EVALUATION QUESTION 1In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real-life media products?

Genre is considered to be the easiest way to grab people’s attention, and is therefore an essential aspect of the film

industry. Film-makers need to make people want to see their movie in order to earn money, and having the film fit to a genre

makes it much easier to do this. It’s very reliable because as Thomas Schatz says in his book ‘Hollywood Genres’ (1981) that

it gives the audience clear expectations of a film and its content, which are called ‘generic expectations’. As our film for

our trailer is called ‘Broken Mind’, the audience would automatically assume that it contains psychological horror

conventions because the title suggests a character with mental problems. These are important because the audience need to

know what they are going to watch and they can expect it to be similar of films of the same genre.

Our film ‘Broken Mind’ fits many horror conventions, as we intended. Horror comes from the Latin word ‘Horrere’ meaning ‘to shudder’, and this is what we tried to achieve with our film. Our film is a hybrid horror and so contains conventions of both

‘action horror’ and ‘gory horror’ as well as the most obvious ‘psychological horror’. One of the first horror conventions we knew we wanted to include in our film was collision cutting.

Collision cutting is very important for horror films, and I think it works particularly well in psychological horrors. We used

collision cutting mostly at the end of our trailer with the jump scare of the main character Leo (played by Oliver Butler)

screaming into the camera. We also used it by increasing the pace of the trailer from slow to quick as it goes on. This was

influenced by the collision cutting used in North by Northwest (1959) when everything is quiet and slow and then all of a

sudden the character Roger O. Thornhill is attacked by a crop-dusting airplane.

Another convention of horror that we used was body horror. We have included a few scenes in our trailer containing body horror as our trailer is partly a gory horror. Our biggest body horror scene is the violent scratch appearing on Leo’s (Oliver Butler) arm. This was inspired by a scene from Paranormal

Activity (2007) where bite marks appear on the main character Katie’s back. This jolt of body horror is designed to alarm the audience but also fit their expectations of visceral

shocks related to the genre.

We also included the horror convention of including a character who is a ‘Psycho/Serial Killer’ and a ‘Male Hero’. Our main character Leo (Oliver Butler) is both the male hero and the psychopath, as he is possessed by a demon created from his dark past but is trying his best in the film to get rid of the demon and live happily. This was inspired by Psycho (1960)

and the schizophrenic character ‘Norman Bates’. He was a psychopathic killer with mental problems, but there is also a more emotional element to the character where we feel sorry for him not being able to deal with loss of his mother and the strong relationship that they had. Also the idea of the mother

possessing Norman inspired us for the possession of Leo (Oliver Butler).

We also tried to include lots of close ups in our trailer because this is another main conventions of horror in terms of

cinematography. We used a close up when Leo (Oliver Butler) is drinking vodka so that the audience could see the emotion on his face and sympathise with him. This was inspired by a

lot of horror films but the film that primarily made me realise how important close ups are was Insidious (2010). I was

particularly struck by the close-ups used when the father Josh attempting to find and save his son. The emotion on his face

really helps the audience to connect with the characters.

Finally, in terms of sound, our horror film fit the convention of parallel music. For our trailer, the music used built suspense

as well as fitting well with the action sequences. It fit the genre of our film perfectly. An example of this is from Psycho

(1960) when the strings play for each of the characters deaths and it is painful and uncomfortable to listen it.

Our horror trailer for ‘Broken Mind’ fits the generic conventions of a horror highlights trailer. Firstly, a trailer’s main aim is to establish the narrative clearly which our trailer does, mainly

through the use of intertitles. Our trailer introduces the character and his back story with intertitles such as ‘when your life is

shattered’ before showing the plot of the movie and then slowly building suspense to a fast paced quick sequence and a jump

scare. The suspense is built by teasing the audience with small clips of events starting to happen, and also through the use of

intertitles which create anticipation for what is going to happen. After this, the pace increases speed resulting in a quick sequence

of some of the most action packed scenes and finishes with a jump scare. The quick sequence creates panic and tension, and

the jump scare hopefully works effectively and makes the audience jump leaving them shocked after watching the trailer. This is what horror fans are expecting from a trailer and will be

disappointed if it doesn’t work or if it doesn’t fit these conventions.

The trailers that most inspired me to recreate the conventional style of were Oculus (2014), Insidious: Chapter

2 (2013) and The Babadook (2014). I was immediately inspired by the way they built suspense and used collision

cutting effectively as well as every other convention of horror that was shown. Both Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) and Oculus

(2014) included very effective jump scares which also influenced me. In the trailer for Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

the most effective jump scare is the father Josh is in the other world and is walking along, and an old and spooky looking

man appears extremely close in front of him. In the trailer for Oculus (2014) there is a scene where the dead mothers face appears in the mirror which creates an intense jump scare.

Our trailer is distinctive due to the inclusion of 3 different sub genres of horror. We decided to use conventions of all three because each of us in the group wanted to make a trailer of a different sub-genre, and so our trailer is a mixture of different influences and auteurs. On a personal level, I was most influenced by Alfred Hitchcock and George A. Romero.

Hitchcock influenced our trailer in terms of his obsession with using montage, primarily collision cutting as well as being the ‘Master of Suspense’. We wanted to use these ideas and use them to produce our trailer so that it would be more effective in terms of fitting the horror conventions. Hitchcock demonstrates this most clearly in his films North By Northwest (1959) and Sabotage (1936). For example, in Sabotage (1936) the scene where the child is carrying the bomb through the city creates tension and suspense extremely well and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.

Finally, our film reflects some of its historical context for the current time. This relates to George A. Romero because he

included the context of consumerism in his 2004 film Dawn of the Dead. For example, drugs and alcohol are presented in the news much more now and many people are abusing their use

and families are losing loved ones to this when linked with depression. Our main character Leo (Oliver Butler) is

depressed from his past experiences as a police officer, and has turned to drugs and alcohol to try and solve these

problems. This could be a tough theme for certain viewers of our prospective film as it is seemingly become more of a

problem each day.