Evaluation Question 1: In what ways do your media products use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

TRAILER:

Use
Our teaser trailer uses conventions of a typical action teaser trailer in the following places:

Its Score
The music used is similar to that used in an action film, with sound effects and increasing pitch as the plot thickens

Conflict & Divide

In our teaser trailer, just like in other action teaser trailers, there is some sort of conflict, and a divide between characters that leads to...

The Epic Battle

An epic battle can usually be found at both the end of an action teaser trailer and at the end of an action film, used to solve conflict. The above shot is taken from the portrayal of the epic battle at the end of our teaser trailer.

Develop
We have developed typical codes and conventions in these areas:

Use of two worlds
We developed the idea of there being a difference in interests in a typical action film and incorporated codes and conventions of a fantasy film with our use of two worlds. 

Fight for survival, rather than to the death

Fighting in action films is usually used to sort a conflict by coming to some sort of compromise or make a final decision between the two fighting parties, or a fight to the death to find a reigning winner. In our teaser trailer,  the fight is a case of survival in the case of the people from the underground, as without the sun, the underground people will die out, whether directly involved in the actual battle or not.


Challenge
We challenged codes and conventions of an action teaser trailer in the following areas:

Lack of dialogue
In our teaser trailer, there is a distinct lack of dialogue. In comparison, dialogue seems to be used quite frequently in action trailers to describe issues, and show characters attempting to plan their next step of action. We decided this wasn't necessary, as we wanted our montage and the portrayal of the battle to tell the story instead.
 

MAGAZINE:

Use:
My magazine used codes and conventions of a typical film magazine in the following areas:

Special Edition
I used this edition of empire magazine

 as inspiration for my masthead. Here, the masthead has been changed to match the featured film, Thor, and its theme:

It was this edition of Empire that gave me inspiration for my 'two covers to collect':

And I got the stamp-style circle from this edition of Total Film:

However, I also changed it, so it also qualifies as a:

Develop
Another area I have developed in is my focus. In this edition of Empire, the article is about Captain America, rather than the actor who plays him. 

Instead, I interview the actor:

Challenge
Although I haven't immensely challenged codes and conventions of a film magazine, as I want it to resemble a film magazine as closely as possible,  I have challenged typical editions, in that I am suggesting that this film will be feature of two editions. I do this by telling the audience there are two covers to collect, this edition, being focused on the Underground's Elijah Richards and the actor who plays him, and another edition, next week's, focusing on a member of the real world. This is quite unique.

POSTER:

Use
As mentioned earlier in my blog, I have taken inspiration for the layout of my film poster from billboard posters for Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol such as this one:

 My final poster ended up like this:

Other uses of codes and conventions can be seen on this part of the poster, with the steel tongs, film title, production and distribution logos and 'coming soon':

Develop
As can be seen in the posters to follow, the focus of film posters is generally to introduce the characters:

In comparison, my poster has a narrative feel, with less of a focus on particular characters.

Challenge

While writing this post, I have found another poster similar to the Mission Impossible one, this time for Thor:

 

 Something these two posters have in common is that there are four images, and the film particulars, i.e name, release date etc. are centralised. Comparatively, I only have three pictures on mine, and all of the film's information is to the right:

I chose to do it this way because I didn't want my images to be too overloaded with text and information. I also thought the tagline split well into three.