Evaluation.

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

A typical convention of a teaser trailer was that the footage lasted no longer than a minuet and the clips did not give the story away nor were they placed in order.

We used this convention in our own teaser as not to give away too much of the plot, create suspense and mystery but to still give audiences an understanding of the back story. We decided, like many other horror teasers, to only show one death. However, we used a title half way through stating "He thought he would teach them all a lesson" to imply that this was one of many killings.

We did a lot of research around the slasher horror genre and conventional killers within that genre. I analysed 6 killers from various different teasers and theatrical trailers including A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween II. All of the protagonists such as Jason and Freddie Kruger followed a strict pattern. All were male and wearing masks. We decided to follow this convention in our own teaser and so gave our killer a 'secret identity' by using a mask. The use of the mask allowed audiences to understand that our killer was an outcast without any humanlike qualities.

After reading through many synopsis' of slasher horror movies it became apparent that the killers were committing these mass murders as some sort of revenge for what had once happened to them. In our synopsis we have expressed that the reason for our killings was because he wanted to be famous, known all around the world. He believed that his victims were too popular for their own good and he wanted to teach them all a lesson, referring back to our tagline on the poster and the still in our teaser.

A convention that we decided to challenge was the idea of a voiceover. Many of the existing teasers and theatrical trailers that we watched included a voiceover. We decided that that by not using a voiceover it would create more suspense and mystery for the audience. We developed this convention by adding in a still title which helped the story to progress.

I also looked into the conventions and typical features of horror movie posters. I found that many of the posters contained an image of their killers, looking their scariest within an establishing shot such as a forest or scary house. We decided to challenge these conventions by styalizing our poster and placing him in a plain black background, with blood running down the wall. The use of the bloodstained wall helped portray our genre and also stuck to conventions. The colours used were also conventional. it became apparent that typical colours used in classic horror movie posters were black and red.

Similarly to the poster, we looked at existing magazine front covers to decide which forms and conventions we needed to include in my own. We took inspiration from existing magazines such as Empire, a well known film magazine, and Fangoria, a magazine dedicated to horror movies. We decided that our magazine would be called Film Extreme as we felt that this would appeal to audiences of all backgrounds and ages. Our research into masterheads was extensive as we wanted to make sure that it was eye catching yet not too overpowering for the reader. We also believed that this would set our magazine apart from the rest because as soon as you see the masterhead, you instantly know that it is dedicated to films and films only. After thorough research it also became apparent that the protagonists on the front cover were always dominant and usually employed a mid shot, and so decided to follow this convention in our own magazine. This gave us enough space around the image to include various subheadings indication what audiences could expect inside the magazine. We chose articles that related to the horror genre and also gave our magazine a subheading indicating that this edition was a ‘slasher horror special’.

We followed these conventions as closely as possible to ensure that our trailer complied with conventions and to fulfil our brief.