CONVENTIONS OF A ROMANCE GENRE FILM

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_film

CONVENTIONS OF A COMEDY GENRE FILM

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedy_film

CONVENTIONS OF A THRILLER GENRE FILM

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(genre)

CONVENTIONS OF A HORROR GENRE FILM

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film

CONVENTIONS OF AN ACTION GENRE FILM

Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_film

AUDIENCE SURVEY

A2 Audience Survey from Monique Jackson

Codes and Conventions and History of Film Trailers

What Makes an Effective Movie Trailer?

Trailers should set up the basic premise of the film. They should include enough information on the plot so that the audience can know what to expect in the film. Trailers should aim to make the audience want to know more about the film so that they will view it when it is released. This is often achieved through the use of cliff hangers.

Film trailers should be very polished and include the story of the film in a highly condensed and concise manner, as over the years the industry has become more competitive and therefore companies seem to have been increasing the quality of trailers for an effective advertising technique. The trailer should make the audience want to know the rest of the story; it should excite and entice the audience without giving away crucial plot points in the film. Parts of the narrative will often be explained so that the audience can know what to expect from the film but they will also be left speculating. Film trailers often have a structure of three parts. The beginning (the plot is laid out), the middle (the story is developed and the best parts are shown), and the final part (a montage of scenes with a soundtrack which leave the audience wanting more).

A huge factor that gets the audience hooked immediately is dialogue between characters. Voice overs are also used but character dialogue engages the audience more.

Genre Research

Different films are assigned to different genres based on the codes and conventions that commonly appear and are repeated. Genres have lists of conventions that an audience would expect to see whilst watching a film of this type. A film does not have to include every convention, but it must make sure to add at least a few of the obvious ones. Genres help creators in specifying their film to the audience, as well as helping classify films for consumers.

Genres can often come together to make sub-genres, which combine the conventions of different genres together. Conventions can be to do with: setting, theme, characterisation, plot, props, camera work, lighting, iconography, and mood. 
Some classic film genres are:

• Action
• Adventure
• Comedy
• Crime
• Drama
• Horror
• Musical
• Sceince Fiction (Sci-Fi)
• War
• Western

The project that I am doing has to be specific to film trailers, not the whole film. Each genre has different conventions, but film trailers have codes and conventions as well. Trailers should give the audience some insight into the setting, narrative, characters and genre of the film. This allows the audience to be aware of whether or not the film interests them enough for them to want to see it; film trailers are vital to enable the film to be a success as they can target specific audiences.
Me and Monique are considering different genre's at the moment including action, romance, and thriller. Action trailers involve a lot of fast cuts along with really intense music, which causes a lot of suspense for the audience and draws them in. Romance trailers show a lot of the characters personalities and relationships through trailers, which could make the audience want to see more about how certain relationships will develop. Thriller trailers  include a lot of dark settings and low intense music, which can keep the audience on edge whilst watching the trailer and leave them curious wanting to know more. We will be brainstorming different ideas in a following blog post in order for us to decide our genre and plot.

MAPPING OF TRAILERS - Lights Out

MAPPING OF TRAILERS - X-Men: Apocalypse

MAPPING OF TRAILERS - 21 & Over

A2 Grouping Planning

Who will I be working with?

This year I have decided to work with Monique. Last year I worked with my friend Tinika, who I get along with really well. However, we have had a conversation about our A2 coursework this year and have completely different ideas for what we want to accomplish. This is the reason why we think it's best that don't work together, so that we can reach our full potential with no restrictions during this task. I am working with Monique because we have similar ideas for what we want to accomplish this year with our coursework, and we are already good friends who get along quite well.

What problems (if any) might this grouping cause?

This grouping may cause us to have some difficulties because Monique studies drama, which involves a lot of practical work and takes up a lot of her time already. She may therefore sometimes struggle with timing for when we have to work together to shoot our trailer. As well as this, I study exam based subjects, which may mean that a lot of my time is taken up with revision and study sessions, which may overlap with our production work.

How will this be overcome?

We will make sure to plan everything we do and when we will do it in order to make sure that we do not get overloaded with work. We will also try to be fast with the way that we work so that we can move onto different blog posts swiftly and be efficient with our coursework. Doing this will hopefully mean that working with Monique won't cause much stress on us and the other subjects that we are studying.

Reflecting On My AS Coursework

What were the strengths of my AS Coursework?

• I believe that my AS Coursework went really well last year. I managed to achieve the tasks in the brief effectively whilst being imaginative with my ideas. The grouping of my project was good, as I got to work with Tinika, who came up with a lot of similar ideas to me so it was easy for us to get to work on one solid idea that we both liked. We also only live one bus journey away from each other, so it wasn't hard for us to meet up to film; planning and researching was also an easy task for us to complete. However, we have not decided whether we want to work together this year, as we have been talking about looking into different genre's from each other this year.
• One of my main strengths that I am happy about is the amount of planning that I completed. This is because of the fact that I made sure to take my time going through the sources that I used and made sure that I collected all of the relevant information so that I could use them to plan constructively on what I wanted to do in the production stage. I used the internet a lot of the time  to find out about different genres or conventions, but I also used other blogs of other students' work to gain inspiration on what research they had done so that I could figure out what research I should do as well.
• An additional strength of mine is that I am great when it comes to decision making. This means that whenever me and Tinika wouldn't decide on something, for example the name of our production company, I was always able to determine the best course of action for us to keep pushing us forward in the right direction. This meant that we were always producing and hardly got stuck during our tasks because we were always developing our ideas to help us with the final production.
• The final strength that I will acknowledge is the actual final product itself. Although we didn't have access to the best equipment and editing software, we were still able to make it work with what we had and end up with a B graded piece of work. In my opinion, we used our resources to the best of our ability and utilised everything the correct way. We also chose a genre that wasn't typical such as horror or romance, we tried to stand out and make an original product by exploring our creativity. We used a mixture of conventions to make the task creepy and mask the genre of a thriller. 

What have I improved on?

• One improvement that I could've made last year was planning more in terms of primary research. Although planning was easy and I got a lot done, I would've liked to do more about the genre that I chose. I also could have done more research regarding the feedback of my target audience. This would have made it more evident where the ideas I came up with for the production came from.
• Another thing that I could have improved on is increasing my blog posts. I feel as though I could have documented more of my decisions during the production stage of my task so that all the details were evident on my blog.
• Additionally, although my time management was overall good, there were some points where I struggled, as I had other subjects to study for so work sometimes overlapped. If I had managed everything a bit better last year could've been a bit smoother.

Three targets for my A2 coursework:

• Do a lot more primary research involving audience feedback in order to make the best production that is fully catered to what the audience want to see.
• Plan out every blog post and improve time management so that work from other subjects don't overlap.
• Try not to spend too long completing blog posts and work quickly and efficiently so that I can post as many blog posts that are of a high quality as I can.