In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Like many other trailers, a key convention, is to show intertitles. Each intertitle is part of a sentence which keeps the audience waiting for the next part of the sentence. This keeps the audience on edge, waiting for what the trailer is about to tell us. The words that appear in the trailer, help to give certain facts to the audience as to what the film will be about and entices them to want to find out more. The colour design used with the text in our trailer is red which is a horror convention and often used within horror. I believe this emphasises the genre that the film is. The effect we used with the blurred redness behind the writing demonstrates disorientation of which the girl deals with when being tortured. Both trailers use a black background which is again a horror convention and adds to the darkness within the teaser trailer.  

Halloween uses a similar shot using a horror convention where the camera is angled upwards from an extreme low angle, up the stairs. Light is shining through from the top of the stairs and this gives the sense of being in the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. I feel this makes the audience scared as to what is at the top. The low key lighting is a typical horror convention of which we associate with fear. 

A typical convention within horror is blood and gore, and this is shown here in the film trailer Basement and our trailer, The Mentor. Knives, blood, cuts and wounds are often involved in horror films and for example, this is shown to extreme in Eden Lake (a trailer earlier discussed). The shot is a close-up which shows the blood and deep cut to extreme. The lighting in both shots is ambient. The 'Basement' shot is entirely dark whereas our close-up shot of the knife going into the arm only has dark around the outer arm, however light is placed in the specific place of the wound. 

Another typical convention we see in horror, is when the protagonist has been tied to a chair. The audience automatically assume that they are going to be tortured, pyshically and maybe mentally as they can not move, runaway or protect themselves. This is shown in both Hostel and The Mentor. However, the shot within Hostel shows the man's whole body, with the camera right in front of the character framing the person in a medium shot. The lighting is low-key in this establishing shot and so the audience can not see what is in the dark background. Contrasted against this, we used a high angle above the girl and we wanted to do this to give the impression that it is the antagonist above the girl, torturing her. This gives the impression that we are the in the 'eyes of the monster' which is a successful convention within horror. I do believe however, that the camera angle used in our trailer, 'The Mentor' is very much appropriate and follows the horror movie conventions.

'Wrong Turn' and our trailer, 'The Mentor' both use a convention of horror with the setting of the woods. This is a typical setting within horror which emphasises loneliness. Trailers must also clearly establish the genre of the movie being advertised. The genre is shown with the location in both trailers above due to the woods being a typical location of horror. The light shining through the trees also suggests maybe that the positive surrounding is outside and that the protagonist is in the darkness away from the light and away from normality. We never see horror films that show the woods in the light as darkness a very important element in horror and we can see this in both of the screen shots above. An over the shoulder shot is used in 'Wrong Turn' and this gives us the impression that the monster is behind her, lurking in the darkness. However in our trailer, we used a shot where the protagonist is running towards us, running into darkness which adds fear. If we were to film again however, I do feel that the over the shoulder shot would be more successful within this part of the trailer. This is something I feel didn't work so well. 

The two screenshots show a key horror convention where the antagonist is walking down a backlit corridor. The lighting in the background makes a silhouette, which blacks out the features of the face. Also, the camera is positioned in an extreme low-angle in both trailers which is also a key horror convention. I feel both hold a menacing feel where the camera angle helps to show the power and control the antagonist has. I feel this helps to scare the audience which is of course essential within horror. We took this idea of the backlit corridor and incoporated it into our trailer. 


I feel however, to make this an even better shot I feel the lighting in the background should be darker. 

These two screen shots show both horror and trailer conventions. Trailers will always show the title of the film and conventionally they take place within the last seconds of the trailer. Horror conventions are shown where the colour red is used within the title (although the colour may not be clear in the screen shot of our trailer, it is within the actual trailer). They both use black backgrounds, creating the conventional horror appearance and emphasising the darkness within the film. The fonts however in each trailer are different and in 'My Bloody Valentine' the font is stronger and bolder which I feel is very effective and stands out. The actual font appears to have cracks and looks dirty which contrasts against the font we used in ours. However, the font in our trailer crackles and moves slightly. I feel this is so effective as it leaves the audience feeling on edge as if something is about to happen next or the tension has built up throughout the trailer and finally comes to an end, yet in a really creepy title. Both titles also are positioned in the centre of the screen which is very common in all trailers. I feel that both titles work effectively on the audience and both show conventions of horror within the two.



Also, a typical convention of a teaser trailer is the length of 1 minute to 1 minute and 30 seconds. Our trailer is 1:49 which is slightly over, and this is something we should have worked on, however it was hard as we felt the content within our trailer was absolutely neccessary. Our trailer involved quick shots throughout which meant that the trailer did not drag on with long durated shots. Therefore, I feel our trailer worked effectively.