Evaluation Question 1:

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

Film Trailer:

My film trailer is quite typical of most common conventions that other horror trailers tend to have in them. For example, at the beginning of my trailer I have what all trailers and horror trailers have which is an warning regarding the age classification of my trailer. The reason that I have this right at the start is too ensure that no audience members that are under this age classification are informed that they shouldn’t be watching my trailer. To avoid audiences from misinterpreting my trailer by it being too extreme for a viewer under the age rating I decided to put it right at the start, to again warn them. Based on what Stuart Hall said in his reception theory, again reinforces my reasoning for putting it at the beginning because without if viewers could have a completely oppositional reading of my trailer which would result in them being offended or angry that I didn’t warn them on the content that they are about to consume.

I then display the main production company that produced my ‘film’ and trailer. This is again following typical codes and conventions of horror trailers because most either show this information right at the beginning of the trailer or leave it till the end. The reason I opted for the beginning is because I felt that with the tension and atmosphere that I wanted to create in my trailer, I didn’t want to ruin this for the audience at the end. I wanted to leave my audience feeling different to what they felt before watching my trailer to leave more of an impression. If I showed them this information at the end they might not feel as if they have just watched something completely different, thus leaving little or no impression on them and they may not continue to be endorsed in my film.

If I was to apply the AIDA Marketing Theory to my target audience, if I didn’t leave them feeling intrigued to be involved in later stages of my film marketing I would lose them on the second stage, which is interest. A consumer watching my trailer in the first place is fulfilling the first stage of attraction/attention and then if they finish watching my trailer and feel impacted then that is the second stage of interest. This also comes into the third stage of desire which will eventually lead to the fourth and final stage of action, which would be them paying to watch my film.

I decided to break convention slighting by creating my own production company logo. The way in which is did this was to distort a very normal and simple clip. I felt that distortion fits nicely with the horror genre so it also ties in well with that. I made it conventional with some element of production company logos in terms of simplicity as most established companies have very standard, straightforward logos so I attempted to mimic this.

My first shot is a gradual zoom into some trees looking out the window of the house my film is set in. I decided to follow some conventions of horror film camera shots as the zoom was very shaking but I felt that this added to the atmosphere of my trailer. This relates to the Uses and Gratification theory by Blumler and Katz because audiences would have to be actively consuming my film trailer to notice this to become captivated into the atmosphere that I was attempting to create.

With my chosen music in my trailer, I have challenged conventions of real film trailers. This is because I start my trailer off with very subtly non-diegetic music. The music was not to create tension like normal horror trailers; it was actually put in to create a sense of uneasy tranquillity. The film The Shining that uses contrapuntal sound effectively to create a slightly unstable atmosphere inspired my use of it. Another reason for my doing this was to create a disorientated atmosphere to make my audience question why they were watching my trailer, again to target AIDA marketing theory to encourage my audience to be more active, rather than passive.

A frequent shot type that I used throughout my trailer was focusing and un-focusing on different objects whilst either zooming in or out. I used it on the objects in my trailer that has a greater meaning than other to connote a sense of importance for the audience. It was also to retain the continuity throughout my trailer to give it a clearer structure. Also the focusing and un-focusing was to ensure that my audience were actively consuming my film trailer as it was intended to make them second-guess what they are looking at if the image was distorted.

Another way that I conformed to conventions of horror film trailers was by added a dark filter to all of my footage. Even with my footage that had a lot of bright natural lighting I still added the filter to give it a very obscure and disorientating look.

The use of children in my trailer was entirely intentional because the way in which I have seen children presented in horror films is that the child who witnesses a horrifying act or sees a ghost or demon or other frightening creature. This character is usually confused about what they are seeing or is scared and continues to be scared for the rest of the film. This use of children shows how innocent they can be and in some cases how trusting they can be. This reminds me of films like Paranormal Activity where the children have a relationship with the ghost creature and trust it as their friend but they are not the bad character overall in the story. This can also be applied to a movie like The Sixth Sense where the little boy can see dead people and interact with them but he is not the actually evil character in the film. Because of this, a child’s innocence can be disrupted and cause them to do violent things. This again relates back to the effects theory where, children can be passively or subconsciously influenced in a negatives way and therefore could result in them repeating this negative behaviour as they could believe that if someone else is violent then it is okay for them to be violent.

Both of the main characters in my trailer are female and are sisters. The reason that I chose to play on the convention of using females to play victims is because I felt it was the easiest way to convey the meaning of different types of victims throughout my trailer. Flick is shown as the ‘inflictor’, the one who is doing all of the wrong. However, if an active and dominant audience were to look at my trailer they would depict the underlying meaning of her being a victim herself. She was forced to do what she did by the ‘demon’ present in the house. All Flick wanted to do was the relieve some of the stress she has built up from the secret she had by informing Effy of her discovery. As Effy is clearly younger than Flick, she immediately appears to be even more victimised than Flick because in the end Flick has done something terrible and all of the signs are pointing to Effy as the centre of the event.

The MAMA Trailer had the most influence on my trailer because it has some of the elements of my story. Similarly, it has two sisters with a supernatural encounter and one of the sister’s befriends the supernatural creature. I also took inspiration from the 2015 film trailer from The Gallows, especially the sound editing. Due to my trailer incorporating the contrapuntal music, I wanted to speed up my trailer by silencing the music and then placing a very sudden loud noise, like they did in The Gallows. This was to ensure that my audience were still engaged in my trailer and also added some tension into the atmosphere.

Film Poster:

The original design of my poster did not follow many conventions of a horror film poster at all, this resulted in the final outcome resembling a poster from another genre altogether. The first film poster that I analysed was the MAMA theatrical poster. From this poster I took a lot of inspiration from the font choice and colour, however I soon realised that this particular style didn’t word well with my main image as the image on the MAMA poster was a lot more striking. With this I decided to pick a bolder colour, which was red as it connotes a different and more prominent meaning. Despite the white connoting innocence, I felt that red was bolder and had a more obvious meaning behind it. It also stood out a lot more on the pale face of Effy in the main image.

Another convention that I tried to break in the earlier draft of my poster was to have the title and tagline sideways on the right hand side of my poster. This was mainly due to me attempting to fill in some negative space on my poster but I soon realised that it was too difficult to read form a distance and did nothing aesthetically pleasing for my poster. I also discovered that the negative space on my poster made the main image stand out more and look more significant.

The next convention that I stood by on my poster was the credits at the bottom. I used the typical thin, narrow and elongated text that is almost always used on any film poster. I then put the affiliated company logos underneath this. Some of the logo’s I created and some were from existing companies to make it look more like an existing film poster.

Finally, I made some change to the overall layout of my film poster, which now doesn’t challenge any conventions of normal horror film posters. The main image is in the middle and is a very conspicuous image of one of the main characters in my film. I then have the tagline at the top of my poster, so it sticks in people’s minds and the words within will trigger memories whenever they hear them after they have read it. I then have the film title “Secret” in the centre of the poster, whilst avoiding the main image too much as this is the main piece of information that I want audiences to take away from the poster, as well as the release date which is just above it.

Film Magazine:

My film magazine broke several conventions, mainly through the layout. Normal magazines have most of the text to the left third of the page but I decided that for the sake of my main image, that I would put it on the right hand side. Other than my main image being off centre and the text being on the right hand side, my magazine matches the layout of a normal Empire magazine.