Evaluation: Question 1 , how does your Media Product develop, conform to and challenge conventions of real media products?

Our trailer conforms to other horror trailers that we have researched as we have included quite a classic plot using the idea of a child being possessed and then he turns against his family and ends up committing a lot of crimes and murders to his family. As well as this we conformed to the stereotypical sets that clearly display the genre to the audience such as the dark forest and a haunted house that are used in a number of films that were researched such as the last house on the left and we found that they were also very common in the films that were aimed at the lower age range 12- 15 which is the audience that we wanted to target. The characters that we used are quite similar to the normal type of characters that are in a horror film we have an innocent character of the boy at the start before he changes and the villain which is the evil ghost that possesses him. But our trailer challenges this slightly as the boy is seen as innocent and as the villain as he changes persona throughout the film. The trailer. Our trailer also conforms to that of a real trailer because of the pace of it, we tried to make it so that the start of the trailer appears much more brighter in contrast to the end where the trailer gains speed and the imagery becomes much darker and intense this is often the case with other trailers that have been researched but there are a few which go straight into the gore and the quick pace of it this is normally in trailers for films that are classified as being an 18 certificate.  

In the early stages of planning and thinking of what we were going to do for our product we had decided on producing a horror trailer. But we did not completely know all the codes and conventions within this genre and this is what we learnt, by the use of the internet we gained in knowledge of some of the components that make up a horror trailer, for example we probably didn’t realise that we could have a frightening image after the main title at the end of the trailer. We knew the rough structure of this type of trailer but we needed to know the type of footage that we needed to include and also the speed and music that could accompany the trailer. By researching various different types of trailers all of the horror genre we learnt that we needed to have a contrast between the start and the climax of the video. This how the happy bright start with the normal family at the start of the film came about which contrasted with the much darker ending. Also we learnt towards the end of our project that the trailer needed to gain speed, we improved this by adding more footage and increasing the speed of the trailer this created the tension and suspense that is needed within the trailer. This is how our footage conformed to the typical trailer you get in the horror genre. We developed the plot quite a bit so that it strayed from the norm, by adding a child actor, it automatically intrigues people as it is different and everyone is always concerned when it comes to the vulnerability of a child. Although children are involved in other horror films such as the exorcist and insidious, I think children would always be a talking point because people are always weirded out by haunted children, and I think it makes it even more frightening. In our preliminary task we created a short video to practise and think of Ideas that we could include in the real thing, I think we have certainly developed since that in editing, camerawork and sound as well as mise en scene. The first video clip, didn’t really replicate any trailer and we didn’t think through well enough the setting, therefore the lighting was too bright and didn’t create the right atmosphere, we kept that in mind and made sure that the lighting was right throughout the shots of our real footage. Also then we used a mask to try and make it more horror but it just looked daft and didn’t work, and when we both watched it back we weren’t enormously proud of it, as it wasn’t our best work. Because of this we didn’t have any cliche masks or anything and just had the actor themselves acting the scary shots that we needed, which made it seem more realistic and spooky.

When we were researching our ancillary texts again we had a rough idea of how magazine cover and posters look, but in hindsight, we didn’t really know that much about the horror genre when it came to how the magazine looks. This is why we did more research into it and the evidence is on my blog. We also used photoshop which I had little experience in using and I think I developed my skills in using it quite quickly, and ended up producing something that was decent and which linked to the main trailer product. I also used the internet for some guidance on how to create some of the effects in photoshop. I also used the internet to compare the products I had made to some original ones, I think the poster that we created replicates some of the colour schemes used in the official posters, and also we received audience feedback saying that the poster looked good and looked similar to other posters they had seen which is also a good sign. I think the picture looks good small and centered in the middle of the page and think it looks like the poster used for last house on the left.