(Part 1) In what ways does your media products use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 Poster

This is my film poster I believe I have successfully used conventions from other movie posters of a similar genre, my most noticeable inspirations being the poster for I Am Legend and 28 Days Later. But while it's clear I have followed the conventions of these two posters, I have been able to be creative and I have challenged forms.

These are the two posters I have taken most inspiration from, I will refer to these as I talk about the conventions of my poster.

Conventions

• It's clear to see when comparing my poster to these two that I have gone with the idea of the hero alone in the centre of the poster. The image of the hero walking down the empty road shows that he is on a journey and it's something I wanted to include in my poster.
• I liked the idea of having the title along the bottom like the I Am Legend poster, this way while it can be scene it takes no attention away from the image of the character on the poster.
• I decided to go for this colour scheme because I believe it looks good on the poster, while it's not the same as the I Am Legend poster I stayed with the similar style but while I Am Legend used brown and beige. I used red and black, more like the 28 Days Later poster.
• I followed conventions with the colour scheme, it's common for horror posters to be dark colours, I used red and black. 

Challenge

• There is much more mystery around the setting on my poster it's now clear to see where it's set and it's just a road, however you can see that 28 days later is set in London because of Big Ben and Brooklyn Bridge shows that I Am Legend is set in New York.
• Suspense is what I tried to aim for even on the poster and I think I achieved this with the films tag line.
• While you can tell that my poster is a horror it's not quite so easy to see what kind of horror it will be, where as 28 Days Later and I Am Legend are both very clear with their taglines.

Magazine

This is my magazine cover, I think this is the product I pushed conventions the furthest with, but I did take inspiration from other special edition covers and regular magazine covers. The Total Film Superman special was an inspiration as was the layout of a regular Empire magazine.

Conventions

• The name of the magazine is at the top and the stories are at the bottom, these are simple conventions and I have used them to keep it recognisable as a magazine.
• I have created a barcode to be on the front of my magazine, I have also included the date on the magazine since these are necessary.
• I left the sizes of things the way they should be, I stretched the name across the width of the top of the page.
• The font of the magazine title was inspired by the font of Empire magazine, I tried to find something similar.
• I still included stories on the front of my magazine, I decided to this this because of the Total Film magazine, I didn't want the whole magazine to be dominated by my film, I still kept them zombie related to tie in with the special zombie edition.

Challenge

• I have dedicated the whole of my cover to zombie films and made the whole thing look like a bio hazard danger sign.
• The yellow and black colour scheme are unconventional.
• The photographs I used have also challenged conventions, the main character is not looking directly at the camera neither is he the main subject on the magazine. I did this because I wanted him to stay a mystery and feature is as much a zombie edition.
• I left a lot of space on my magazine, I did this because I wanted to recreate a bio-hazard sign and I didn't want anything to take away from the effect I was trying to create.
• The title of the film sits within a black box, the title of the film being featured sits second to the WARNING just above it, this is so that it doesn't break the allusion of the bio-hazard poster.