EXAM Q1a - Use Of Conventions

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USE OF CONVENTIONS

• Our Media teacher said we would have to stay more within the conventions with our AS coursework, we have less CREATIVE FREEDOM than in A2
• Although I first thought that the loss of originality would be bad, but I actually realized it was necessary to help me in my first media production 

HOPES

• I hope 2 use conventions in order to be CREATIVE much more, but really give them my own stamp
• Really want to be countertypical again, this time I need 2 be even more aware of the conventions if I want to stay away from them 

USEFUL LINKS:

• ProdEval advice, the rest is from the same blog.
• Characteristics of a Music Video; (bite-sized chunks of theory!)
• Web 2.0 + Fan-made vids: Applying YOUR work; (any Q1a answer should cite web 2.0)
• PoMo by louderthanwar blog; (accessible guide to this very key concept)
• POMO Slasher sitcom Holliston @ FearNet.com;
• POMO/NARRATIVE: HI v POP Cul: Austen v TOWIE!; (neat comparison of TOWIE + Jane Austen)
• Creativity + MANGeR: Everything is a Remix?; you can't avoid the issue of whether there's any possibility today of originality
• POMO/CREATIVITY: Warhol's impact and vision; (not JUST about his visual style: his groundbreaking use of looooong takes; prediction of today's we-media [everyone will have their 15 mins of fame]; pertinent to working within a group, his concept of factory production by a team but bearing one artist's [auteur...] name)
• CREATIVITY: Tyranny of Genre; (snippet: 'The phrase "tyranny of genre" comes from genre theorist Richard Coe, who wrote that "the 'tyranny of genre' is normally taken to signify how generic structures constrain individual creativity"')
• Does slow pace = boring?; (pace was an issue for you all at AS and A2, linked to aud feedback + genre conventions: are you virtually forced to surrender to market/audience/genre demands for fast pace?)
• Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film; feminist Carole 'final girl' Clover's 1987 journal article
• Final Girl: Carole Clover and critiques; 
• Creativity sans la femme + Bechdel Test; feminist Bechdel flags up the tawdry way women are used in film, but also consider the wider lack of women in prominent positions: were you influenced by any female directors, for example, of film/video? Feminism is a theory you should address for this topic. To what extent are the conventions you've used sourced from male practitioners? Sexist? Or does post-feminist thinking end such debates?
• Cultural Imperialism; this was tied to a previous exam topic but can still be used to explore how Britishness is subsumed by dominant American tropes - or even how S.Eng rep'ns overwhelmingly dominate UK media output; are your text/s normative or perhaps counter-hegemonic (challenging these normative representations, challenging whats seen as common sense and above questioning?). Have you managed a distinctive UK/Northern/Yorkshire/Ilkley 'voice' or have you overwhelmingly followed patterns laid down by US + London producers?
• Coens on using Final Cut for Oscar-nommed True Grit;  
• Slideshow on media terms;
• The 'Britishness' of your work; rom-com eg but can be applied across the board. Are there distinctly UK conventions?
• Hammer horror; any aspect of your work in this classic British tradition? 
• British horror + budgets; bright future?;
• The false scare; common slasher narrative device, links into concepts of audience pleasure + genre theories   
• Researching recent genre egs + presenting this in vid; 
• Scream 4 + genre/METZ; the classic pomo slasher franchise + Metz's theory of genre cycles
• Peeping Tom 50yrs on; one of two British proto-slashers from 1960 that set out key aspects that Halloween would later reintroduce to a global audience, this one largely disappeared while Psycho was hailed as a huge influence, but today is rightly seen as a masterpiece, and has a sharp commentary on audience pleasures with the killing weapon actually mounted onto the camera itself, giving us an early example of the audience sharing the killer's POV
• Colin, the £45 film; this made it to the cinema despite being really rather poor, not least the lack of shot variety and excessively long takes - clever exploitation of marketing, not least online, helped the case and it continues to make decent money from DVD sales. Maybe worth contrasting your superior use of MLang
• Times Top 20 Villains; a poorly thought out list but nonetheless highlights the central narrative + marketing role of an identifiable killer, and the curious audience response (delighting in the killing and enjoying killers' quips [eg NoESt's Freddie Krueger]); did you attempt any intertextuality with existing killers?
• Audience Expectations in the ‘Slasher’ Formula; did you venture outside the typical expectations in any way?  
• Horror music copies animals?; use of music/soundtrack from AS is worth considering, and this helps