QUESTION 1. In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Individually and as a group , we looked at media products so that we could understand in deeper depth the conventions of horror for example unlike drama, where the goal is to get the audience to experience a range of emotions, horror has a much simpler goal. The goal is to get the audience to experience fear. An expert in the horror genre will have a number of tools at her disposal to create fear. In the beginning we produced three textual analyses, one of a magazine front cover, one of a horror movie poster and the other of a horror teaser trailer. This would give us an insight to what makes horror, horror. It would help us decide what type of camera angles would look best for the poster, magazine and or the trailer.
The rules that we used when creating our work were that of the conventions of horror films. Each genre of horror films has their own twist on the conventions and that in itself defines that genre. For our product we decided on following the psychological thriller genre. The miss-en-scene that has been used throughout the films that we have studied are as follows:
Costumes: The costumes that the villain usually wears is a smart suit or jeans and shirts. E.g. In American Psycho the villain Patrick is always dressed smartly in a suit. And in Cape fear the villain is always dressed in jeans and shirt. The villain is mainly a white man. Such as in American Psycho, Cape fear, Se7en. However, in films such as Fatal Attraction, Misery, The Ring the villain are all females.
Props/Colour: Props that have been used in the opening of my 6 films that I have researched on are, The use of white colours of objects and costumes to help identify the victims or the hero. For e.g. In Fatal Attraction all the innocent characters are wearing white clothing and the colour of their walls and objects such as the lamp, the table are all white. Similarly in The Ring the victims are also wearing white clothing.
Costumes: The costumes that the villain usually wears is a smart suit or jeans and shirts. E.g. In American Psycho the villain Patrick is always dressed smartly in a suit. And in Cape fear the villain is always dressed in jeans and shirt. The villain is mainly a white man. Such as in American Psycho, Cape fear, Se7en. However, in films such as Fatal Attraction, Misery, The Ring the villain are all females.
Props/Colour: Props that have been used in the opening of my 6 films that I have researched on are, The use of white colours of objects and costumes to help identify the victims or the hero. For e.g. In Fatal Attraction all the innocent characters are wearing white clothing and the colour of their walls and objects such as the lamp, the table are all white. Similarly in The Ring the victims are also wearing white clothing.
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The idea of a teaser trailer is to entice people to go a watch the film, normally the scenes that are shown are the dramatic ones, these are used to tell the story in a short amount of time so it is important that the trailer flows well. This is done with the use of music behind the shots and the timing of them. For our horror trailer we decided that the theme would be physiological so at the starting of the trailer we show the unwinding of the character. For this we used the first minute into the ‘Orphan’ trailer, it shows the change of her moods. For example from a sweet looking girl to an angry psychotic child, this is when the other class mate makes a dig at what she is wearing. We see her face change from a nervous smile to a blank expression; this shows that the character is uneasy.
For our trailer we in some ways we have changed the convention ever so slightly in a few shots that we show, for example, in our trailer we show the same shot twice one after another. Most trailers are quick all the way through and do not give away the identity of the killer but give little hints, in our trailer we show the character have a nervous breakdown as the viewer of the trailer we can see that this is the most likely person to be the killer. It is normal for the trailers that of horror films to show the killer but they do not normally show the unwinding of a character that drives them to kill, this shows that we as a group have developed the idea of a 'normal' horror trailer.
We also kept the to normal conventions of a horror trailer by keeping it short, doing this would mean that it keep the attention of the people viewing our trailer. Towards the end of the trailer is a montage scene and this is a concept that is common in most horror trailers and this is so that in a small amount of time the plot is shows and the so are the high lights of the film.
Practitioners of the horror genre use atmosphere to establish a supernatural world, where fear is the common currency. Gloomy weather, shadowy locations and strange noises in the distance are just a few ways to establish that something strange is to come this way. Often, the amount of time and detail devoted to the atmosphere of a work of horror allows the environment to become a leading character in the work. For example, in our trailer we have used quick cuts to keep our viewers interest, he have also laid grainy effects onto the shots to show the darkness of the situations that the victims are in.
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For our trailer we based our idea on Saw 1 and the way that it flowed, for example the first few seconds show the change in the character leading us into the story.
Like the trailer we have also used captions to link shots together and we use a quick cut montage sequence to show the antagonist in the act with the victims. Unlike Saw we didn't show any blood in the trailer, we put the idea of gore into the audiences mind. |
Best Friends Forever Saw
Magazine front cover
After analysing magazine front covers I noticed that most of the front covers that showed horror films had the antagonist as their front cover. For our storyline it was crucial that the identity of that person was kept a secret, not so much to the audience but cause the storyline en-tales it to.
To work around this concept the idea was that we would show on of the victims in pain, this is a concept that is normally used for posters but can work for magazines. This was so no part of the story was ruined and the identity of the murderer remains unknown. However we have followed conventions regarding the cover lines, date, bar code and the puff used these are common grounds of a magazine. The colour scheme has been made eye catching and like all horror products the colour red has been worked into it. We have tried to incorporate the idea that the magazine is up to date and has the appeal to every film lover and not just that of the horror genre.
To work around this concept the idea was that we would show on of the victims in pain, this is a concept that is normally used for posters but can work for magazines. This was so no part of the story was ruined and the identity of the murderer remains unknown. However we have followed conventions regarding the cover lines, date, bar code and the puff used these are common grounds of a magazine. The colour scheme has been made eye catching and like all horror products the colour red has been worked into it. We have tried to incorporate the idea that the magazine is up to date and has the appeal to every film lover and not just that of the horror genre.
For our poster we developed the conventions, instead showing a person in pain like the poster beside ours we chose to fixate on one single part of the victims body. Like our trailer and magazine we used the same font for the title of our film, this was to show that all the items were under the same branding.
For our poster I used a Canon 7D to take the picture and added the effect of the bruises with Photoshop, also like the trailer and our magazine front cover we did not use any blood as like an actual media product the idea of it being gruesome is simply implied and not actually shown. By doing this is shows that we did not change the conventions but simply developed them as we've used an image showing distress and damage that our victim has suffered.At the top of the poster we have added the names of the main people that are shown in our trailer, the photo that is used is also of one of the characters used in our trailer. We have added our logo at the bottom right of the poster and created credits to make the poster look legit, the image used for the poster keeps with our genre as low lighting has been used so that all it shows is the pale skin and the dark bruises, this also make the dark red title of the film stand out more. This shows that we have taken into account that it is important in keeping with some of the conventions of a horror poster, its so that the audience recognise that it is a horror film that we are advertising.
For our poster I used a Canon 7D to take the picture and added the effect of the bruises with Photoshop, also like the trailer and our magazine front cover we did not use any blood as like an actual media product the idea of it being gruesome is simply implied and not actually shown. By doing this is shows that we did not change the conventions but simply developed them as we've used an image showing distress and damage that our victim has suffered.At the top of the poster we have added the names of the main people that are shown in our trailer, the photo that is used is also of one of the characters used in our trailer. We have added our logo at the bottom right of the poster and created credits to make the poster look legit, the image used for the poster keeps with our genre as low lighting has been used so that all it shows is the pale skin and the dark bruises, this also make the dark red title of the film stand out more. This shows that we have taken into account that it is important in keeping with some of the conventions of a horror poster, its so that the audience recognise that it is a horror film that we are advertising.