Evaluation Question 1

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

Conventions of a Horror Teaser Trailer. (Rasheda Miah)

Conventions are the customs in which things are followed within the film industry when creating media products such as film, teaser trailers, film posters and film magazine front pages. Form of conventions are used to help the audiences to recognise what specific type of media product it is, and whether they would want to watch it.

After taking a look at many various horror teaser trailers, as a group we also looked at the types of sub genre such as physiological horror. Psychological horror tends to be subtle compared to traditional horror and typically contains less physical harm, as it works mainly on the factors of mentally affecting the audience rather than the display of graphic imagery seen in the slasher and splatter sub-genres.

Many of these horror teaser trailers follow the same conventions, for example, some of the conventions followed are:

The lengths of most real teaser trailers are between 30 seconds up to 60 seconds. For example, the teaser trailer for Paranormal Activity 2 length is 39 seconds and the teaser trailer for Scream 4 is 42 seconds. Screenshots are shown below to show the length of the teaser trailer.

In our teaser trailer we followed the conventions of a horror teaser trailer by keeping the length of our teaser trailer at 40 seconds. This is because we did not want to give too much away to the audience nor did we want to show less. A screenshot of our trailer is shown below illustrating the length of our teaser trailer.

Another convention that was made paramount from watching many real existing teaser trailers was that many of the scenes and shots were very fast paced this was done to help emphasise the tension and suspense of the teaser. Some examples of fast edited teaser trailers we saw are: Rec, The Grudge, saw 3D, Halloween, The Ring, etc. Below are videos of the teaser trailers for Scream and The Grudge.

From looking at these trailers we also decided to follow the conventions of a typical horror film teaser trailer by making our teaser trailer also slightly fast paced in order to make the audience jump and to catch their attention. Another convention we also followed was by including a really quick scene of the villains face at the end of the teaser trailer, to tease the audience and make them jump. We also added a loud diegetic sound to go with the shot both of this idea was followed by looking at the trailer of Rec. A screenshot of our teaser trailer and Rec trailer is shown below illustrating the convention of adding a quick scene to entice the audience.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/UlaZfOiGaCU" http://www.youtube.com/embed/gwbOej9r6K4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJuOCO06_Lk

Another convention that was also noticed in the majority of the teaser trailers that we watched was that many of them did not give away too much of the story line and plot, this is done to prevent too much of the main action being revealed. Yet teaser trailers are kept short but are very effective.

Horror films generally aim to shock, scare, entice and alarm viewers of the factors that play on individuals common fears and present an extraordinary situation. For example, in existing teaser trailers shots of individuals in pain are introduced to ensure the horror representation is implemented. Likewise as a group we decided to follow this convention to entertain the audience. Below are examples from saw 3D and our teaser trailer illustrating how we followed this convention:

Another convention that also seen in many teaser trailers was that in majority of the films the villain was usually males. However, I believe this is a very stereotypical convention that has existed for many years. Examples of male villains seen in existing teaser trailers are: Halloween, Friday the 13^th and Nightmare on Elm Street etc.

However, in our teaser trailer we challenged this convention by creating a female character to play the villain role as we did not want the film to be predictable like most horror films. We managed to do this by using a monk suit for the villain in our teaser to wear, in order to prevent the audience from knowing whether the villain is a female or male. An image is shown below on how we managed to not give away what gender of the villain:

By establishing the plot, they let viewers know the setting and know the genre in which the film lays. That’s exactly what we did when we filmed our trailer and we let our viewers know what genre our film is through this convention.

How we used or challenged conventions. (Fergie Nzita)

When is comes to challenging the conventions of teaser trailers, we decided that we was going to introduce our villain. If you notice on many different teaser trailers, villains are mostly unmasked unless it is for example The Dark Knight which is a Batman sequel and many people already know the villains that are in Batman, even so, in the first of two teaser trailers to The Dark Knight, they did not even show the villain. By revealing the villain it could be an advantage because people might be interested in the villains appearance and intrigued by their problem. However it could all backfire as revealing the villain might just let the audience and viewers already know what is going on so what is the point. On the other hand we believe by challenging the convention and revealing our villain in a teaser trailer, we could possibly achieve a fanbase for our villain for example the same effect The Dark Knight had in terms of good vs evil which manages to create a bigger audience and base for our “film” as this is only the teaser trailer and there is more to come. 

