Evaluation 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our task was to create a 2-4 minute horror trailer, with a magazine cover and poster to accompany our trailer. Each of these media texts have their own separate convention, as well as the horror genre as a whole. This means that we had a large amount of conventions that we could adhere to or challenge. To start off I will talk about the conventions of a trailer.

Trailer conventions are used and challenged no matter what the genre of the trailer, we researched these by watching multiple trailers and noting down their key similarities, and discussed whether they were effective to the trailers objective. We found that almost every trailer we watched used titles, a voice over, and included key scenes from the film itself. We agreed that we should use and develop on these, within our own trailer. We agreed to use the tiles, because it was a different way of feeding the consumer information about our project, using a single stream of information would have been boring and it would have hindered the effect we wanted to give off. With this in mind we decided on seven titles that will be placed at key points within the trailer. These titles included: our tagline, our production company, our lead actress and the name and release date of our film.

We used our tag line as the three titles because we wanted to use it as a link to our poster and magazine. This is similar to the development on the tagline used to promote movies, such as alien. The quote “In space, no one can hear you scream” is very memorable. We wanted to recreate a memorable tag line, we did this by using the rule of three. Using the tagine three times it will be more memorable to our audience. The tagline was used within our trailer to tell the audience a little about our plot, in a subtle way. We did this because it causes the audience to think about what it could mean, playing on the audiences mind intrigues them to find out the answer to their questions by watching our film. The other titles are very basic, and are usually staple for all film trailers. We followed this convention because we believe that it is an effective way of informing the audience of our films name and release date.

A voice over can be used in two main ways, the voice over can talk throughout scenes and not break the 4th wall directly. Using an actor or actresses voice to explain the story of the trailer, indirectly informing the audience about the situation. The second type of voice over reads out the titles. “Coming soon” “(Film Name)” this is used in trailers where they use the sound, form the scenes to tell the story this convention is common in comedy and romance films because they use the scenes from the trailer to relay information to the audience. We decided to use the first voice over conventions. This is because we believed it fitted with the theme of our film, as we are having a patient we agreed that having someone read a patient file as our voice over would be an effective link to the films plot. While also telling the audience about the backstory to our film. This is a development on the first voice over convention because we have the voiceover as our own separate character, suggesting that the audience is just a fly on the wall watching the scenes unfold, this is supported by the play theory explanation as to why people enjoy horror movies.

A convention that is viewed in almost every trailer made no matter what the genre, is key scenes from the movie. This convention was used by our group because it would be near impossible to make a trailer without using key scenes from the film itself. While planning our trailer we had to come up with a full plot and decided the scenes that we were going to use from that. In film trailers, they use scenes from as the being middle and end. Usually the scenes that are the most representative of the films genre. For a comedy film they would use their best jokes. And for a horror film they would use a jump scare to spook the audience. This inspired our choice of scenes, influencing our decision to use a jump scare within our trailer, originally, this was later taken out because our film wasn’t about scaring the audience senseless, it was about making the audience question their existence thus making a jump scare redundant to the plot, and suggests that there are conventions for sub genres as well as regular genres.

The regular genre conventions are more cut and dry, whereas subgenre conventions are often changed and challenged. Our given genre was horror, this meant that we had to research the conventions of the horror genre. The first convention of a horror is isolated settings, using abandoned warehouses, and characters being alone in forests. We developed this convention, and used mental isolation instead of physical isolation. Although our main character is often seen alone, we wanted to portray that she was alone in her own mind. As our film is mainly set I the mind of Natasha, a sufferer of depression, we wanted to use the physical isolation to portray the metal isolation that people that suffer depression can experience, such as our main character Natasha.

Horror movies, especially paranormal and supernatural, use irrational settings in their films, this convention was hard to follow, however we tried to create the irrational by having two split worlds that were of our main characters creation. We chose to do this because we wanted the audience to believe that this was a possibility, and that either world can happen to someone. The realism in our film is an effective way to spook the audience because it can make them contemplate their existence which is the desired effect of our film.

Death and blood, this convention is not as common in psychological horrors compared to slasher horrors. We used this convention in our film because we wanted to show the gory past of our main character. Our story follows the death of her boyfriend, she is the reason that he was killed and we wanted to use blood and gore to make the image of Carter more disturbing. This was effective because it helps explain why she would need psychological help, and how common practises may not have had an effect as she has kept the gory image of her boyfriend in her mind.

Colours are used to subtly represent genre, for the horror genre people would associate dark colours and deep reds. Red and black being favoured for many horror posters as the black has dark connotations such as death and the unknown. Whereas red signifies blood and passion. We challenged this convention in our poster because we did not need to show blood in our project. Instead we used green, this is because the connotations of Green linked with the plot of our film. Green has been observed to reduce the effects of depression. Therefore, using green as our main colour along with black is effective, because it has a deeper meaning as well as it standing out against other horror movie posters and magazines.

For our film we discussed using a clear Protagonist/Antagonist split in our characters. We decided that we were going to use a doctor, separate to the narrator, be our antagonist so that our main character can look like the stories ‘hero’ however as it is revealed that Natasha was the reason her boyfriend died it does out make her the perfect hero because she is to blame for his death. This links with the final convention. Conflict, most horror films show some kind of conflict, either internal or external. We decided to follow this convention and use an inner conflict. We are focuses on Sanity vs Insanity in our film one Natasha is deemed insane where the other side it’s normal. If we were to make the full film we were going to push that the ‘Normal’ world was the sane one and that she needed to escape the insane world however we wanted to develop on the conflict, the X vs Y concept was changed so that the conflict wasn’t so obvious ad that the audience needed to figure out which world was the sane one. We did this because we wanted the audience to doubt their opinion on the film and make them second guess what we lead them to believe.

