In what ways does your media product use, develop

or challenge forms and conventions of real-life

media products.

Our trailer fits the horror genre through use of classic horror conventions that have been used from the 1930 with the Universal Horror movies to more recent years’ modification of the genre. The establishing shot of the trailer is a grim looking church which fits not only the mood of the horror genre, but also the settings for some horror movies; such a Silent Hill (2006) where people are cut up by barbed wire. We used this setting to not only get across the narrative of the film with a holy figure murdering people in a sadistic way, but because it caused controversy by using a saintly place to instigate murder is happening there.

Silent Hill (left)

Priest establishing shot (right)

Thomas Schatz’s Genre Theory (established in his 1981 book “Hollywood Genres”) could be applied here. Because of the conflict the Priest has morally, he then takes that inner moral conflict on the people around him and over the course of the trailer it shows his decay as a character. We used a quick, smart monster which is a priest. We thought about whether we wanted an actual monster as the source of horror such as Frankenstein (1931) or whether we wanted a human. This would create a sense of threat because the monster could have been anybody, and because it was a member of authority it created a further sense of panic and threat for audiences.

We also used low key lighting inside the church to connote the gritty and murderous intent that the antagonist had. We intentionally used a combination of both high and low key lighting in various ways to show the safety of particular areas, in the trailer the church is dim to connote the decayed morals of the priest whilst the Priest’s home is bright to give off a sense of safety for audiences. The scene within the Priest’s home takes place before he decides to kill people as a means of contrast. This is also shown within The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) where the inside of the house is dark and the outside appears safe.

After analysing and watching multiple trailers for inspiration, there were particular moments that we wanted to adapt and pay homage to. The pacing of the trailer starts quite slow and eventually ends with a montage of brutality. This is reminiscent of the The Evil Dead (2013) trailer which starts slowly with shots of the teenagers discovering the abandoned cabin. However, it then builds into a montage of gore effects and killing. After watching the trailer we knew that the conventions used and the overall pacing of the trailer was one we wanted to recreate, we wanted to lure audiences in and then show them some of the horror whilst still remaining an enigma.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qthT79uSJ_M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKFDkpHCQz4

Evil Dead (2013) trailer PRIEST (2015) trailer

We also watched The Human Centipede 2 (2011) which also opens with a derelict and enclosed location to establish the dark tone of the movie. We found this an interesting way to begin the trailer and therefore wanted to try and replicate that within our own trailer. It also uses montage quite well and both trailers we viewed that used montage used them successfully which is why we wanted to also incorporate montage into our trailer. After watching the trailer for Bloodsucking Freaks (1976) we wanted to try and recreate some of the gore effects used in that. In terms of institutional context, the movie is very low budget but the gore effects are still quite good for their time. On the low budget we had to film our trailer, we wanted to see if we could recreate those effects to the same sort of degree.

The enclosed location from The Human Centipede 2 (2011)

The cheap gore effects from Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)

Stylistically, we especially enjoyed the work of the auteur Alfred Hitchcock and his ability to create horrors out of the smallest things, such as the shower scene from Psycho (1960) in which he used chocolate sauce to replicate Marion Crane’s blood. It was this kind of complex montage and visual conventions from Hitchcock that inspired us to create gore effects balanced with editing techniques to maximise the small amount of resources we had to a believable degree.

Within the historical context of our trailer, we wanted to try and comment on the corruption of power within our society. In the media there are stories of police officials that are included in paedophile rings, for example, and they abuse that power to get out of it. We decided to use an antagonist that was regarded as a safe member of the community but could potentially have a very dark twist to them. This would also be reflected within the CDI that priests are paedophiles through abuse of their power.

Also the choice of central theme for our trailer is the grittiness of religion and the seedier undertones given to it by the media. An example would be the extremist groups such as ISIS that are using religion as a fuel for their actions that directly affect the general public. We wanted to take that extremist view and personify it into our central character who is directly representative of the misappropriation of

religion ideologies.