EVALUATION ACTIVITY 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We created a urban drama teaser trailer with the aims to ensure we reflected this genre by the following use of typical codes and conventions: Gritty fast paced narrative, ccreativing tension and excitement, fast paced editing, the protagonist is male, suspense music used, start fairly slow, props e.g. cars to represent the age of boys, and show behaviour. To improve awareness of these codes and conventions we analysed urban drama teaser trailers: Shank, Kidulthood, 4.3.2.1 and also Green Street which is a slightly different genre.

Below is 9 screen grabs from our teaser trailer, edited together to show how I have used such conventions and codes of urban drama films to succeed in representing the particular genre.



The film title font has been put in a urban style, with all letters other than 'i' in capitals. This gives it a gritty look, conforming the the conventions of our genre.

The setting, location and atmosphere can be seen in the pictures, they all have a similar colour scheme which can be seen above in the screen grabs. The setting is generally at night time as well in order to match this colour scheme.

One way in which my teaser trailer uses conventions of real teaser trailers is by including the moving footage of media company logos that are designed to show which media companies have helped to produce the product. Most teaser trailers feature this with only a few exceptions. I think that including this feature gives my teaser trailer a sense of authenticity and professionalism. A secondary use that I found was useful for these small clips was that I could slow the pace of my teaser trailer towards the beginning by separating my filmed footage with the logos.


We chose to name our film Sub urban Nightmare, this portrays our storyline based around the struggle of an upbringing of teenagers, located on the outsides of London. We actually used the two local towns; leatherhead and ashtead to represent this, however through costume and camera techniques made an affluent area appear more rural then it was in reality. Choice of clothing came from insperation from films such as kidulthood and 4.3.2.1. Trackies, hoodies and baseball jackets being key feaatures, title font used was basic, we wanted it to be easily read and nothing to fancy, its a fairly down to earth; grass roots drama, so simplicity was our main objective. Characters are introduced by having shots of them out then freeze frames, use of editing to improve the effectiveness of teaser trailer.

Images of close up shots have been freeze framed in order to allow the audience to familerise themselves with the actor, this also matches the beat of the soundtrack.
Generally the camerawork was handheld in order to create a more realistic feel, which we thought to fit into the mood of the genre.

All of the titles and intertitles share the same font of poplar, however they all vary in size depending on importance and the amount of text needing to be shown in the shot. For example the film title is a big font in order to fill a large amount of the page whereas the summer 11 intertitle is smaller size.

This story isnt very clear through the viewing of the trailer, therefore there is a high sense of enigma. This is good as a large number of trailers use enigma as a technique of attracting their audience without letting out too much information on the plot.

The genre in British Urban Drama. This is suggested through the trailer through the setting in the club and in the cars. It is also set up by the costume and characters as they have a late teen stereotype which the target audience are intended to belong to.

The characters are introduced; starting in the club, a famous location for being an attraction for young people (the audience), on the side of a street, a commonly known place where the stereotyped characters and age group are known for being found
the final character is introduced in his car. A known interest of the target audiece as they are all beginning to learn and pass their driving tests. Special effects are used in a basic standard. An example from on of the screen grabs is the speeding up of the top left image.

Film Poster editing





Final piece

I took three different shots of max facing at different angles, I then used adobe illustrator to edit them all into one picture. The aim of this is to have a finalised picture with max in the shot three times. This helps add a slightly frightful and edgy feel to the poster.

Final piece Film poster

This is the poster I have personally choose to use as I believe the discomforting feeling it gives with the jumbled wording, yet simple layout is eye catching and effective. The picture i think is ideal as it shows an underground shot, yet scenes of a busy city in the background. This portrays our 'sub urban' theme perfectly. Here is a print screen of me editing on Adobe photo shop, I added the text in a jumbled order, in a vertical layout, to improve its chances of standing out. More editing shots..

Poster

Good composition

Black and White

Portrays sub urbs well