Question 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We choose to create a poster, trailer and a film magazine for our coursework. We believe our 3 media products both follows, develops and challenges conventions of real media products in todays horror film industry. We had to produce a trailer that was around 1-2 minutes long which was based around the horror genre, we choose to create a supernatural/possession trailer based on the doll style specifically. Our 2 ancillary texts being a teaser poster and a film magazine, these 2 products had to link with one another and also our trailer. We used research and planning into existing real media products similar to our idea to influence our production. As well as following conventional horror products we also challenged and developed ideas, this PowerPoint will show how we did this in our own 3 media products.

MEDIA PRODUCTS

TRAILER…

When coming up with ideas for our coursework as a group we decided to first research into our main product which is our trailer. We all firstly choose a popular horror film in the media. We choose trailers such as Chucky and House Of Wax as these a similar sub genre and story line to our doll idea. We started to deconstruct the trailers and looked at camera work, sound, editing, characters and mise-en-scene in particular. We needed to see how real media products created effective trailers so we could take aspects of their work to embed into ours so it follows conventions of real horror trailers. Throughout our trailer we used conventional aspects from the shots and music box sound we choose to our editing.

TRAILER…As a group we decided we needed our trailer to look as professional and real as we possibly could. We started to look at how conventional horror trailers did this. To create this we choice to add a shot of an age restricting note, which is common in horror films as they are mostly at least certificated 15/18 due to the violence and fear element which is unsuitable for children. When deconstructing the chucky trailer we found out that in fact although many horror trailers can be suitable for all audience and therefore have a green restriction shot instead of a red one, as shown in the chucky trailer we noticed that our trailer could also be suitable for all audience as ours is suggestive to our story rather than violent or overly scary. We used this as it is conventional and also looks professional.

THE CHUCKY TRAILER

TRAILERWe also looked into effective shots that existing horror trailers use, our trailer is based around a toy china doll. When researching real trailers we spotted an effective close up of a doll in the trailer for The women in black. We choose to also use a similar shot in our work also, this is going with the conventions as it is typical to have close ups of significant objects in horror films, ours being the doll. I think this slightly challenge the conventions as these ‘toy’ shots in other trailers are there to show child are involved who are thought to be vulnerable. Although in our trailer the doll is our main character so this is also the reasoning for using the close up. We also noticed looking into real trailers was that the pace and transitions between shots is very quick, snappy and short shot lengths. We decided to use this in our work. We choose to start the trailer typically using more fluid transitions and longer shots and when the action and trailer builds the shots speed up and become much more snappy.

WOMEN IN BLACK TRAILER

MAGAZINE COVERWe tried to create a magazine cover that looked very professional and fit in with today's real film magazines. We took inspiration from film magazines such as Empire and Total film. As we wanted to attract the broad audience they do although our magazine is specifically aimed at the horror genre. We believe our product follows conventions as we have stuck with the layout and features of real film magazines in the media. This included insuring our magazine had the following conventions;-Big masthead-Various cover lines-Film featured on cover in large font-Tagline-Barcode

We also decided after researching into existing magazine covers to use a banner also, using ideas for other magazines like the image to the left. We ensured our font on our magazine cover synergised with our trailer and film poster also. We challenged conventions slightly by adding a free poster inside, which not big film companies would usually do although we believe this would help sell our film magazine as this draws the audience in.

FILM POSTERWhen coming up with ideas for our film poster we looked into posters we thought were effective in similar genres. We concluded as a group that the main aspect of a horror film poster is a strong image usually of the antagonist. We decided also before shooting our main character needed to be looking straight towards the audience as this is also convention to horror film posters as it both draws the audience as well as frightening them as it feels like the character is looking at the audience. We stuck with conventions when deciding what features and text must go on the poster. To make the poster look real we chose to use the conventions; Large film title, tag line, date, production credits and staring. This simplicity is typically seen in film posters as it is all usually focused on the main image to draw the target audience in. All film posters must have a catchy tagline, ours we believe is strong and follows the conventions as its enticing and links directly to our trailer and story line. Slightly challenging conventions we chose to stick with black, white and grey instead of red as we believe our horror film unlike most isn't based on blood and killing so using red which is very conventional wouldn't work as well as traditional neutral colours. We chose to use a very typical date for our release which is October, this is conventional as that is when usually in the media horror films are released due to Halloween coming.