Overall, we have developed upon many of the conventions of the horror genre. This is because we wanted to make a quintessential psychological horror movie that was identifiable and showed the genre that we were portraying. We agreed that challenging too many conventions would be detrimental, and have the opposite effect that we wanted to portray.

Poser forms and conventions. There are four kinds of poster that we could have created, we looked at the conventions and example of all four and had to decide which we were going to produce for our project. The four kinds are, teaser, main theatrical, DVD release and character Poster. The first poster we said no to was the character poster. This was because we were making a magazine cover that would use our main characters he focal image. This meant that having two main character images would have made the two products very similar. We also removed the DVD release from our list because we were creating a film trailer, it would be better if we did all three of the tasks in the mind-set that our film will be coming out in the near future. Allowing u to keep similar dates on all three projects.

This left us with Main theatrical that had a lot of film information, and teaser that included very little about the films plot and was very inconspicuous. We chose the main theatrical poster, but we decided to use some of the conventions from a teaser to create a hybrid between the two types of poster.

Conventions of posters include, the name of the film, release date, tagline and the actors names and a focal image as standard, some posters have additional information such as the films credits and reviews about the film from critics.

The conventions regarding the tile of the film, usually refers to their positioning. By convention the name of the film is low on the poster so that the Image can be the

focus of the poster as the consume reads from top to bottom. The image to the right shows a small sample of film posters. The image shows that many posters have their film title quite low to the bottom of the poster. This is one of the conventions that we will be challenging because we feel it would be far more effective if the title was higher up on our poster. This is because of the focal image that we used. Many of these posters have quite a large amount of visual cues, such as background characters and scenery, the title being high up would take focus from these images. For our poster we are taking a more minimalistic approach and using the simplistic image allows us to reposition the text on our poster to be more spaced out. We challenged this convention because having the tile at the top draws the readers gaze to the very top of the poster making them read down and seeing the largest amount of our poster as possible.

Release dates are not always included on movie posters, as they rely of other mediums to relay this information to their audience. As we do not have access to these media texts we have included our release date on the poster of our film. This challenge of the poster conventions has allowed us to Bulk up the information that was in our poster as it is include a lot of empty space. The position was an effective choice because it draws the attention to the surrounding credits. This includes that names of the actors and directors, the reasoning behind it is that seeing someone’s name you recognise can drive someone to watch the film more than a flashy poster can.

Our tagline I a common element between our three products and acts as a bridge between all three. Having the tagline on a poster is a very common convention of movie poster, this is because it is an effective marketing strategy. Having a catchy/memorable tagline can increase the audience of the film tenfold because it replays on the mind of the audience. We have tried to replicate tis effect with our tagline, I believe that we were successful because our tagline is very ambiguous. This means that the audience may be intrigued and try to find answers to what we are presenting to them. “What is the accident?” We want to inspire this question in the minds of our audience.

The focal image of the poster is the main body of the media text, this image is what draws the most attention and is used to tell the most amount a film. For a main theatrical trailer there are two types of images that can be used. A Minimalistic image that tells little about the film but has a large effect or an informative picture that is full of information about the film itself. The two posters to the side

show the different images used for the Avengers movie. On the left is a minimalistic image of the avenger’s logo. This flashy poster captures the eye and inspires investigation. Whereas the poster on the right captures the eye and impresses the audience.

We decided to use the metronome on our poster as the focal image because it is quite minimalistic, we weren’t going to have large action scene so an informative poster

wouldn’t have been effective for our project. The metronome is effective because the metronome itself is shrouded. Those who don’t know what one is will be mystified by the sight of it and those who know will understand the link between the poster and the trailer as a piano scene is included. And one of the uses of a metronome is help a pianist keep to a steady beat.

Magazine cover conventions are similar no matter what the genre, when analysing real magazine covers there were a few observable conventions that was common throughout all that we looked at. For example the tile of the magazine was always at the top of the cover, this is because it is the brand their magazine company has created. However we have noticed that the images will sometimes overlap the tile hiding some of the letters, this is because the magazine is o notable the tile isn’t fully needed. We have not used this convention because we are using an ‘Indie-movie’ magazine that will not be as well-known as Empire magazine.

The other articles that are used on magazine front covers are there to attract the wider audience. We have developed this by using play on words on both the articles about our film and about the other films. The saying Femme Fatale was changed

to Femme Fatal as a play on word hint to a plot of a move that Shailene Woodley has starred in. We have seen this used on a few magazines and believed it would be effective to implement into our own product.

We have used the tagline f our film underneath our title. As previously mentioned in this essay, we did this to create a bridge between the three products that we have made. Following the One, Two, Three theme we have been able to create a brand for our film. This is a convention used by many franchise movies, we have used this because it is an effective marketing strategy and helps create a buzz for our product.

Over all of our three products we have followed the majority of the conventions of the four categories, this was because we wanted to create a horror movie with the quintessential horror movie theme and feel. Without these conventions it may have worked against us and made our film’s genre unrecognisable. All of the decisions we have made concerning the forms and conventions of our products have been to increase the meaning of our film, as well as help portray the realisms we we’re hoping the audience would notice.