MAGAZINES FRONT COVER CONVENTIONS

This is also a promotional way and through this the audience is attracted to the film. The magazine cover should also be eye-catching and attractive like a film poster. This front cover has a big title of the magazine name which informs the audience. To make the front cover noticeable the pictures of the famous actors are used and all the colors and graphics are there to make the magazine theme evident. The main character of the film is on the cover and the title of the film is also with big fonts and attractive colors. Magazine front covers also have the list on the side of all the articles inside the magazine. Price of the magazine and barcodes are also given on the side of the cover.

FILM POSTER CONVENTIONS

Film poster is a way of promoting a film and it attracts the audience towards the film. In order to do so the poster should be firstly eye-catching.  To make it an eye-catching one trick which is useful in the cases of big films is to put up the picture of the well known main actor in the film on the poster. Apart from that a poster has a big film title with a tag line in some cases which delivers the hints of the theme of the film. In these posters the names of the characters are also displayed sometimes and some information regarding the release dates are given as well to make sure the audience is well-informed about the film. On these posters the name of the director is given along with the production house and all other credits. There are some films that have age restrictions and so the age restrictions are also listed in these sort of films. Mainly the motive of a poster is to attract and inform the target audience about the product. The type of font, color and designing is used depends on the theme of the film and a poster gives many hints to the audience about the film and characters in it so that they are well informed and come with a prepared mind set to watch that film and enjoys it. Posters have all these conventions which makes it eye-catching and attractive for the audience but as every film is different piece of art and appeals to different audiences so all of the conventions are not fixed and can be adjusted along with add-ons to the attractiveness of the poster with innovative and creative ideas.

SHORT FILM CONVENTIONS

Short film is called a ‘short’ because firstly its duration is normally 5-10 minutes and maximum 35 minutes. If it exceeds this duration so it’s no more considered to be short film but a feature length film. Apart from that these short films are low budgeted reason being that the people making these films are not the big-shots of the industry. We can also say that short films are experimental form of art where fresh film makers polish their skills and display their work at different film festivals. In these short films as the time and budget is limited so the story lines or the concepts are really simple. Furthermore, when the story line is simple so it must have a spark in it to attract the audience and that spark is called the twist. The twist is a problem which enters in a simple situation and that problem can be between characters, problem with the characters in sight or problem with the surrounding. But eventually that problem resolves and comes to a new solution or ‘new equilibrium’ as termed by the media theorist Todorov. These short films sometimes have an ending without a conclusion or solution to the issue, this is because the motive of some short films is just to make people think about little issues of the society. Short films are a beautiful world of art in which an artist can play with all the signs and elements of sound, editing, mise-en-scene and camera without even making his characters speak a word. These were some conventions of short films which I observed and I believe that any form of art have infinite conventions and same goes for the art of short films as Elbert Hubbard said “Art is not a thing; it’s a way.” 

Industry Reasearch

Whenever I think of selecting a film industry for my film project, I don’t know why but Bollywood is the only industry comes in my mind. Maybe this is because the culture of my country Pakistan and India is similar to an extent. But what I believe is that an artist has a creative thinking process by which he/she makes decisions and as an artist my thinking allows me to do my project with all the belongings of Bollywood in it and no other industry. Apart from that in my AS level I selected Bollywood for my portfolio project although at that time my way of thinking was not the same but all the research I did will definitely help me in this year. So here goes all the research I did in my previous year related to the rapidly growing film industry Bollywood.

BOLLYWOOD

The name Bollywood is made from two word Bombay and Hollywood. The golden age for this Hindi film industry started in 2000s. Throughout this age the industry improved in almost all the fields such as cinematography, story lines and also in technological advancement like animation and after effects. There are two secrets of the success of this industry that is the diversification of its target audience geographically and also in terms of demographics. If we talk about present time so the films which are made in this industry are divided in two main audience group which includes rural areas people and urban areas people and this group also have abroad audiences.

Bollywood is influenced by number of things around it. Firstly some stories are influenced by their ancient stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. Secondly the influence of Sanskrit dramas including the rasa culture is also common. Ramlila in Uttar Pradesh which is a folk theater is a strong influence. Humor, music and stagecraft of Parsi theater were a great influence also which we can see in Bollywood films. Last but not the least the Bollywood films in 2000s and after that were with great influence from western music television MTV which was visibly evident in the music, dance and camera work of these films. It is not only Bollywood which is influenced but at some points Hollywood is also being influenced by Bollywood especially the music and some concepts such as reincarnation.

