Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of

real media products?

Will Clarke

Media Product – Poster• When creating my poster, I had to consider

the generic conventions of a horror film poster and how I would use them to an inventive advantage. The film title is the biggest font on my trailer, standing out easily to inform the reader of what my film is called. I made it red to create a dark eerie effect. The font looks like its been scratched and presents a sinister feel. The tag line “leave while you still can . . .” contains ellipsis which helps to add an element of mystery and suspense to the context of the film, suggesting there’s something sinister in the house and the fact the font in red creates an horror-like gore feel. The image of the main character if of the main antagonist, the Stalker, as this tells the audience he has a central role in the film. The mise-en-scene of the image depicts the villain’s dark and devilish look. This shows who the film centres around, showing the audience who they’ll be watching and what they do throughout the film.

Media Product - Poster

• The release date , ‘July 10th’, is written largely on the poster so the audience can easily identify when the film will be first shown, thus increasing a hype and anticipation until that date. This is for the purpose of pre-release advertising to increaser the film’s notice. The information on production companies, for example in our case ‘Linemedia Pictures’ and ‘Boulevard Films’ is shown on our poster to show the film’s instructional info as well as the distribution legislations etc. The main cast and crew, e.g. Tom Hughes and Will Clarke is shown at the top our poster just above the title. This is because it’s the first thing people see so they will instantly recognise the names of the film.

• In comparison with ‘The Purge’ poster, I made sure the main image was simply just the antagonist rather than anyone else. This highlights the Stalker as the sole villain in my movie and the only antagonist, therefore challenging the conventions of The Purge in which there are multiple villains.

Media Product - Website

When making my website, I always had the intention of making as accessible to as wide a group of people as possible, therefore needing the generic conventions to make it so.

I made the sure the biggest font on the screen was my film title, to assure the audience the website supported my film. Similar to how the Sinister website is, I positioned red font over a black background to develop a more gruesome effect. I also made sure my official trailer for the film was shown on the home screen. This helps to bring my media products together and is also a quick link to my trailer. With the toolbar, I made sure when the user hovers over a different section, it will light up red, again showing continuity with the red-gore like theme.

Media Product – Website • In order to show my accessibility on my website, I

included references to various social networking sides such as Facebook and Twitter. This is due to the fact many people are on social media and through this, I would be able to develop a wider audience who would be aware of my film – a good example of advertising my film. In the about section, I followed the generic conventions of a film website by including a simple synopsis, loosely detailing the plot as well as naming the four central characters. This is because it can clearly tell the audience what my film is like, thus enticing them and drawing them in to using my website and eventually watching the film itself. Mostly when creating my ancillary products, I have developed the conventions of real life products instead of challenge them. However with my gallery, instead of creating something too technical or interactive, I have created a simple collage of movie snapshots which can resemble photographs. This ties in with the synopsis and the fact the Stalker takes photographs.

Media Product - Trailer• We made sure we included a mask in the trailer. This was so

the audience were aware of what our villain looked like so familiarity is build upon when recognising the villain is from our film. By showing our Stalker, this follows the conventions of general horror film trailers which include their masked antagonist, e.g. Scream series.