Media evaluation question 1

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Rishika Bhalla

Horror Film Trailer Conventions

Mis En Scene: Costume: Evil girl: white clothing Teens: casual clothing Lighting: Dark Lighting Make up Bruised and dark make up for the

bad character Props Saw, knife, signifies evil persons

personality Setting: Mysterious and challenging

environment

Sound Eerie music, fast paced, tense Characters Dominate male, final girl theory,

evil girl is seeking revenge Camera and editing Fast paced editing, fade in/outs,

close ups, range of camera angles

Titles Promote film, carry storyline Themes Fear, good vs. evil

How generic Mis En Scene Was used, developed or challenged in my trailer

Costume: The costumes for the teenagers within my film trailer were decided through research into heavily teenaged based horror films such as ‘final Destination’. In the Final destination films each character wears casual clothing but the style of clothing is unique. In my film trailer the teens are also wearing casual clothing, all similar to one another but different styles to suit the personality of the character in order to give the audience more of an insight into the characters and their individual selves instead of viewing them as a group constantly.

In order to determine what costume should be worn by the ‘evil girl’ Rosie in our film trailer we did research into films that contained female horror figures for example ‘The Ring and The Grudge’. The figures in these films seem to wear a plain white gown, so we adopted this idea for our film trailer as well. However we altered the costume choice, by placing blood on her gown and making it dirty to reflect how she is not a pure soul yet is a hateful one seeking redemption. Generic

costume Our Costumes


Lighting: Our research into films with a similar location to ours, such as the Blair witch project, suggested that complete darkness was the most effective lighting technique, with the rest of the trailer consisting of limited lighting. In our trailer we placed a limited lighting tint on the start and end scene to add to darkness of the horror trailer. However for our scenes in the woods we challenged the convention of complete darkness, and ensured it was gloomy and a little dark instead. We chose to do this as it adds to the personal fear experienced by the audience, as it makes them weary that this is all happening mid day in the open having them extend their fear so it is not just restricted to the night time and the complete dark.

Gloomy lighting


Make up- From the research we conducted we identified that the evil figure within the film never had a clear face, and it was always covered with bruises and dirt. For our trailer we made rosies face bruised and dark which adheres to the convention. This was challenged however as Rosie is not fully revealed in the trailer but she is shown up close on in the poster and magazine which enhances the mystery of who she is, as well as the audiences desire to find out.

Generic Make Up

Our Make Up


Props: film trailers usually contain props that relate to the genre of the film or reflects the personality of the evil character, for example ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ consisted of chainsaws and knives. In our film trailer the only prop that was shown In relation to the evil character of our film was her case file consisting of the case details of Rosie the mental patient and images of the event that happened in the ruins 10 years prior. This slightly challenges the convention, as we do not present a weapon as a prop in the trailer, but a case file filled with knowledge in this mysterious character Rosie.


Setting: Many horror films such as the Blaire witch project, and Freddie vs. Jason are set in mysterious and challenging setting as well as dark ones. E chose to follow on from our research ad set our film trailer in a challenging and mysterious environment such as a forbidden woods. The woods is a challenging environment as the teens knew nothing about it, and were unfamiliar with it, however we chose for it to be gloomy instead of dark as it intensifies events that take place in the woods due to minimal lighting instead of non at all.

How generic Music And Sound Was used, developed or challenged in my trailer Music and sound: Horror film trailers usually consist of slow and eerie

music to begin with in order to set the scene and start on a relaxed yet suspicious atmosphere. As informed by the research we conducted into insidious, the conjuring and woman in black We have incorporated this into our trailer where the teens are sitting in the park, as it adds a sense of naivety to the trailer and how they do not know what is in store for them. As the trailer progresses the music tends to get faster as suspense builds and events begin to unfold. We have also used this technique when our trailer reaches its peak as it approaches the running scenes, to enhance the action portrayed in these very scenes. Finally as a horror trailer tends to reach its end, it slows back down to bring the overall trailer to a mysterious finish encouraging the audience to go see it in order to know the full story. We adopted this technique when a glimpse of Rosie is revealed as it is the climax point as to who the teens are running from. We challenged the generic conventions of the sound, as at the end we used voice over instead of an outflowing soundtrack, as we thought this bought our trailer to a more appropriate end than a soundtrack would. Also the voice over ties in with how the trailer ends, as the scenes show Rosie indicating for the teens to come looking for her, and the voice over is saying ‘catch me if you can’.

How generic Characters Were used, developed or challenged in my trailer

Characters- Movies consisting teenagers always consist of an alpha male who is the dominant figure within the group and comes to the rescue of others that are in need especially females, such as the male in the film ‘Friday 13th’. In our trailer we challenged this convention as the female character ‘Tamara’ has the dominate role and is the more enticing character who dominates the group and pushes them to go to the woods as it will be ‘fun’.

