Question 1a: Using Conventions from Real Media Texts

You need to be fairly systematic in breaking down the forms and conventions of the media texts which you have created into easily manageable sections. We'll consider the video texts most of all rather than the ancillary print texts because the question asks about your skills development from Foundation to Advanced, and you simply didn't do any print work for Foundation so print doesn't apply.

Forms and Conventions are:

• Narrative
• Technical
• Representational

Narrative Forms and Conventions.
Think about your Foundation project first. What are the narrative conventions for the opening of a film? Every narrative will seek to establish an enigma right at the very start, to hook the audience's attention. Narrative and plot are very different from story, however. The story is the chronological sequence of events which happen to the character, whereas the narrative or plot means the order in which these events are shown to the audience. You may have chosen to open your film at the start of the story, when the events were at equilibrium, or stability; the calm before the storm. Alternatively, you may have opened your film somewhere towards the middle or end of the story, when events are at a disequilibrium (the problem or complication which the main character has to overcome), so that the rest of the film becomes a flashback. This is called opening the film 'in media res'.
Now consider your Advanced project. The narrative conventions of a teaser trailer are very different indeed. They mostly follow a straightforward linear progression of the story so that the audience has a brief idea of the main events. It will show the initial equilibrium, something about the disequilibrium or problem which the protagonist faces, and may even show glimpses of the film's final dramatic climax, but will not provide full closure - in other words, it won't show how the story ends or how the problem is solved. If it did, the enigma would be destroyed and nobody would want to watch the film.