Evaluation 1In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms of real media products?

Joseph Donaldson

In our horror trailer, we made sure we used generic horror conventions, from mise-en-scene to characters and representation. Looking at Thomas Schatz’s Genre Theory (established in his book Hollywood Genres in 1981), we wanted to make sure we included everything we could to make our horror trailer the best it could be. All 3 of our group members wanted to do a psychological horror as we found them to be thrilling and exciting so we carried out a lot of research into psychological horror trailers, making sure that when we made our own one, everything was done properly.

When looking at the mise-en-scene, our main focus was using low key lighting as our group all agreed that this is one of the most affective things when you’re trying to make a good horror trailer. We used low key lighting whenever we could as it gave our trailer an eerie twist, like many horror films do such as ‘Paranormal Activity’ (2007). Due to our location, we mainly filmed during the day so it was quite difficult getting the lighting correct on every shot so we had to change the contrast in some of the shots to make it darker. Another thing we tried to incorporate into our horror trailer is an enclosed location, and the garage where Caitie hangs herself is quite spooky so it made our horror trailer seem very professional, just like ‘Evil Dead’ (2013) or ‘Woman in Black’ (2012). One thing we tried to avoid in our trailer was body horror as we were making a purely psychological horror and felt that body horror wouldn’t fit well with the storyline, and would risk making the trailer for ‘Lullaby’ seem a bit comical.

With the sound, we used conventional parallel music throughout, using three copyright free tracks downloaded from the internet. The primary parallel music of the eerie “Hush Little Baby” lullaby was a focus used to build suspense and a different version of the same lullaby was used the ending seem really spooky. It could be argued that the lullaby music we used is contrapuntal as it is a children’s song, but we used a creepy version to make the ending of the trailer quite disturbing. To make a dramatic horror trailer, we had to make sure we included lots of close up camera shots so the audience could really see the emotion within the characters. We used the close up shots a lot with the main character Caitie, so the audience could see exactly what she was going through and sympathise with her and to be afraid of her. We took inspiration from films such as ‘The Conjuring’ (2013). Another way we tried to scare the audience was by using a handheld camera and point of view shots like they do in horror films like ‘The Blair Witch Project’. (1999) This is to make the audience feel like they are in the film with the characters as they are seeing a lot of things from a scared character prospective. We also experimented with different camera/expressionist camera angles. For example when the main male character is taking the baby, we used a low angle to connote his power that he has over his wife, and when she hangs herself we use a high angle to show the lack of power she has and how low she feels. We were inspired by ‘Breaking Bad’ (see image below) and we wanted to try and include some of our own unusual camera shots to really get across the different emotions that each character shows.

Like a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films, we used pacing to build suspense throughout our trailer. We stared off using longer shots of around 2-3 seconds to establish the storyline and give our trailer a more scenic feel to it, but then the suspense starts to build and the shots are speeding up from 0.5-1.5 second shots, making it more of a highlights trailer. We liked the idea of the ‘Cloverfield’ (2008) trailer as it starts of as a slow, casual trailer and then all of a sudden the pacing picks up and it starts getting really interesting and exciting, a lot like our trailer. For example towards the end of the trailer the shots are a lot more interesting and scary whereas at the start we’re just setting the storyline.

When it came to filming the trailer, I had a lot of interesting ideas with different camera angles we could use as I studied quite a few horror films and I knew which camera angles looked best and which ones create more mood and effect. I also felt I had a lot of input with the unusual editing techniques that we used to create a lot of suspense, for example when Alex’s hair is being pulled up by the ghost; I thought it would look a lot spookier if we reversed the shot. We also did this when I was falling down the stairs as we thought my character being dragged up them would appear more supernatural and be reminiscent of the eerie crab walk from Regan in ‘The Exorcist’ (1973).

There were two auteurs that influenced our horror trailer; Alfred Hitchcock and George Romero. Hitchcock is well known for his very clever montages and pacing techniques that he uses in his popular horror films like ‘Psycho’ and ‘Birds’ so we tried to include some of his ideas into our own trailer and I think it worked well. George Romero is known more by the film industry for his interesting characters and the way he challenges stereotypes in his films. He made a run of zombie horror movies in different decades where he uses political satire and goes against cultural dominant ideologies. For example in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (1979), Romero addressed the problem of capitalism and consumerism within America by connoting that malls are an unsafe place. ‘Day of the Dead’ (1985) tackles the military and ‘Land of the Dead’ (2005) attacks terrorism. As Romero likes to challenge stereotypes, we thought we’d do the same. For example we our main character Caitie starts off as a weak character but quickly turns into a powerful female killer, making the male hero into the male victim. We also had a non-sexual female victim which is quite unusual for horror films as the female victim is normally very provocative, just like in ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (2004).