GENRE CONVENTIONS

In Bollywood the films with most promising success are called as Masala films and this is a film that has a mixture of all genres like action, comedy, Romance and so on and so forth. The films in Bollywood should have a mandatory song which is an item number or dance number which is appreciated by the local audience and to satisfy them and attract the locals it is essential to put these. Although today on the path Bollywood is walking on is towards a change which includes art films also who normally targets the international market which Bollywood have and the Urban areas public and are also becoming successful but in these films also the concepts and conventions of typical Bollywood exists and will always exist in the coming years too no matter how much modernization and globalization influences it.

FINANCE

From 1990s Bollywood started to flourish at a great pace and if we see in the present time so it has great institutions with massive improvements in their budget and money making has increased a lot with time. Previously and still nowadays Bollywood films get a tough competition with Hollywood films coming in the audience and this competition demands great improvement in action and animation from the industry to cope up with this tough competition. The industry has improved a lot throughout the years in science fiction and other genres as well with films made all around the world in different diversified abroad locations which have given a lot more attraction in the films. The markets have also gone abroad and now Bollywood has been recognized around the globe and migration of Indians around the world could be a reason for this overseas markets but the improvement in professional skills, techniques and quality of recent productions cannot be ignored.      

  

DISTRIBUTION HOUSES

Eros is big huge distributing house although it does not belong to the history from its background. But nowadays Eros is making and distributing films of almost all the genres which include art films, romantic films, science-fiction, comedy and many more. It also recently launched the Pakistani film BOL in India and internationally which gives a hint of the diversification of Eros.

Yash raj films is always been known as the biggest and the oldest production and distribution house made by Yash Chopra who had great name and fame in Bollywood because of his contributions. The genre which is normally linked to the productions of this house is romance and love stories which gives us the hint of its audience demographics that mainly they target the youths and uses many different techniques to do so. As it is a big house so it is not at all restricted to Romance genre and have made films of other genres as well but the fact is that the proportion of romance genre and love stories is more than any other in the history of this house.

This house is of Karan Johar the son of Yash johar. He was also tagged as a film maker of films with romance genre but after hits like Dostana, Wake-up Sid and Kurbaan this tag has been removed. Now Dharma is also considered as one of the diversified production and distribution house in Bollywood making huge amounts of money on box office.

This one is also a wide, huge and diversified institute making films like THANKYOU which belongs to comedy genre and films like Dhobi ghat which is an art film. This house makes small budget films also giving chance to new artists but is also involve in large productions with experience they also make hit films and carry out the thought of Indian audience of money’s worth films.

BOLLYWOOD AND SHORT FILMS

Bollywood is now moving towards short films and some of the biggies of the industry are also supporting this form of art here’s what Anurag had to say: “Short films are more interesting than a feature film according to me because, now- a- days it gets connected to you very easily. You can even watch them on your phone, youtube, laptop in your daily chores”. However shorts also has a little history in Bollywood and 73 known shorts are made which includes documentary shorts, musical shorts, animation shorts and short films as well. These shorts are of different genres, started from 1990s to date.

Sources: http://www.mspocr.blogspot.com/2011/10/institution-20th-century-fox.html
              http://bollywood.raftaar.in/Movies/Genres/Short/1 

       

PROPOSAL

“To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.” Schumann. This year in my A2 portfolio for the media studies I need to make a short film, poster and magazine page. The summer vacation period was my brain storming period and after all the thinking and observation now I have decided to make a short film which is somehow related to the social problems of my society/underdeveloped part of the world. I have short listed a social problem on which I will research and then I will make a short film according to the guidance of my teacher, my abilities and available resources.

Here goes the theme which I thought of during my vacations is about the education system available for the underprivileged world. I say the underprivileged world and not underdeveloped world, because according to my observations in these underdeveloped nations there are some masses that are privileged to study in a foreign education system with a good standard in terms of environment, teachers, course outline and others. But most of the masses are underprivileged and don’t have access to these things. Firstly, I will be showing the nature/psychology of these small kids who are full of imagination and creative thinking, but their talent dies as the time passes with their strict teachers, economic problems and social pressures. Those students who are underprivileged have many demotivated through many factors and one of them is the type of teachers available to teach them in the local system. There is this representation in these societies that the teachers in such schools are harsh and beats up their students on every single thing they do without finding out the reasons. But my film would first build up the character of the teacher according to the existing representation of these teachers and will eventually change this “re-presentation” into a presentation. I will show that these teachers are not actually harsh and as they usually justify them when I interviewed some of them that it’s just they don’t have any idea of the student’s background, reason being the over populated classes. Apart from this the environment around the teachers and students make them psychologically disturbed because of the insecurity and social and economic needs not being fulfilled. This psychological disturbance leads students to a careless behavior which eventually makes the teacher behave harsh with them. Furthermore, these small kids are full of imagination and creative thinking, but their talent dies as the time passes with this sort of harsh environment. I won’t be giving any conclusions/solutions to this problem in the film, but will surely correct the miss-representation on the side of government teachers as well as of the students.