Media Theorist - Fowler

Genre theorist Alastair Fowler (1989) stated that "an individual text within a genre rarely if ever has all of the characteristic features of genre". To an extent, our teaser trailer conforms to the conventions of our genre (social realism), for example the way in which the social struggles of underprivileged collective groups are told to an audience via individual stories. Fowler's recognition that media texts rarely display all characteristic features is one we felt crucial to creating a successful media product. Media products that follow rigid characteristics and conventions are often dull and childlike, manifesting in the form of fairytales or fantasy fiction. With a more complex social genre such as social realism, we felt that it was important we experimented with genre.

We did this through the following techniques:

1. used a lack of dialogue
2. used symbolism and experimental editing rather than naturalistic straight cut edits
3. used only one protagonist in the trailer to convey isolation - typically social realism texts portray a group of characters
4. subverted the stereotypes of the collective group being represented in our piece - although he showed signs of hyper-masculinity our character was fragile and vulnerable