Media Coursework - Question 2... ALevels.

1. Question 2:
In what ways does your
media product use,
develop or challenge
forms and conventions
of real media products.

2. Trailer
From research we found that horror films genuinely attract a younger
audience; genuinely aged 15—24 year old males therefore, we needed to
stick with the codes and conventions of horror films and try and imitate
some of the characteristics of horror films for example, having an
attractive female lead to help with exhibition sales. The theorist in which
is massively evidential in most if not all horror films is Laura Mulvey which
we kept during the creation of our film. Laura Mulvey’s theory proved the
fact that sex sells whether you’re female or male, you will enjoy a film
whether this be because of the beautiful actress or actor or because of a
sexual seen incorporated in the film. Our trailer has this as we have the
beautiful, female protagonist – Emily Hugill, we have the beautiful, female
antagonist– Nikki Alderton for the male prospectors and for the female
prospectors we have the good looking, male hero – James Trenholme
which is apply the codes and conventions of any film created as well as the
hero in horror’s genuinely being male.

3. Magazine Front Cover
The magazine front cover follows the genres of social realism and
compliments how a horror magazine is suppose to look if I were to put it
into total film magazine.
After doing a lot of research, I came to the conclusion that my film would
benefit more and be a lot more successful from the exhibition side if my
film were to be featured in Total Film magazine because my film is aimed
towards the audience members as Total Film magazine. Also by choosing
to imitate Total Film’s magazine, I was able to publish a much more
professional look onto the magazine as I noticed that if their picture is
large then the text tends to go in front and as the picture I chose to put
onto the front cover is quite large, I followed the conventions of Total
Film’s magazine cover and placed the masted over the top of the picture.
For the magazine front cover, we decided to choose a completely different
picture as we did for the film poster because the magazine is merely trying
to highlight the actor and their role rather than the character itself.

4. Film Poster
The film poster follows the genres of social realism of how a film poster is
suppose to look and appealing to the viewers eye.
The picture which we used for the film poster merely emphasizes the story
of the film in a single shot. By having a shot of Nikki sat on the floor with
duct tape around her mouth with low key lighting, clearly indicates to the
audience, what genre the film is going to be and a sneak view of what’s
going to happen in the film without them knowing themselves.
As I wasn’t allocated the role for creating the film poster I did give
feedback however to try and make the poster look professional. On the
poster we needed to have a punch line, director’s and actor’s names and
stamps of approval by the film festivals in which our film would have been
shown at. As the audience would see these marking, this would help also
for exhibition sales as the audience viewers would know who the director
and leading characters are.

5. Teaser Trailer
A teaser trailer needs to incorporate three highly beneficial points in order for
the audience to want to see more resulting in them going to see this film in
the cinemas.
The first point in which needs to be incorporated into a teaser trailer is the
generic codes and conventions. The generic codes and conventions include:
voiceovers posting as a narrator to help move the trailer along, dramatic
camera angels to help reveal hidden or new characters in the film and a
finishing ending climax to tease the audience.
Another point in which needs to be incorporated into a teaser trailer is the
structure. Even though trailers don’t follow a typical linear or episodic
structure the teaser trailer still need to incorporate and show the equilibrium,
the disequilibrium and the resolved equilibrium that would be shown within
the film.
By having a teaser trailer the audience can never predict what’s going to
happen next and certainly won’t find out the ending therefore, resulting in
them going to watch the film which would result even further into the film
being highly successful.

6. Stereotype
As a contributing director we have kept a few stereotypes however, we have
also challenged some stereotypes. We haven’t got any characters that are
religious, homosexual or multi-ethnic which helps with easier script writing as
we could stray away from the dangers of discriminating against any individual
in this minority group that gets discriminated against quite frequently in
today’s society.
Even though we haven’t got any stereotypes in this aspects of the trailer from
the categories above, we have kept the stereotypes of the masculine hero
who comes to save the fragile feminine antagonist however, the protagonist in
our film is female rather than male. Here, we have challenged the conventions
of stereotypes as the females aren’t normally the psychopathic killers in horror
films however, we know this isn’t always true from the film ‘Orphan’ – 2009
where we see the young girl being the protagonist instead of the male which
highlights women empowerment which is what we have tried to incorporate
in our film ‘The Void’.
We decided that we were going to challenge some codes and conventions of
stereotypes in horror films to one not only undertake an experiment of how
successful the film would be but to also show that you don’t need to go with
the norms, of horror even though the majority of the film does need to follow
them. By challenging some codes and conventions we are taking a stand and
future directors may also stray away from traditional horror films also.