the use of media conventions, including genre, form and story conventions, and how they shape audience expectations across two or more media forms

What this dot point is asking

Conventions are different from codes. Codes are the individual signs; conventions are the patterns of how those signs are usually arranged. Audiences learn conventions through repeated exposure, so a convention works because it triggers an expectation. Unit 3, Outcome 1 wants you to use the three convention types precisely and to explain the expectations they create.

The three types of convention

• Genre conventions belong to a category of story. The crime genre carries conventions such as the investigation structure, the red herring, the morally compromised detective and a tense, low-key visual palette. Audiences recognise these and predict how the story may unfold.
• Form conventions belong to a media form regardless of genre. Film has the establishing shot and the end-credit sequence; a print feature has the masthead, headline and pull quote; a narrative podcast has the host introduction, the episodic cliffhanger and the sponsor break. These conventions are shaped by how the form is produced and consumed.
• Story conventions (sometimes called production conventions) are the expected narrative building blocks: an exposition that sets up the world, rising action, a climax, and resolution, along with the expected use of point of view and pacing.

Conventions create expectation

The core idea is expectation. A convention is a promise the text makes to the audience. When a horror film dims the lighting and slows the score, the audience expects a scare; the convention has primed them. Creators use this in two ways: they satisfy the expectation to reassure and orient the audience, or they deliberately break it to surprise, unsettle or comment. Both choices depend on the audience knowing the convention in the first place.

Meeting, combining and subverting conventions

Strong narratives often play with conventions rather than simply obeying them.

• Meeting a convention confirms genre and orients the audience. A new crime drama that opens on a body and a detective is meeting genre conventions.
• Combining conventions creates hybrids. A drama that imports the investigation structure of crime into a workplace setting builds a hybrid that draws on two sets of audience expectations.
• Subverting a convention breaks the expectation for effect. If the detective who is conventionally expected to solve the case fails, the subversion can deliver a bleak commentary that a conventional resolution would not.

Across two or more forms

Consider an original crime drama in two forms: a streaming series, Holloway, and a narrative podcast, Holloway: The Tapes. The series meets the form convention of a cliffhanger episode ending with a visual reveal. The podcast meets a different form convention, ending each episode on an audio cliffhanger, a half-finished interview clip. Both belong to the crime genre and share genre conventions such as the unreliable witness, but each form deploys its own form conventions. Showing this contrast is exactly what the two-forms requirement is testing.

Writing about conventions

Name the convention type, state the expectation it creates, and explain whether the creator meets, combines or subverts it and to what effect on the audience. When you cross forms, point to a form convention that exists in one form and not the other, and explain why the form's mode of consumption produced it.

Conventions are about shared expectation. Know the three types, explain the expectations they create, and analyse how creators satisfy or break them differently across forms. That keeps your analysis precise and squarely on the Outcome 1 skill.