Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our radio drama 'Under the Mushroom Cloud' uses many conventions and theories. It uses conventions such as emotional music, extravagent sound effects and specific things such as 'fake radio broadcasts' with inspiration taken from radio dramas such as War of the Worlds. We also used accents in our dialogue which conformed with general radio codes and conventions, for example Nick's scottish accent reflects his personality and can be more memorable for the audience. Using accents can also show diversity between characters on the radio when visuals are not produced. We also had a very strong narrative and created lots of tension with our action filled plot which again is another narrative convention. We also conformed to many theorists in our radio drama such as Propp, we used many of the various characters Vladimir Propp stated that should be in a drama, such as the hero and the villain.

However we also challenged codes and conventions by including a twist, this completely took apart the theory of the equilibrium by Todorov as we have an 'agent of disruption', however he won and owned the rest of the narrative, therefore we didn't use the classic 'hollywood' narrative and have a happy ending and a new equilibrium. We also didn't include scene changes which is another convention, we felt this distracted from the actual radio drama itself.

As I did extensive research into real media products which were similar to ours, I managed to conform and challenge and learn the codes and conventions for all the tasks such as the radio drama, poster and newspaper article. Because of this, I feel that I was able to create the tasks of that to a higher level and to a near proffessional level as I had a basis to work on.

My poster and double page spread take many conventions of real media products such as titles, photography and colour schemes. I took many influences and inspirations from real media products such as NME and radio covers for CDs. I also looked in newspapers and magazines at feature film adverts to get some knowledge on layout and how to make a magazine advert or article look professional and sophisticated.

Overall, I feel that my products used and developed conventions of real media products rather than challenge them. Although the conventions we did challenge, I feel they worked in an effective way and could make my products seem much more original and memorable for an audience.