Essay on research & planning

At the start of my media year, I had little to no idea on how to start creating my first project, which was a college magazine. Although I've had experience with cameras being a part of the 'selfie generation', I did not have much experience with advanced software such as Indesign and Photoshop, making editing my magazine more difficult. Because of this I had used very little conventions, therefore making my magazine unrecognisable as a college magazine, and this was majorly based on the fact that I had not done any research and planning on existing magazines, so my textual analysis was non-existent. I didn't have understanding of the typical layouts for my type of magazine, meaning that my magazine did not look like any other magazine that was out there, making my magazine unrecognisable for its genre. 

Moving onto my music magazine, I had developed my research and planning, learning from my previous mistakes, by looking at existing music magazines, specifically for my genre, which is hip-hop. Upon looking at dozens of hip-hop magazines, I started to notice the similarities between them, and that made me realise that all music magazine genres all follow different rules of conventions, in order to make the genre recognisable to the desired audience. Taking this into consideration, I had started to follow the typical conventions shown in hip-hop magazines, such as the colour scheme, placing the masthead at the top, the type of shot that it used for the dominant image, which is a mid-shot most of the time, in order to show off the mise-en-scene of the artist/s on the page, which is done in hip-hop magazines to show off the wealthy aspects such as the jewellery, and designer clothing. Upon including all of these conventions in my magazine, I started noticing how recognisable my magazine has become as a hip-hop magazine, and this was down to the fact that I had looked at magazines beforehand.

Moving onto my summer trailer, I had created a summer trailer without closely analysing existing trailers, and again, my trailer did not include the conventions it needed in order to be a 'scary horror trailer'. It was not set in a secluded place, like most horror films are, the protagonist was not scary-looking enough, and low-key lighting was not existent. However, when it came to making my A2 trailer, I had looked at many horror trailers, especially trailers that fit into the sub-genre of my horor, which is a psychological horror. For research, I looked at psychological horrors such as Get Out, and Shutter Island. I had noticed that with psychological horror films, the main conventions and themes are isolation, the feeling of being trapped, and the release of the enemy within. Because these conventions were shown in these films, I included them in my trailer to make my trailer recognisable to the audience as a psychological horror. I also included things that are always apparent in every horror film, the antagonist, protagonist, the secluded house in the middle of nowhere, the low-key lighting, etc.