In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- 1. In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? By Rianna Brathwaite
- 2. THE TRAILER
- 3. The Pact When creating my horror trailer, I needed to make sure I included all of the conventions which a horror is made up from. When planning my horror trailer, I had to take into consideration the location. I decided to use a house as this is a popular horror convention. Scary and haunted houses are often used in horror films. I also used low-key lighting to give an eerie and suspicious effect to the trailer. On final cut pro, i had to use a colour filter to enhance some of the low key lighting to make it even more darker for a great overall effect. During research, we looked at films such as "The Pact" and also "Paranormal Activity" which also use a house as there main location.
- 4. The Hills Have Eyes II To make our genre clear to the audience, we used a weapon such as a crow bar. This is the weapon that the Trespasser uses to break into the peoples houses. We see sighting of this weapon throughout the trailer. In the trailer for "The Hills Have Eyes II" there is eerie music shown and we wanted to refer back to our audience research. We then decided to try and find some music which was similar to the ones in the films we researched. I needed to make sure that the typography in the trailer suggested that it was a horror trailer. Using LiveType, I selected the "Frigid" effect with a shaky static feel about it.
- 5. Paranormal Activity In "Paranormal Activity" the camera shot used throughout the film is a point of view shot. We felt that we wouldn't be able to achieve a variety of shots with just using a point of view shot so we added some POE shots into our trailer. we also used both high and low camera angles. When filming our trailer, to make sure that the shots were steady and still, we used a tripod to prevent wobbles and unnecessary/unintentional movement. Costuming was also casual clothing so we decided to relate to "The Pact" and also "Safe House" which was the action film that i researched and analysed. We decided that the three girls were to wear light colours to portray innocence and let the audience know they were the protagonists and the Trespasser to wear dark black/blue/grey clothing to portray the antagonist.
- 6. THE POSTER
- 7. For my poster, I used a full body shot image that similarly looked like a persons outline or shadow. I had to take into consideration and also used an enigma, which the view may ask themselves, why the man is standing at a door? I also had to think about low key lighting and an eerie atmosphere. The posters which I had looked at during research had the name of the film in the centre of the image or at the bottom. This helped me to consider the final composition which is placed at the bottom. The image from the poster is also an image which we see in the trailer; The man standing in front of a door. I believe that this also creates an enigma as it makes you wonder why he is standing in front of the door and what his intentions are going to be. I used a central long shot for my poster as many horror posters use this format and convention.
- 8. THE MAGAZINE
- 9. When creating my magazine front cover, I had to consider lighting, typography and also the conventions of a magazine front cover. Before I began to design my magazine front cover, I researched previous empire magazine front covers to get an idea of how the composition and layout of mine should look. For the image of my front cover, I used a photograph of the antagonists face only revealing his eyes. This showed that he was the antagonist and that his identity was not revealed at all throughout the film. By using a black background, I represented one of the conventions for a horror as none of the colours are usually bright. By using red and white for my typography, I was using both of the horror conventional colours which can be associated with blood and innocence or spiritual. I also chose these two colours as they work well with a black background and stand out to an audience. As a convention from EMPIRE Magazine, the character is always facing the front (towards the camera) which is also why i chose that specific image for my magazine front cover. Deciding to use the conventional Empire magazine logo makes my magazine seem more realistic. I include a barcode, the date and price of the magazine as there's are key essentials for a magazine to be purchased.