Final girl theory carol j clover- This is a theory that is usually common to most horror films, in which a final female character remains to tell the story of what happened. However this was challenged with our trailer, as the final girl becomes the story as it continues, as she is sacrificed by Rosie into the cult.

Evil girl- A common convention to all evil female characters within horror films is that they are usually someone seeking for their soul to be released/ revenge for example our research into ‘the woman in black’ indicated she was awaiting for her son to be found in order for her soul to be released from the house she is haunting. In our trailer Rosie was left behind out of her friends to continue the legacy of the cult, and once conducts her own killing she can be released and the one sacrifice she leaves continues the cult and takes her place

How generic Camera And Editing Were used, developed or challenged in my trailer

Camera and editing: Our research into the films ‘sinister,’ ‘insidious’ and ‘the Conjuring’ suggested that Generic conventions in relation to the camera and editing in horror trailers were fast paced editing (jump cuts), fade ins and fade outs, many different camera angles but intense use of close ups/extreme close ups. In our film trailer we included all of these camera and editing techniques, as they were common in many examples we looked at. We used fast paced editing techniques, for when we had to speed up the running scenes, in order to make them look more effective and realistic. A jump cut is used when we are showing Tyler running through the woods, we used this as it enhances the impact the shot has due to it being from numerous angles instead of just one continuous one. We used fade in and fade outs quite a bit for the beginning scenes, as we felt it helped portray the fact that darkness is enclosing in on the teens and something is about to happen. Finally we made use of many different camera angles, such as a medium shot when Tamara is trying to gain signal, a long shot when Tyler is running but most importantly we used many close ups in order to enhance the fear experienced by the audience. For example a close up is used when Alice is stating ‘ I don’t think this is a good idea’ , and the fear within her facial expression becomes embedded into the audiences mind as it is so up close.

How generic titles Were used, developed or challenged in my trailer

Titles: Ttles are used within trailers in order to promote the film, or to direct the trailer at the audience a bit more and make it feel as if they are part of the characters experience. For example the titles used in ‘The Woman In Black’ contained the name of the main actor ‘Daniel Radcliff’ which encourages fans of his acting to go see the film thus acting as a promoting agent for the film. However we developed this generic use of titles as we used them to give our trailer direction, but not to make the trailer seem more direct to the audience but to carry our storyline as it is highly completed to be understood through just imagery.

How generic themes Were used, developed or challenged in my trailer

Themes: Our research into film trailers in general indicated that there was always some opposition present in a film and this was made clear in the trailer. For example in ‘The Batman: Dark Knight’ the binary opposition of Good Vs. Evil is made evident to the audience as it shows the doings of the two oppositions in contrast to one another. We also included the theme of binary oppositions and presented the ‘Good’ as the teenagers as they are innocent people looking for a little fun, and the ‘Evil’ as Rosie as she is harming them although they have done nothing to her.

This links to Rick Altman semantic/syntactic elements theory as there is always an indication of a theme that allows us to establish the trailers genre for certain. For example the semantic element of Fear is portrayed in ‘insidious’ through scenes of the little boy hiding. We also portrayed the semantic element of fear but through the use of many running scenes, suggesting the Teenagers are running in fear from something in the woods but we are not certain of what/who they are running from.

MAGAZINE CONVENTIONS

Magazine Analysis

Before creating Our Magazine we analysed two magazines; ‘Empire’ And ‘Entertainment’.

Audience Feedback

We then gained audience feedback on which layout out of the two we analysed they preferred, and they decided upon ‘Empire’. We then went on

to use this as a guide for creating our own Magazine cover

Magazine Conventions We Used, Developed or Challenged


We included a large master head that stretches across the top third of the magazine. We changed the name of the magazine so it made our production unique, and because our magazine name is not as recognised as empire we couldn't place it behind the image so we just laid it over the top instead of behind. We also used a similar font to that of the Empire magazine, as it is an appropriate font as well as stylish. We changed the colour we used for the text however, as Red is the constant theme throughout our production as it is the colour of fear and terror.

Above our master head we included a strap line just as the empire magazine does.. However we developed the strapline use by adding a solid grey background behind it, instead of letting it be free flowing. This was mainly due to the issue that we couldn't find an appropriate colour for the text, as any colour we used would blend into the image and make the text slightly un readable. However I think the grey block behind the text emphasises the strapline more and makes it stand out, which is necessary as it is to do with the films premier which is important information. Similar to the empire magazine our front covers image is

centralised, and is neither to the left or right. We chose to follow this convention as iron man is the main character in the film being shown on empire, and Rosie is the main character in the film we are presenting on our front cover, and having them in the centre draws more focus on the character being shown which is an important thing that needs to be done for a main character of a film especially. We challenged the convention however as our image is in black and white instead of colour, but this is because our film is horror and it is common for horror images to be presented to the audience in dark colours such as black and white.


