Evaluation| Q1. In what ways does your media production use of, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

MEDIA CONVENTIONS OF FILM TRAILER AND POSTER
JOCELYN ASEA

RESEARCH; FILM TRAILERS

Before filming our trailer, we felt it was important to do research into real media conventions, so that we can understand how film producers are able to use conventions to convey genre, build tension and create an exciting and theatrical storyline. The research in effect acts as a guideline, as to what audiences expect to see when watching horror films/teaser trailers. This helped us decide whether we want to support or challenge conventions.

I researched The Ring, a psychological film; paying attention to the use of a blue filter and its effectiveness in creating a chilling atmosphere and feeling of anxiety and anticipation in sections of the film. I also spent time watching the 1999 psychological thriller Sixth sense. This ties in well with our trailers in terms of the portrayal of death; the build up to the climax of the protagonist, for that the young boy seeing the dead bodies and how it made to take audiences by surprise, for example instructmental  What I was most increased in analysing here was the flow of the narrative which leads to the climax, as this section is most relevant to our trailer ideas.  

In addition, I also referred back to my textual analysis to remind myself of the typical conventions in horror films which we could portray in our trailer to have a dramatic and emotional effect on audience e.g. quick cuts, elliptical editing to compress time, slow motion and non-linear arrangement of shots. For my textual analysis I looked at REC2.
Click the link below to find out more about my textual analysis.
http://motionlesspictures010.blogspot.com/2010/10/updated-storyboard.html

RESEARCH; FILM POSTER

Research

Before taking photographs for our poster, we felt it was important to understand the conventions of existing horror posters so that we can create a poster that is eye catching and marketable; one that sells our trailer well and effectively appeals to our target audience. By analysing existing horror posters it helped us decide whether we want to create a poster that supports or challenges conventions of horror posters.

In our research into psychological horrors we discussed the effectiveness of the conventions in The Ring and other pschological horrors. This post can accessed via this blog link;

http://motionlesspictures010.blogspot.com/2010/11/audience-research-pschological-horrors.html

For our main poster, our protagonist is captured loosely clutching onto a voodoo with blood dripping down from her arm down to her hand. The fact that our female protagonist's arm appears pale, is a typical convention of horror films. Make-up to make character's appear pale is used to portray sickness or death. In our trailer we portrayed both and throughout the film Stacey was made to appear, unstable and unwell. The pale make-up achieved using talcum powder, proved very valuable in the shot where Stacey sees her dead-self. The Talcum powder helped make Stacey appear like a decaying corpse.
 The use of blood is iconic and supports typical conventions in horror films as well as the use of a green filter, which was used to create a feeling of sickness and an eerie atmosphere. The fact that the focal point in the poster is the voodoo doll and Stacey's hand rather than Stacey herself perhaps challenges conventions of horror films. We are usually used to seeing the denotation of a face or body of some sort on a horror poster. We deliberately placed focus on Stacey's hand and voodoo doll to interrogate the audience's mind; causing them to raise questions about the sub genre of the trailer and narrative.
 In addition, by placing focus on something unexpected and peculiar in our poster, it also helps to target niche audiences. By challenging and conforming to some conventions of horror films, this has helped our media products appear less predictable and more unique and exciting to audiences.

For our second edition poster, we chose to conform to conventions of horror posters so as to be able to wider audiences.
From the denotation, the excess use of blood is overwhelming. This was deliberately done to create a feeling of sickness and unease in audiences, in the hope that experiencing this discomfort and sickness when looking at our film poster, will in effect cause audiences express the feeling through word of mouth and so promote our trailer. The whole idea of using sheer gore was to make it iconic of our trailer and to create a buzz around the trailer.
We also supported the conventions of real media texts by maintaining the production design, for that; giving the photograph a green tint in photograph to create the illusion that a green filter has been used, as we did not use one whilst photographing our 2nd poster. This continuity of green being used in the trailer and posters, should help audiences realise that the products are connected and belong to the same institution. This is production design is a typical convention most institutions follow, for example; Dark Knight created 5 posters to promote their trailer, they were linked their posters by colour; a blueish-black, with white light coming in from a distance and ancillary texts. 


In addition, the fact we have used a Caucasian female to promote our products effectively supports conventions of horror films. By using a Caucasian female to promote our trailer, this allows us to target wider audiences including niche audiences. We also supported conventions that relate to femininity as our character has pink hair and is portrayed in our trailer, poster and magazine as vulnerable and fearful and so typically behaves like a girl.

MEDIA CONVENTIONS OF EDITING JOSHUA ADERINOLA

In the first shots of the trailer, the production company logo is shown; this is common for movie trailers, of any genre. For example I analysed the teaser trailer for The Strangers for my textual analysis, which can be accessed via this link; http://motionlesspictures010.blogspot.com/2011/02/textual-analysis-of-teaser-trailer.html

This helps to inform the audience of the institutions involved; this can also create larger audience because this will allow audiences from various other films produced by the same institutions to be attracted to the film even if it is not their preferred genre(s) of film. This is the main reason why we chose to add the logo before the trailer began to help create brand awareness and a buzz for the film.

The use of anchorage in-between some of the shots, is also very common in horror trailers, the main reason why we chose to use this technique for our trailer is the anchorage acts as a narrative for the audience, because there is no voice-over sound, to inform the viewers of what is happening. The anchorage also acts as an enigma code for the audiences, because they tell half of the story but not the full story. This in return leaves the audiences thinking what the other half of the story could entail. For example “A Girl Who Sells Her Soul”, the audience are aware of a female character, but they do not know who she has sold her soul to, they are likely to conclude she has sold her soul to the devil, they would then link the genre of the trailer to horror, and this is one of the conventions we wish the trailer to convey.

MEDIA CONVENTIONS OF A FILM MAGAZINE MELISSA MENSAH

As a group, we decided to link our work quite closely to the conventions of a film magazine but also challenge conventions where we thought we best. As a media consumer and current producer, my creativity was based around the conventional film magazines that I had seen in shops, internet and other sources of media advertising methods used to attract the media.

One particular magazine company which we were inspired by to make our magazine was 'Empire Magazine" The reason being was because they base their front cover around the genres of action and horror. This was a good source of research for us to make a conventional link between our horror genre ad looking at they could be represented to a magazine to attract our target audiences. Baring in mind our genre was based a horror we thought it would be a good idea to base our ideas around 'Empire' and using their Masthead.

One convention which we followed the was the Masthead placed in front of the image. But this convention was only followed according to whether it would disturb the image or not. For example the diagram below shows the two different examples of the Masthead being brought into the front and sent to the back. As you can see the first two examples have images represented in a medium long shot whereas the other two as shown in a extreme close up taking up most of the page making the masthead less distracted when a bigger image is used rather than a smaller one.

When creating the magazine, my group and I thought we would take this into account by looking at the camera shot of our image and testing whether both possibilities of putting our Masthead in front and behind the image.

As our image was more a less a large image represented as a medium close up and didn't disrupt our image we thought we could place our Masthead in front of image instead of behind. Another reason for this is that the make up on our characters face complimented the colour of the magazine so we thought we'd emphasis that as the colour red has a stereotypical link with horror genres.