essay

“Sometimes, working within constraints produces the most interesting work” (Branston and Strafford)
How have you used real media conventions to produce interesting or effective coursework productions?

The quote suggests that during the foundation portfolio and advanced portfolio units my work was able to be more interesting due to the constraints I was given such as the real media conventions for Thriller Openings and Music Videos.
Some examples of conventions for the foundation project were; extraordinary events within ordinary locations, hidden identity, the villain is often a powerful man, and typically being centred on a crime. Examples of 4 conventions for the advanced portfolio project were; fast cut montage, lyrics matching visuals, voyeurism and bright/colourful elements.

It is clear in the foundation project that ‘working within constrainsts produces the most interesting work’, as I chose to adhere to many of the conventions, such as extraordinary events within ordinary locations; this was because it was easier for us to access ordinary locations, and we were able to convey extraordinary events through the editing stages. We also chose to follow the convention of hidden identities; the villains face in our thriller opening is obscured. We thought hiding the identity would cause enigma for audiences, fulfilling another thriller convention. Our thriller opening vaguley followed the convention of being centred on a crime, as our thriller was centred on the abduction of a child, however, we focused more on the psychological side as we were attempting to follow the sub-genre conventions of a psychological dramatic thriller. The thriller convention we chose to challenge was the role of the villain being a powerful man; our thriller opening portrayed the villain to be a powerful woman, signified by her black clothing and red hair.

In the advanced portfolio project I would also agree that ‘real media conventions’ of pop music videos enabled me to ‘produce interesting or effective’ work, as again, I chose to adhere to most of the conventions. A convention I followed was using fast cut montage, as it fit our genre, electro-pop, very well, and suited the fast paced beat of the song we had chosen. We also conformed to the convention of lyrics matching visuals; this is present in many music videos of our genre, and we felt it fit the song and lyrics well. We also adhered to the convention of using voyeurism in both senses of the word; the artist is seen to look into the camera lens, through a camera and look in various mirrors, and the artist was also dressed provocatively with heavy makeup and close ups of legs/lips/eyes. We felt this was important as many female pop artists adhere to this particular convention. We also adhered to the convention of using bright/colourful elements through use of costume, props, setting and lyrics on the screen because we felt it suited the upbeat feel of our song and fit our genre well.


For my foundation production I believe adhering to the most of the ‘constraints’ made my thriller opening more convincing and effective; without typical thriller conventions in the opening, audiences wouldn’t be aware the film was a thriller. However, I think by slightly challenging the power roles, it made our thriller opening more interesting as it would stand out more compared to typical villain characters; so ‘constraints’ will not always necessarily produce ‘the most interesting work’ in this case. However, for my advanced production I think adhering to all the conventions of pop music video did aid us to produce more ‘interesting work’, as our ideas and inspiration were directed by the constraints we were given, allowing us to be more creative. Especially as our song was within the pop genre, we felt it was important to conform to the conventions as it would be more believable and we felt the video would have a better outcome by following the conventions. I still believe this shows improvement though because we were able to assess our objective and apply the necessary conventions, whereas the year before we perhaps didn’t do this so much.

Although we didn’t challenge any conventions in the second year but did in the first, we still greatly progressed as our knowledge increased allowing us to understand and use more of the conventions than we could have before; some of the typical conventions of thrillers we didn’t chose to challenge, we simply didn’t understand them or know how to apply such an effect. For example, we didn’t follow the convention of a ‘dark, shadowy atmosphere’ as we didn’t know how to darken the scene without impairing the quality of the footage; we didn’t know that the raw footage could be changed during the editing stages to darken a particular scene. We also didn’t follow the convention that ‘female characters in thrillers are often objectified through a series of gazes’ as we didn’t understand what this meant. However, in the advanced portfolio production, our knowledge and understanding of both terminology and the iMac computers had improved, so our developed skills allowed us to be able to follow more conventions. The difference between the first and second year was that in the second year we knew how to challenge the conventions but chose not to as this didn’t fit our genre, whereas in the first year our work was limited to challenging or adhering to conventions due to our little knowledge and understanding of the conventions or how to create them.

It can be said that we thought more carefully during the second year about which conventions to follow and which to ignore as we followed specific conventions for our genre; electro-pop. We chose to ignore more general conventions such as having a ‘performance based music video’ or ‘close ups of instruments’ as we were aware these were conventions not suited to our genre. Instead of researching general conventions, we only followed conventions suited to our specific genre, which enabled our music video to be more realistic. This was not particularly the case when creating the foundation production, as although we were aware there were different sub-genres within thrillers, we were unsure of how to research the individual conventions and which sub-genre we should follow. We attempted to create a psychological thriller opening in which the conflict between characters is mental and emotional rather than physical, shown through our use of flashbacks, however, I feel had we researched and followed more conventions of this sub-genre we could have had a better outcome. This indicates had we worked ‘within constraints’ of ‘real media conventions’, we may have been able to produce more ‘effective’ work.

By following genre specific conventions for my advanced portfolio this made my music video more effective as it made it clear to audiences which genre my artist was; if I had followed different conventions this would have been confusing as the song I chose is very clearly an electro-pop song, and challenging conventions of this genre would be unusual as it is a mainstream genre. This is why we chose not to challenge conventions in our advanced production; it would have made for an unconvincing music video which was not our aim- we wanted a music video that was effective and looked realistic. Had we chosen a song from another genre, such as ‘indie’ for example, we could have been more experimental and taken more risks with challenging conventions as this is more of a niche sub-genre, and is typical for this genre not to conform; however we wanted a song that we could enjoy and feel able to follow genre conventions accordingly to create the best most effective possible outcome. The statement therefore proves correct for our second year, that ‘working within constraints produces the most interesting work’.