Genre: The type of theme that is set for a play/film/music. For example, genre's for films would be horror, romance, western, sci-fi, action etc.
Here is an example of a Western film.Media Codes: A technical element to create a certain effect to the audience, for example in horror they would want to create fear as an effect for the audience.
A clown, because clowns are often in scary films and create fear for the audience.Convention: Something the audience are expecting to happen in a certain genre of film, for example in a romantic comedy, the audience could expect to see a couple finding love.
This picture is an example of a couple finding love from the film Titanic, which the audience expected to see.Conventions In Films
In a western film, the conventions are:
- Cowboys - Horses
- Hats - Soundtrack Music
- Guns - Waist Coats
- Red Indians - Close Up shots on eyes and fingers
- Bar Fights - Card Games
- Smoking Cigars - Piano playing
In a adventure film, the conventions are:
- Spy's - Chasing scenes
- Good and evil characters - Sting (music to show important characters)
- Black suits - Leader/Sidekick characters
- Low point/High point - Exotic locations to film in
- Themesongs and soundtracks
In a Sci-Fi film, the conventions are:
- Aliens - Lasors
- Spaceship - Rocks
- Darkness - UFO's
- Computer Generated Images - Astronauts
- Imagenary - Paranormal
- Robots - Start treck
- Longshots showing around space - Subtitles
- Sound effects - Cross cutting
- Slow Motion - Dark and leathery clothing.
An example of an action film An example of a sci-fi film
Your material is fairly well presented with some good use of graphics to identify genres in an engaging visual way. As a development here, you could now try to employ an online media tool such as Prezi to present an objective of this kind. This would allow you to annotate graphics and integrate video in your analysis.
ReplyDeleteYour paraphrasing of what is meant by the media specific term “convention” is reasonably good, and you successfully list a number of conventions from each of the three genres you’ve chosen to explore, western, adventure and sci-fi.
You could extend your definition of the key phrasal term “media code”. You do not explore technical codes at work. This is an area for development. Anchor yourself with a specific moving image extract and explore how technical elements such as CAMERA, SOUND, MISE-EN-SCÈNE, EDITING or SPECIAL EFFECTS (which may also be conventions of the genre) are used to: communicate with / manipulate / engage the audience; and lead the audience to understand / think / feel / expect certain things.
Satisfactory and good in parts. D--