Evaluation question 1 a2 media
- 1. Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- 2. Introduction In this presentation I will be looking at the ways our media products that we created have shown or challenged the conventions of real media products. I will be justifying the choices we made and explaining the reasoning behind them. The main conventions of our teaser trailer that I will be looking at are the duration of teaser trailers, editing style, use of sound, text and graphics. Examples of real life media will be used to evaluate our use of these conventions compared to our own media products. I will also be doing the same for our poster and magazine front cover with comparisons to real media examples.
- 3. Format conventions of teaser trailer – editing style Another convention of teaser trailers is the editing style, in teaser trailers the editing tends to be in a montage style. The montage style is used in the trailer to hint at the narrative without giving too much away. This is often done by making sure that the trailer is not in chronological order of the film, by doing this the genre becomes clear but people still don’t know too much about the narrative of the film and are therefor more likely to go and see the film. In our teaser we used montage style of editing to increase the intensity of the trailer and match the visuals to the soundtrack of the trailer. If we had used more continuity style editing for the whole teaser it would be difficult to hint at the narrative while making the genre clear because you wouldn’t be able to fit much in, whereas with montage style editing you can show a wide variety of shots over a short space of time that gets the genre across and gives a small understanding of the narrative to the audience. Furthermore, using a montage style means a high pace can be maintained which we used to create an intense feel and worked particularly well for our genre of film. The pace of our trailer increased as it went on, this was done to maintain constant attention of the audience and keep them on edge, this approach was inspired by the teaser trailer of Blair Witch 2016 where the trailer opened with establishing shots flying over the setting and then progressed into a montage. The slower shots at the beginning are a good way of building up suspense for the explosion of the montage sequence.
- 4. Format conventions of teaser trailer – Use of sound The next convention of teaser trailers is the use of sound, from doing research on the use of sound in teaser trailers of a similar genre to our own I noticed that the most common elements were distorted and sharp noises of both high and low tones. Using a variety of layered sounds creates a unnatural distorted affect and works to good effect on the audience by creating a feeling of disorientation and provoking a sense of the unknown which scares the audience. In our teaser trailer we used sound effects rom within Final Cut Pro x and we also created 2 soundtracks on Garage Band. I feel that using both worked really well and complemented each other nicely when put together. One example of one of the deeper tones that we used was "dark drone suspense", this was used throughout the whole montage sequence of our teaser trailer and worked well placed behind our main soundtrack which had been made on garage band. It helped to add depth to the overall soundtrack and maintained a high intensity. For our soundtrack for the build up to the montage we wanted to build up suspense to keep the audience on edge and keep their attention, from our research of other trailers of the same genre we noticed that a piano was often used for a creepy and eerie effect, for that reason we decided to do the same and create a mysterious consistent piano soundtrack which alternated between low and high pitch piano keys.
- 5. Format conventions of teaser trailer – text and graphics For the text and titles in our teaser trailer we wanted to continue the theme of our genre so decided on a font called "American Typewriter". It is a simple font but gives an old fashioned feel which fits in well with the genre of horror / thriller films. The font also appears letter by letter to help portray the typewriter effect. During research we noticed that a lot of other horror film titles were white on a black background, as shown below, so we decided to do the same. Finally, another common convention of teaser trailers is a "coming soon" screen at the end of the trailer so we placed this right at the end showing the release date. This is the last thing that the audience sees so it should help them remember when the film is coming out, whereas if it was at the beginning the audience would be less likely to remember when it is coming out.
