In what way does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

As a group the genre we decided to go for was ‘horror’ as we thought the genre would allow us to be more creative with the storyline. We wanted to have a plot that would shock the audience and include enigma’s to keep the audience asking questions. When producing our film trailer, we did research on other teaser trailers with the stalker horror genre such as ‘Obsessed’, ‘P1’ and Incidious. We also researched the posters and magazines for stalker horrors such as ‘Julia’s eyes’.

After finishing our research we found many common conventions such as camerawork such the shot reverse shot to show the protagonist disappearing and similar character roles e.g. the conventional and stereotypical female victim and the male antagonist. We also found that the themes often repeated themselves, all of which we decided to include into our storyline. We decided to do this because we wanted our teaser trailer to be easily understandable for the audience, this would allow the audience to easily identify the text.

For the costumes we decided that our characters would dress in casual clothing. Scenes in the daylight required casual clothing so that they wouldn’t stand out in our location, this allows the scene to be more creepy because normally horror storylines take place in the dark/night time however we challenged to make it different. This also gives a sense of realism to the audience as it makes them think that it could happen in everyday life. As we were researching we found that many different films allowed their characters to also dress casually because it created a sense of realism for the audience. The female character wore little make-up in order for the scene to look natural (as if she was going about her every day life). For the protagonist the costume was also casual.

We followed the codes and conventions by allowing the antagonists identity to stay hidden during the film trailer, he always wore black and the hoodie was always covering half of his face. Enigma codes such as these as central to horror and thriller trailers. We wanted to create this look so the audience will be intrigued in watching the film and finding out who the stalker actually is. This made the scene of the antagonist look more effective and give a sense of eeriness.

In many horror films that have ritual/cult themes, the costumes usually include clothing such as long cloaks, canes etc. and the make up is usually dramatic also however in our film we have challenged these conventions. In the ritual that takes place in our film the partakers are wearing dark but casual clothing this is so we could put a modern twist on the ritual themes.

We also developed the codes and conventions through lighting. We found through that many existing films of this genre used low-key lighting to portray suspense and build tension. We used the dark room and single light to allow the protagonist to hide in the shadows both literally and metaphorically. Low-key lighting was used in certain scenes when the antagonist was being made to look evil or mysterious.

We incorporated this into our teaser trailer to make it more effective for the audience. We used normal lighting for most other scenes in order to create realism for the audience. In our poster we also used low-key lighting to keep the antagonists identity hidden, which creates mystery for the audience.

In our film there is the protagonist and a potential antagonist. The potential antagonist plays the typical stalker role where he is constantly watching the female protagonist. The antagonist often appears to stalk the female and then disappears before she has the chance to notice that she is being watched. The antagonist constantly appearing and disappearing generates fear for the female and the audience. The protagonist also strikes fear because his intentions are still unclear as to why he is stalking her and whether he is trying to protect her or trying to harm her.

The same conventions were used in similar films such as the Mummy and Halloween. The action is mainly generated by the antagonist, whereas the female protagonist is passive, appears vulnerable and oblivious to her surroundings this ties in to John Berger’s theory. Traditional victim is less common but we went against the concept of the final girl.

We followed all the basic codes and conventions when creating our products including the magazine and poster. The magazine followed the codes and conventions such as the masthead, central image, cover lines, bar code, issue date and price. And for the poster the codes included the credits, the production details, film log and tag line.