Conventions of a Horror Poster. (Olympia Amoo)

There are many things thats connote a horror poster, these conventions enable the audience to be able to recognise a film of this genre without even knowing about it. There are many conventions but there are some key ones that are used most commonly; these are, low key lighting (dark photo), large title, bold fonts and colours and of course the victim on the front, usually injured and a female, if the villain is on the poster they will normally be holding a weapon of some kind or just look 'evil'. For example 'Halloween' has the villain on the poster with a cover with a knife in his hand, this clearly indicates he is dangerous and the 'killer' in the film. Also by having him on the front cover shows that he is the main character and that the film will be following his life. Also in a conventional poster dark images are used but not with all posters as you can see with the poster on the right, the background is completely white and you can slightly see a house in the background, this automatically establishes the setting; the reason for the white background is to make him stand out more because he is in black and also the knife is held over his clothes so it stands out over the black.
Other conventions of a horror poster is a phrase or a tag line, this is something that allows people to remember the film. A lot of films use this, but not all. Example of films that have used this convention is 'Orphan', 'An American haunting' and 'Last house on the left'. The phrases are a very important part of the poster as it catches you in, and other than the image on the front it is the only thing that really tells you what the film is about. An example of phrases used: 'If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?' this is so effective as it gives you an idea of what happens and then makes you think 'how far would you go?' and it intrigues the audience to watch it because they wanna see how far they go.

For our poster we did follow some conventions of a horror film trailer. For example, on the right hand side you can see a professional poster for the film 'REC' this poster has many horror film conventions, for example it is very dark and the background is completely black. Looking at our poster you can see how we have followed that convention, the background is all blacked out connoting fear and horror. The title on our poster is white because it stands out against the dark background, this is also evident in 'REC' the colour white is used and also red, this is also because the 'record' button on a camera is red. If you compare our poster to this professional one, we have followed the conventions closely.
We have used the steel tongs font that is used on all posters for the credits. Another convention that we followed was using a tag line that represents our film 'she's coming for you...'; the use of ellipsis also adds tension and suspense to the poster. The photograph of the victim on the front injured is also a convention of a horror poster, the fact that the victim is white and female also adds to the stereotype of a horror poster. The listed film companies and website underneath the credits are also a convention.
Our poster has followed some conventions of a teaser trailer and left out some others. I think that the use if the conventions that we used makes are poster look professional and real.

Conventions of a horror magazine. (Kerry Treacy)

It was an important factor that we as a group produced a magazine front cover as part of one of our three media products for our media package. We decided as a group to use a conventional way of advertising and use a traditional method to advertise and promote our media product to audience members. The purpose of the magazine front cover was to create the awareness of our media products which included a teaser trailer production, movie poster and a magazine front cover all of which worked together to promote our main media product “TAKEN“. All three products were made to work together and promote our Teaser trailer.

The third product that we created was the magazine front cover which promoted our main product the teaser trailer production of “TAKEN“. When in the process of designing and developing our ideas for our movie magazine. It was an important factor to do post production research into the conventions and the production of a movie magazine. From the early stages of our post production research each individual member of our group produced a textual analysis on a movie magazine product.

The intention and purpose for doing this was to visually see how professional Graphic Designers use specific design techniques to fit in with the conventions of successfully distinguishing to the audience that the product that they are being presented with is a movie magazine. From our textual analysis we individually saw the importance of how the appliance of how typography and photographic work was crucial in the way designers applied conventions and professionally constructed graphical and extra design elements to make the product look professional and persuasive to a consumer market audience.

Down below is a photographic image which demonstrates visually how we used and applied the conventions of a movie magazine. It was a crucial and important factor that we followed the conventions of the professional media product so we could distinguish to audiences that the product they are being presented with is a Film magazine.

The image on the right visually demonstrates the conventions that we applied and used. We decided as a group to follow the conventions of the Empire film magazine cover featured in the image up above. We thought it was most appropriate from our own visual perspective to fit the layout of our photographic image. The image above features four annotations which visually show what conventions we used for our media product. The first annotation points out how we used the convention of sub headlines. On our magazine front cover we featured the use of, exclusives, verdicts, wowser and surrogates. These were conventionally used to persuade our target consumer audience to view our media product. The second annotation points out how we used the use of a masthead. This was conventionally used to distinguish to our audience members that the product they are being visualised with is a magazine front cover, and also communicates to the audience the name of the product. The third annotation points out how we conventionally used the se of a barcode. This was another important convention to use as it was specifically used to communicate to the audience the price of the product. The fourth annotation points out how we used a main headline. This was used as the feature on the movie magazine that would distinguish to audience that the main feature in the product was our production of TAKEN.

We used all of the above conventions as a set of rules that would enable use to successfully design a film cover magazine product that would distinguish to audience members that the product they were being presented with was a film magazine cover. We as a group decided to follow all the conventions of a professional magazine cover and not challenge or break the conventions as it may have brought about negative and unsuccessful effects into audience members feedback.

In the correspondence to our photography for our magazine front cover we as a group thought it was an important factor to include the process of continuity. This was a crucial factor to use as a convention as it would enable audience members to link all of our media products together.

On the left is a photographic image which visually shows both of our print made promotional material to advertise our main media product of our teaser trailer TAKEN. In correspondence to the use of continuity we used the same conventions on both our magazine front cover and our film poster to visually establish to audience members that both products have a relation to each other. We used specific factors such as mise en scene between both products to establish that the product was of the horror genre, and had a connection with the other promotional material. We used factors such as low key lighting, specific make up to convey and give a visual representation of the victim and a variety of graphical techniques that would give the overall effects and completion of the magazine front cover to make it professional.