- 6. During our planning and research of other teaser trailers it became clear that the majority of teaser trailers had a duration between 30 seconds and 90 seconds. Our teaser trailer lasts 1 minute 27 seconds so leans towards the longer area of the typical range, however we felt it was important to keep it within the 90 second range to comply with the traditional conventions of other teaser trailers. The teaser trailer shouldn’t be much longer than this to avoid giving away too much of the narrative, however in our trailer we wanted to make it long enough so that is was clear what the film genre was. Below is an example of a teaser trailer's length that is of a similar genre and one we used to guide our own (Blair Witch 2016 "The Woods") as you can see it is a very similar length to our own teaser so in this area we have met the conventions of a teaser trailer. Format conventions of teaser trailer - Duration
- 7. Format conventions of teaser trailer – text and graphics (Ident) From my research I found that the ident usually lasts between 1-3 seconds, a lot of idents are animated and involve a small amount of movement varying from little moving features in the text to camera movement around the logo such as in 20th Century Fox. Typically the ident appears within the first 10 seconds of the teaser trailer but is also often shown before the trailer begins so is the first thing the audience see. The company ident we made features a small amount of animation slowly moving through the clouds at a constant speed and the lettering fades in and out at the beginning and end. We implemented the small amount of movement to catch the eye of the audience as it would be less interesting if it was just a still image. The name of our production company links nicely with the ident animation of it moving through the clouds, which obviously links to a storm.
- 8. Format conventions – Poster Title Our poster Blair Witch poster Image Tagline Billing block Website • Title- Centered to it is the first thing the audience see. In the same font as title in the trailer and on magazine cover to continue genre theme. • Image- Dark cold looking colours helps to convey the genre. Background setting helps hint as the narrative. Main character in the foreground to have main focus. • Tagline- Helps to portray the genre, puts the audience on edge. • Billing block- provides information about who is involved in the production and making of the film. • Website- Shows where the audience can go and find out more about the film if they want to. Our poster, on the left, was inspired by the poster from the film "The Woods" (Blair Witch 2016)
- 9. Format conventions – Magazine • The magazine we decided to base ours on was "Scream" we chose this as oppose to other film magazines such as "Entertainment" because we felt it was a much better fit to our genre of film as the other big film magazines like "empire" very rarely feature horror / thriller films so wouldn’t have been as realistic to do that magazine brand. • The title of our film featuring on the magazine front cover is in big text to catch the reader's eye. • "Exclusive interview" makes the reader feel like this is the only way they can find out this information and gives them more of a reason to buy it. "Exclusive" is very common on magazine covers. • Layout of text is around the main image featuring the main character, similar to the example to the right. The image of the character needs to be clear so it has the main focus. • Features the magazine website at the very top for extra promotion. • "IGN" review gives it a professional feel, also convinces the reader that the film is worth watching and reading about. Our magazine cover Example "scream" magazine cover
- 10. Genre conventions Setting- From my research on horror / thriller films I found that a common setting for these films to take place is in woodland or forest areas, an example of this is in The Blair Witch Project which is a teaser trailer we took inspiration from. Characters- From our research into horror film characters we found that they usually go as follows: The main protagonist (often the victim in the film), main antagonist, often a monster or supernatural being that is going after the protagonist. Other characters in horror films often include creepy children or possessed people. Children if featured often play a more sinister role, more often than not it is a little girl for example Esther in "Orphan". Narrative- Often feature teens who make stupid decisions and inevitably end up dead. There is also often a strong male figure who is the protector of the group in the film. Our trailer shows this genre convention through a bunch of teens going into a creepy suspicious looking woods that looks potentially dangerous and ultimately proves to be a bad decision. Jump scares are nearly always used after building up suspense from reoccurring noises or props that represent the antagonist are used to keep the audience on edge. Horror films typically don't reveal all at the end or completely defeat the monster, this is so the franchise can be continued and sequels can be made such as in the paranormal activity series. We followed this genre convention by placing our own jump scare in at the end of the trailer. Horror films are designed to give unnerving elements and sounds through out, this may be a close up of a knife covered in blood or reoccurring sounds of church bells chiming, it could be something like a evil laugh which is played several times. For our trailer we repeated the sound a few times throughout of the echoing calling/shouting for Annie to keep the idea fresh in the viewers mind that she had gone missing.