1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
1. 1) In what ways does your
media product use, develop
or challenge forms and
conventions of real media
products?
2. TRAILER
Similarly to other trailers, we begin our trailer with the ‘dimension pictures’ franchise logo, but then
challenge the conventions of horror trailers, by editing the logo to flicker and coincide with the non
diegetic electrical buzz noise we have edited in. This effect signifies the ahead disequilibrium in the
trailer.
An establishing shot follows, which through our research we found was very conventional at the start
of horror trailers, and so decided to add in.
3. Moment of
Equilibrium Disequilibrium
Disequilibrium
Following Todorov’s narrative theory, similar to other trailers, we showed our equilibrium, moment of
disequilibrium and diequilibrium clearly throughout the trailer. However, we did notice in our research
stages, that most trailers showed no new equilibrium to follow Roland Barthes’ pleasure of text theory,
and so we followed this convention also.
4. Our tone cards follow the codes and conventions of horror, and are similar to the ones from ‘The
Descent’ trailer, as we imposed them onto a black background, connoting the dark, unknown fears of
horror, and with red writing, depicting the bloodshed, killing side to the trailer. However, we challenged
the conventions of horror trailer tone cards, as we edited ours to flicker and blur, to coincide with the
unsettling nature of the horror genre. We have yet to see any real media product do the same thing.
5. The lighting in our trailer, although not necessarily as dark as other trailers, is conventionally dark to
display the night time, more frightening aspects to horror. It wasn’t possible for us to film during the night
time, and when it was dark, so we shot during early evening, and darkened the shots individually during
editing.
During editing, we added sound to our trailer, ranging from sharpening knife sounds and footsteps, to
conventional horror girl screams. We added these because we found them quite stereotypical and
common in real horror trailers. We also noted, that in other trailers, the calmer music was added with the
shots showing equilibrium, and gradually building up to the most dramatic music with the shots
displaying disequilibrium, in order to build tension for the audience. So we decided to use this
convention in our trailer, in order to build the tension for the audience.
Conventionally, in horror trailers, the editing is slow and steady at the start during the shots of equilibrium
to help build a narrative for the audience, but begins to speed up and use a lot of jump cuts as the
shots of disequilibrium are shown. We decided to follow this convention, and use many jump cuts, so
that some shots only last less than a few seconds, to coincide with the fast paced dramatic
background music, and the disequilibrium stages of our trailer.
6. When selecting our characters, and deciding what character types we would use in our plot, we
carefully considered Propp’s character type theory and Carol Clover’s final girl theory. From watching
other real media products, we discovered that the most common character types in horror were the
surviving final girl, the promiscuous blonde girl, the jock and the obvious killer. We decided to use this
convention in our horror trailer and include all of these character types. For the characters’ clothing, we
decided to follow conventions, and so the promiscuous girl would wear skimpy, revealing clothes, the
surviving final girl would wear more covered up, sophisticated clothing, the jock fashionable, laidback
clothing, and the killer a hooded jumper to play on the common public fear of hooded, unknown
figures.
