Conventions Essay
In your experience, how has your understanding of real conventions developed through creating your productions?
Throughout both Year 12 and Year 13, we have been given projects which have allowed us to both delve into and challenge particular conventions of the genres and characters we have been working with. This involved sticking to some theories about how scenes, people and shots should look, but then being more creative and original and ignoring the rules in some situations.
The first opportunity I had to greater understand conventions was in Year 12. Myself and two other classmates created a film opening, titled "Panophobia". Our genre for this film opening was teen drama, although we mixed in some elements of a thriller. This was the first time we had heard about and started to use conventions in our media work, and it enabled us to create a fully-rounded teen drama, as we mostly stuck to the typical conventions of the genre.
For example, our characters were all young, which allowed them to be relatable to our target audience - as they were also played by my classmates and I, this gave a very natural and everyday feel to them, as we all had our different styles and were able to correctly portray three normal girls at high school.
We even filmed around school which added to this.
Additionally, our characters are shown being casual and having fun with eachother at a bowling alley and arcade, which is a very typical setting for teenagers to be shown in.
While our characters and settings remained very true to conventions of a typical teen film, the drama element was somewhat more sophisticated, with the plot of one of the girls going missing, and it being hinted that it is her supposed friends fault. She is shown setting fire to photos of the three of them in an unknown, dark location, watching their video plea for her to come home.
While this does indeed fit into the typical conventions of a drama, it pushes slightly over into the thriller category and adds enigma to the entire production. The audience is forced to question where she is, why she's ran away and why it could be the fault of her friends.
Our Year 13 music video production lead to me pushing more at the boundaries of the conventions for our genre - my group used an indie-rock song, a genre which is predominantly headlined by male bands and artists, however we chose a song by the female-fronted band, Black Honey. This was both due to the fact that myself and my other group member were eager to play the characters in the video, in order to have them portrayed exactly the way we envisioned, and also to showcase strong female roles in the video.
Music videos for indie-rock bands can be extremely conceptual, while others heavily feature live-performance as the main narrative. I decided I wanted to combine these, and go against conventions of using just one trope for the video.
The video we created ended up being a mixture of concept and performance, with myself being the main performer - I deliberately created a character who was equally feminine and aggressive in order to portray a strong and empowering female lead, who went against the typical conventions of a female singer. Wearing bold makeup, dark clothes, glitter and using confrontational body language enabled me to reject stereotypical conventions and instead create my own idea of what a female lead should look and act like.
In terms of the video's aesthetic, we also challenged conventions of a typical indie video - many include black and white as the colour scheme, or dully coloured locations imagery. We went against this entire concept, using bright red, pink and glitter as our iconic colours, and enhancing the contrast of particular shots in order to make them appear more brightly coloured.
Additionally, we decided to use a coloured kaleidoscope for some of the shots, in order to give it the trippy, wacky look we wanted. This was used in the very first shot, and set the tone for the rest of the video, allowing the audience to see that our video would be more bold and colourful than the typical indie-rock video.
Whilst I learnt to better understand and use conventions to my advantage throughout Year 12, I did not feel confident enough to challenge them and create my own original ideas of how my productions should look. Through gaining experience and trying new methods of camerawork, editing and set design in Year 13, I was able to properly challenge the conventions of the music video genre we were working with, and created my own ideas from scratch. I now feel extremely confident in both working with conventions and going against them, in order to make something bold and original.
Throughout both Year 12 and Year 13, we have been given projects which have allowed us to both delve into and challenge particular conventions of the genres and characters we have been working with. This involved sticking to some theories about how scenes, people and shots should look, but then being more creative and original and ignoring the rules in some situations.
The first opportunity I had to greater understand conventions was in Year 12. Myself and two other classmates created a film opening, titled "Panophobia". Our genre for this film opening was teen drama, although we mixed in some elements of a thriller. This was the first time we had heard about and started to use conventions in our media work, and it enabled us to create a fully-rounded teen drama, as we mostly stuck to the typical conventions of the genre.
For example, our characters were all young, which allowed them to be relatable to our target audience - as they were also played by my classmates and I, this gave a very natural and everyday feel to them, as we all had our different styles and were able to correctly portray three normal girls at high school.
We even filmed around school which added to this.
Additionally, our characters are shown being casual and having fun with eachother at a bowling alley and arcade, which is a very typical setting for teenagers to be shown in.
While our characters and settings remained very true to conventions of a typical teen film, the drama element was somewhat more sophisticated, with the plot of one of the girls going missing, and it being hinted that it is her supposed friends fault. She is shown setting fire to photos of the three of them in an unknown, dark location, watching their video plea for her to come home.
While this does indeed fit into the typical conventions of a drama, it pushes slightly over into the thriller category and adds enigma to the entire production. The audience is forced to question where she is, why she's ran away and why it could be the fault of her friends.
Our Year 13 music video production lead to me pushing more at the boundaries of the conventions for our genre - my group used an indie-rock song, a genre which is predominantly headlined by male bands and artists, however we chose a song by the female-fronted band, Black Honey. This was both due to the fact that myself and my other group member were eager to play the characters in the video, in order to have them portrayed exactly the way we envisioned, and also to showcase strong female roles in the video.
Music videos for indie-rock bands can be extremely conceptual, while others heavily feature live-performance as the main narrative. I decided I wanted to combine these, and go against conventions of using just one trope for the video.
The video we created ended up being a mixture of concept and performance, with myself being the main performer - I deliberately created a character who was equally feminine and aggressive in order to portray a strong and empowering female lead, who went against the typical conventions of a female singer. Wearing bold makeup, dark clothes, glitter and using confrontational body language enabled me to reject stereotypical conventions and instead create my own idea of what a female lead should look and act like.
In terms of the video's aesthetic, we also challenged conventions of a typical indie video - many include black and white as the colour scheme, or dully coloured locations imagery. We went against this entire concept, using bright red, pink and glitter as our iconic colours, and enhancing the contrast of particular shots in order to make them appear more brightly coloured.
Additionally, we decided to use a coloured kaleidoscope for some of the shots, in order to give it the trippy, wacky look we wanted. This was used in the very first shot, and set the tone for the rest of the video, allowing the audience to see that our video would be more bold and colourful than the typical indie-rock video.
Whilst I learnt to better understand and use conventions to my advantage throughout Year 12, I did not feel confident enough to challenge them and create my own original ideas of how my productions should look. Through gaining experience and trying new methods of camerawork, editing and set design in Year 13, I was able to properly challenge the conventions of the music video genre we were working with, and created my own ideas from scratch. I now feel extremely confident in both working with conventions and going against them, in order to make something bold and original.
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