Codes and conventions are the familiar and predictable forms and techniques used by the media to communicate certain ideas or to convey a desired impression. Technical codes include camera angles, sound, and lighting. Symbolic codes include the language, dress, and actions of characters. Written codes include headlines, captions and language style.

Our media product is a short film, which has challenged codes and conventions as a short film is seen as unusual and not very common, although people may watch them they are too short to be in a cinema or on TV.

Codes and conventions normally involve the MIGRAIN model. This stands for the following:


Media Language: As the short film starts there shows close ups of all five characters walking, they are all wearing unusual clothing to show that they are different. They are wearing bright colours to convey that they stand out. The editing creates quick clips from each person to the next which shows something is about to happen.

Ideology: In making this short film as a group we have tried to emphasise the use of drugs in society mainly by teenagers and our film reflects this and sometimes bad things can happen if you are pressured into doing something you don’t want to. This is where we emphasized the fact that we gave each individual character their own choices and it turned out the one character was peer pressured, which is very common in society today.

Genre: We decided to make a short film as we felt it reflected our idea most. With a short film you can put a whole story into two and a half minutes which might impact on some people, depending who sees it.

Representation: Our representation is of teenagers as they reflect the use of drugs well, and we produced this in a forest which links to magic mushrooms and implies a certain sense of rebelism and peer pressure that is very common in our society. We have done certain individual representations of each character to show differences. We decided to do this as we felt it best suited our genre of film and what our film was based on.


Audience: Our short film is mainly aimed at the younger generation of people that range from 16-25. We decided to do this as the use of drugs is relevant to our age group. Our audience will be able to access this type of film through sites such as facebook or YouTube due to the fact that it won’t be published.

Institutions: We produced this short film for our Media A2 coursework. This project would be to reach a wider target audience on websites such as Facebook and Youtube. Other media developments influenced us to produce our short film programmes such as Hollyoaks and Films such as Shrooms. These types of media influenced us to make a short film about drugs as it reflects our society and what teenagers today are like.

Narrative: All narratives usually have a beginning, middle and an end. I am going to use the Todorov Theory to show this. The equilibrium at the beginning which shows the five teenagers exploring, drinking ect, the Dis-equilibrium where a conflict is introduced into the narrative this will be the magic mushrooms and the peer pressure on the character Amy. Then there is the new equilibrium where usually everything gets resolved whereas our short film does not reveal this.
What is needed in most films, trailers and short films?

Music - To nearly all of the films, music seemed to be a key part, whether it be an action or romantic by gradually making music faster and louder. In horrors, the music dips from being very fast to very slow and to create a scary effect toward the audience sudden sounds are very loud. In our short film we have upbeat music until something is going to happen we have slow high pitch music


Camerawork - There tends to be a variety of camerawork in trailers to make things look more interesting, therefore many extreme long and close up shots were used with extreme high and low angle shots also used. In our short film we show many different types of camerawork that are quick between clips to emphasize the tension.


Costume - Tends to signify the character and what type of person they are. In our film we used costumes that were bright and colourful to emphasise their innocence and behavior of the character in our case one person who is very innocent is wearing bright colours.


Editing - Scenes tend to start of being quite slow, but gradually as music becomes faster and more of the scene is revealed, attempting to grab the audience’s attention, when scenes will either be in a random order or chronological as the story unfolds but leaving the ending out of it. Our short film unravels a story of young teenagers taking magic mushrooms and the effects they have on each character, we used a lot of special effects throughout the film to emphasize this.


Below I have compared our poster to a real poster and showed the similarities.

As you can see from the above, I have compared the similarities between our poster and one other poster. They all have in similar a mast head, a release date and layers of images. Although we put three of our actors names at the top this was because in relation to other real posters they only show the most famous names on the poster in big as this persuades people to watch it if they see certain actors/actresses in the short film.

I have now compared our website homepage to Twilight New Moon homepage. They have similarities between them. They both have a master head, layers of images and links to pages. Although our homepage is quite plain when I compare it to Twilight there not so different apart from Twilight has a trailer on the front page whereas I have done a separate link to our trailer. I felt that having a trailer on the homepage was a bit “in your face” and having simple images is more appealing so the audience can browse through the website instead.



Below are images from our short film and a series called Hollyoaks. This programme influenced us to create a short film on drugs as it reflects society today. Teenagers our age are experimenting with drugs all the time and we felt that by doing a short film about the effects of drugs it may put people off.

As you can see from our film review compared to the 2012 film review they are very different. Although some bits are the same like our images and writing they are very different. Our film review has a block of writing, which describes what the film is about which is similar to the 2012 description above. We also have a title to emphasise our film review whereas the 2012 review doesn’t. Also on our film review we show our characters that are involved in our short film whereas 2021 doesn’t.