressed alot because the product became to alot more of our own ideas and creation using a wider range of media knowledge. Although our music video was not a hybrid and was not completely new and different from previous media examples it has new and different elements, as most music videos do. The conventions for a thriller film our a lot more specific but there our alot more, however the genre for a thriller is a lot more broad than a specific genre for a music video so the conventions can be followed while still creating a different product , so can be debated that more thriller convention would be used but simply because there are more of them , whereas a music video has less in general so has more to adapt and less to follow,