Evaluation

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

Our media product which is a horror trailer uses many typical horror conventions. As a group, we believed that using typical conventions was as important as breaking them. One film we used as inspiration was Sinister and we ended up using some conventions which were found in this film. We used two main characters, one the protagonist and the other was a masked character who was the villain. 

The face of the figure is never revealed during the trailer, so that it creates more tension and suspense for the audience therefore making more scarier for

 them. 

Vladimir Propp suggested that each narrative includes many characters. This convention has been broken in our trailer as we only have three characters -  the other being the protagonist's mother. By using mainly the girl and villain, it almost adds a personal element as the audience could put themselves into the protagonists shoes and could personally think of the experience.

Todorov's theory that every narrative can be split into five categories has, by a degree, used in our trailer. He believes that it can be split down into;

• A state of equilibrium (all is as it should be)
• A disruption of that order by an event
• A recognition that the disorder has occurred
• An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
• A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium

We use equilibrium; where the main character is sitting in her bedroom, by herself looking at old family photographs. Then there is disequilibrium; where the protagonist is walking alone at night and the villain is in the behind her in the background following her.

Another extremely typical convention used in our trailer is the lack of lighting. We filmed a big proportion outdoors at night and those filmed in other locations feature dark, disconcert lighting which creates a more chilling effect. 

When editing the trailer together it was key that we made the trailer appear as realistic as we included a production screen at the start which appears in every film trailer and used text cards which appear in many horror trailers. 

As a group we felt that sound was a key part of our project and getting the right sound to accompany the trailer was vital to get a good mark. We felt that adding a lyric song would create an unprofessional feel to it. 

We used different sound clips which were all downloaded from SoundSnap which is a website which allows users to download soundtracks. This non-diegetic sound added suspense and creates a sense of horror for the viewing audience. One feature which was lacking in our trailer was the use of dialogue. We only had one clip of dialogue which was the protagonists mother speaking to the camera about her daughter. The reason we didn't have the main characters speaking is because of the accent – having a Geordie accent could make the trailer sound less professional. 

Our genre is horror and we tried to ensure that we used typical horror conventions.

Tom Ryall states; “Genre provides a framework of structuring rules, in the shape of patterns/forms/styles/structures”

This enabled us to use certain characteristics that would abide with the horror genre we set out to create. Throughout the creation of the trailer, we have conformed to using many typical convention which appear in horror movies but have also broke some conventions by the lack of characters.