Question 1

Question 1

how did you USE, CHALLENGE or DEVELOPE codes and conventions of real media

products

The conventions of a soap opera

British soaps are set in a specific part of the country to show regional identity e.g. coronation street is set in Manchester. Manchester was a city built on the cotton industry and every cotton mill would have a brass band so coronation street use brass music as its opening theme tune to anchor the regional identity .

Story lines are supposed to relate to real issues such as divorce, money problems and marriage

They run all year round and normally episodes relate to the time of year or events such as Christmas or Halloween

Scheduling – usually the shows are on to aim at a particular age group e.g. hollyoakes is on early evening for 16 – 25 year olds

Lighting normally reflects the mood and story line and filters are also used e.g. blue filters

Normally they have 4 or 5 storylines running at once but when a story line gets intense they will mainly focus on the one storyline at a time then move to another

Conventions of a social realism soap

Made to not look constructed, natural transitions between scenes , needs to be relatable to the audience that why they use common storylines

Emmerdale , coronation street , eastenders

very natural transitions there’s an element of continuity nothing false or fake

Lighting- very basic made to replicate day light there is nothing used to make the stars face look any different

Narrative – anything relatable to everyday British life such as family arguments, there are more than one story lines running at the same time and episodes normally end on a cliff hanger

Characters- drive the plot

Catharsis – purging of emotions , realism allows audience to relate to the emotions and experiences of the characters

Sound- other that the opening theme tune, music is rarely used apart from in scenes that involve a radio in cafe ect

Similaritys between my soap and waterloo road (use)

Big close ups to show emotion but in quick shots to build suspense

Action shots to anchor the audience and over the shoulder shots to give the audience a point of view

Showing quick shots of the most intense part if the episode to draw the audience in

Ways in which I developed existing codes (hybrid & parody)

In this waterloo road trailer the protagonist is saying ‘this isn't over’ but because I wanted my characters to be more threatening I used the line ‘ill kill you’ I wanted to developed more interest and make the trailer more intense and there for more exciting for my audience

I wanted to end my trailer on an intense line of dialogue that would want to make my audience keep watching I thought that the waterloo road line of ‘this isn't over’ wasn't intense enough so I decided to use ‘ you touch my baby I swear to god’ because it relates to my story line more

Ways in which I challenged conventions One way that I went against the normal conventions of a trailer is by using dubstep in my trailer as my background music because it hasn't really been used before because its difficult to work with and to hard to make your edits fit in because of the inconsistent bass line. but I found a song that would work quite well in my trailer because the bass drops perfectly in time when my trailer is at its most intense. Also Manchester has quite a big dubstep and drum and bass scene so the music also anchors the regional identity if my trailer. I felt that water loo road was to safe with there choice of music ( Dappy- rock star) and although it did appear to there age group it was also quite dated and I wanted to use something fresh and different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeNSzJ2-Jw

Ways in which I used, developed and challenged conventions in my ancillary products

Name of new TV programme date time and channel

The words plus and new are used all over the magazine showing this isn’t a soap magazine with regular features this is for new TV programmes

We can tell who the stars are

Anchoring audience

Once again simple colour scheme showing a high quality product

Having a sub – story that I know my audience will be interested in

I used the same lighting in my front cover as I did in my trailer unlike the misfits front cover which use quite harsh while lighting

My front cover challenges conventions by being a lot cleaner than the misfits front cover and by only having the 2 enemy's on the cover and I've sort of dedicated the whole of my front cover to my trailer and not really advertised many other shows