The name of the film being featured on the empire magazine is placed at the top of the bottom third of the magazine layout. The name is placed above a lot of other information and text, and is in big bold text compared to all other text on the magazine. We placed our film title in the same way, as we also have a centralised image so placing the name anywhere else did not look right. Also placing the name at the top of the bottom third makes it noticeable by the reader, as it is not right in the middle but it is centralised and not hidden. We also matched the colour of our film name to our master head just as Empire magazine did, and made our font big and bold. Similar to empire, we added a strapline under our film name, this

strapline reads the slogan of our film ‘Sometimes dead is better’ as does the empire magazine reading iron mans slogan ‘new suit, new enemies same attitude.’ we kept our slogan free flowing, as we didn’t want our magazine cover to look as though everything has been sectioned, however the empire magazine has a solid grey background behind the slogan. We chose to have our slogan a different colour from all the other text, because the magazine was looking too red, and we needed a statement colour to make it look more interesting. The yellow colour was the most readable of all colours, so we decided upon that. The empire magazine incorporated a mini film strip at the

bottom of their magazine, that outlined some of the other films that were discussed within this issue. We liked this and implemented it onto our own magazine cover. We kept the layout of the film strip the same, however we centralised the text instead of having it all to the left as we felt this looked better alongside the composition of the rest of the magazine cover. We also added a strapline below the film strip instead of leaving as blank space, as we felt the lack of colour on our image would make our magazine look bare if there was nothing placed below the film strip.


We incorporated a barcode onto our front cover as well, as all magazines have one despite the genre or type. We placed our barcode on the right hand side in the bottom third as empire magazine we did this is because we followed a lot of the conventions of empire magazine, and the barcode looked appropriate in the same position as it is on empires on ours as well. Finally we included the same sticker placed on

empire magazine reading ‘Ultimate review of 2013’. We included this as our magazine looked like it had a lack of shaped and was a bit too composed, so adding the circle brought a change in the dynamics of the magazine and it made it look a little less ‘boxy’. We located our sticker on the left just as empire did, however we placed it in the bottom third as opposed to the top third. In addition we ensured our sticker matched the theme of our magazine, so we made it grey in colour to match thee strapline above the master head, this differs from empire as their sticker matches the colour of the master head itself.

POSTER CONVENTIONS

Poster Analysis

Before creating Our poster we analysed three posters; ‘The Return’, ‘scream’ and

‘final destination’

Identifying Similarities

We then identified what was similar between all the

posters we analysed.

Layout and Font Options

We then composed our layout and font ideas, and we gathered our

group opinion as well as audience feedback.

Improved layout option

We then used the feedback we got to compose our final layout options, and got audience feedback which resulted in the favourable option being option 2.

However…

We felt our layout that we had composed did not suit well with the images we had, so we followed the layout of the poster for the film ‘Static 3D’

Poster Conventions We Used, Developed or Challenged

We followed all the conventions of this poster, as we really liked the way it was composed and felt it presented horror in a very simplistic and effective way, and it included all the things we found posters to include in our research that we conducted. We located our trailers tag line in the same place as the ‘static’ poser located its slogan. However we made our slogan bigger and used a wider font as our slogan had fewer words resulting in it not filling up as much space as we anticipated. We kept the font white, as we felt it fit in with the colours of our main image.

We used a similar image to that of the static poster, as our image is also of the evil character within our film. Our image is also similar to the static poster image as it uses similar dark colour but is t too deep in saturation and contrast as we wished for the setting to be visible. In addition to further achieve the background visibility, instead of using a close up shot of the character we used a long shot so we could get the background and the saw in the image. This helps give the audience more insight into rosies character as there is not much given way about her in the trailer.

Poster Conventions We Used, Developed or Challenged

The font for the film title on the static poster is a bit longer and the letters are narrower than in the font that we chose to use. We chose this font for our poster as it is the same one we used for our magazine, and we felt it was a good way to tie in our poster and magazine, as well as the fact that the other fonts we looked at looked too childish/ cartoonish to be seriously considered for a horror trailers poster and our audience did not like them either. In addition we hose to colour the text red as it is the colour scheme for all three of our productions, and it looks good against our black and white image.

Finally at the bottom of our film poster we have our names, as we explained that our production company is called TRI and is a abbreviation of our names. Having our names here represents our distribution company, unlike on the static 3D poster the names represent actors from within the film. We changed the layout of our names and kept them long instead of piling the first name on top of the last name, as it made our poster look slightly bare. Also the small print credits we included were placed to replicate those on the static poster, as this made the poster look less empty and look more realistic as well.

Education

Media evaluation question 1