Georgia Johnson: Evaluation Q.1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? POSTER

Key: use/ develop/challenge

     Formal conventions

       Generic conventions

       Real Media Products

       

                                      Formal Conventions:

The most important convention of a film poster is for it to be eye catching and to captivate the audience. 

- We have done this by choosing a striking image of a hand which seems like it's reaching out to passers by.

- The poster for 'Frances Ha' also achieves this attention grabbing factor by having an image of the protagonist who looks as though she is dancing. The title of the film also stands out well by being central to the poster and having varying font sizes and widths to create a quirky feel. 

- This is brought out in our poster by making the title the central focus using a bright yellow font, although the typeface could have been slightly bolder. 

It is important to indicate who the cast and crew are on the poster as well as informing people on the film's date of release, and age certificate.

- We have included institutional information such as our distribution company 'Arch Pictures' along with details of cast and crew in the small print towards the bottom of the poster as it's not particularly interesting for our potential audience, but still important to credit the important people and institutions involved.

- The small print on the 'Kings of Summer' poster is also placed towards the bottom, and the release date stands out in orange type which is the same as the title. 

 - We have also used this idea by keeping the title and release date in yellow as these are the most important aspects of the poster for our audience because we want them to remember these details.

A tagline is used on a movie poster to give some extra information on the narrative. They are usually short and catchy and sometimes play on words. 

- The tagline for 'Eagle vs Shark' is split into two lines; one above the title 'There's someone for everyone...apparently' and one below, 'Luckily, love is blind'. This works well because along with the title and main image of the two 'quirky' characters, the audience recognise that this is a comedy and are therefore given a hint as to what to expect in the film.

- Our tagline is different because we use just the one, short line but I think we have developed the formal convention of the tagline by having the line lead straight on from the title, 'We Will Shine - When all else fades...'. Most taglines do more to hint at the narrative but our tagline doesn't reveal a lot which should make the audience more intrigued and likely to see the film.

Generic Conventions

As we decided to create an indie comedy-drama film, we thought our poster should be quite minimalistic.

- The image of the sun shining through the hand is also a shot you see in the trailer and represents our protagonist reaching out for help but also seeing the light and finding her inner peace. The image is quite abstract in this sense which suits the indie genre and the themes we would have put across in the film. However, our unique selling point was to portray original, quirky characters but the poster does not establish the characters at all.

- The poster for 'We Are the Best!' is an example of what we initially thought we would include on our poster; our three main characters. This poster clearly shows that the film is based around these three girls which is what we intended to show across all of our products, but we have instead focused on individual aspects of the film within each of our products. This is one way we have challenged the conventions of a poster by using such an abstract image to express the indie nature of the film, rather than the actual narrative.

Typography is an important aspect across all of our products as it helps achieve our film's unique identity.

- We used the font-style 'Aracne' from Dafont.com as it has a DIY, handwritten style which reflects our indie genre and our quirky characters.

- The 'Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist' poster also uses a handmade font to create an indie look. 

If a film is nominated for an award then it must mean the film is well-received, therefore people will be more likely to see it. 

- Our film poster features the 'Sundance Film Festival Award' which not only suggests the film is well-received, but also shows that the film has been recognised by an important independent film festival that our audience is likely to be aware of, making them even more likely to want to see the film. 

- As someone who has an interest in indie film, the fact that the poster for 'God Help the Girl' says 'Winner' of a certain category within the Sundance Awards makes me want to see the film more.

We decided not to clearly show cast names on our poster (as seen in the previous two posters above) because our actors wouldn't have been well-known. 

- We thought instead we would associate the film with the director which is similar to the 'Submarine' poster where the film is defined as 'A Richard Ayoade film'. This is shown towards the bottom of the poster but stands out against the background and small print in a slightly bigger, yellow font.

- However, our poster doesn't make the director prominent enough and has the same font size as the rest of the cast and crew. It would have been better to increase the font size and style/colour to establish the director more.