Media consists of specific conventions that’ll help the audience identify what it is, this is why conventions are needed as it informs the audience what product they have or what they’re watching.

In the film industry the different sub genres and genres are there to be broken and reinvented, this allows more creativity to exist because the conventions will add difference, compared to other films which consist of the same repetitive things.

One of the first tasks in AS was the preliminary task where we were asked to create a college magazine, however I did not refer to any real media texts or examples of any other college magazines. Although I did have knowledge of a basic magazine structure like where the masthead would be positioned and other elements like, cover lines, straplines and the different kind of images (dominant image and a secondary image).

Last year, in AS, one of our assignments were to create a music magazine front cover, a contents page and a double page spread. However, I was not aware of the conventions of my chosen music genre (R&B), because of this, I was not able to produce a well enough magazine where it was obvious what my chosen genre was. Since I had a lack of knowledge for my chosen genre, my creativity was restricted. I used real media texts like VIBE magazine and XXL to take inspiration from which allowed me to create my final product.

The following summer was when we had a task of making a horror trailer only using our phones and editing apps we downloaded onto our phones. Before we started filming, we had watched a couple horror trailer which used for inspiration, our chosen horror trailer was Blair Witch (2016). However, we did not prepare thoroughly as we did not created any plan or storyboard, instead we just went to film random parts where we could piece them all together in the end. Although, we did follow the conventions of a horror as we included lots of blood in the trailer as well as a final girl and appropriate attire for the character. We took inspiration from the documentary type filming structure where we filmed mostly with a POV shot. We did not include an antagonist which breaks the conventions of a horror trailer, making it a lower graded trailer compare to the trailer we are working on now.

In our last year, we are now producing our final trailer where we thoroughly researched and planned ahead which allowed more creativity and structure for our trailer. We changed the sub-genre to Slasher as we wanted to take inspiration from the films ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Scream’, two of the most iconic Slasher films ever made. We included both the antagonist and the final girl, making it apparent what their roles are in the trailer/film. We used high and low angles to show who has more power over who which emphasises patriarchy. For the make-up in our trailer, we referred to iconic slasher films in our trailer, like Friday the 13^th and Texas Chainsaw which revolves round the excessive use of gore and blood.

Essentially, it is prominent that my knowledge of what horror conventions are supposed to do and how to create a successful product has improved as my research and planning now consists of referring to real media texts whereas in AS, no real media texts were referred to, lowering our initial grade for AS. Nevertheless, in A2, my research for other slasher films and the semiotics in a slasher film allowed me to find that the conventions are present to help an audience have more understanding of a film.