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

Throughout the stages of producing the horror trailer my group tried to incorporate as many horror conventions as possible so that it would have the desired effect and would fit well with the genre and work well as a trailer.

The above image shows a screenshot from my trailer (right) and a screenshot from a trailer for The Ring (left). Both shots show the "monster" of the films that they belong too. A classic horror convention would be to hide the monsters face slightly so that the audience cannot see it properly. Both the shot from my trailer and the one from The Ring do this. Another horror convention is to have close ups of the monster. The two shots above are not exactly close ups but I feel that they give a similar effect. The shot from trailer is at a low angle. Obscure and unusual angles are very often used in horror films so this shot fits with conventions. 

This image shows a screenshot from my groups trailer and a screenshot from an actual horror movie with a girl entering an attic. The shots show the reverse of each other though as the shot from our trailer shows a girl entering the attic from below outside the attic and the shot from the actual horror movie trailer shows it from inside the attic. This shot fits with horror conventions as it is taken from a low angle, which is very common in horror films. Also, attics are often considered to be quite creepy which fits with the genre of horror. In a number of horror films people venture into the attic.

Here are screenshots from my groups trailer and the trailer for the 1978 film Halloween. Both show the outside of a house and both occur at night. One very common horror convention is that the films mostly take place at night when everything is dark. This makes them much more creepy than if they were set in the day time as you never know what could be hiding in the dark. It is also quite common for horror films to be set in a large house. The house in our picture isn't all on show and is not as big as the one in Halloween. Another common convention in horror trailers is Point of View shots from the monster. The shot from our horror trailer could be considered to be a POV shot of the monster looking into the house.

These two shots both involve a staircase. The one on the left is from groups trailer and the one on the right is from an actual horror film trailer. There aren't obvious horror conventions in these shots but they are similar to one another. Also in a number of horror films that I have there are chases up and down stairs. In both of these shots the staircases are not straight down but they go round corners which is usually the case in horror films because having to turn corners on the stairs whilst running is much more difficult than running down straight stairs. Also the shot from our trailer is an interesting shot because it was taken with the camera placed on the floor. This is an interesting angle and allows a different view of the scene than if it were shot from higher up.

These two shots are similar to each other but it is also quite hard to distinguish what they are showing. Each shot is one that is after a camera has been dropped on the floor. The one on the right is from The Blair Witch Project trailer. This is an entirely handheld film and a lot of our footage is also hand held. Both shots show a camera lying on its side. These fit with horror conventions because there is sometimes handheld footage in horror movies and quite often when footage is shot for a movie in handheld the camera will get dropped at some point and we will see this still from the point of view of the camera. Also, once again it is a unique angle which is very common thing in horror films.

The shot on the right is from the horror film Paranormal Activity 3. Both the shot from my groups trailer and this one show the monster of the film surrounded by darkness. The dark is obviously a very common horror convention. The shot of the person standing there alone is also quite creepy. They are also both standing in a similar position which perhaps enhances the lifeless elements of them. A trailer convention is too not give too much away. Both of these shots show the monster in little light so we are unable to see them clearly which makes them look more eerie and also helps to not show the monster too much in just the trailer.

The similarities and conventions shown in these two shots are not very apparent when seeing just the shots themselves. Both shots are showing something that has been found in the attic of an house. An attic is often symbolic of the unconscious which fits very well with the storyline of our film. In the shot from Paranormal Activity it is a picture of one of the main characters when she was younger and in the shot from our trailer it is a book that has been found. Both of the objects have been burnt but you cannot clearly see this in the shot from our trailer. These fit with the horror convention of something hidden being uncovered. Both shots were also captured using handheld camera work.

Both of these shots show three figures in the dark. The shot from my trailer has two people facing the camera with a third figure in the background and the shot from an actual horror film shows a figure in the background and then two people facing this figure. You cannot tell it simply from these shots but in the trailer you see that both the shots are taken from a scene in a graveyard. A graveyard is a common setting in the horror genre because of the creepy factor of graveyards, and the dead that occupy them. Both shots being in the dark also fit with the common horror convention of being at night.

As well as fitting horror conventions into the trailer we also worked to fit conventions of trailers in general. A trailer is usually something which teases a film without giving too much away. We did not give too much away in our trailer so this fits with the horror convention. Trailers also tend to pick up speed towards the end to increase excitement or build tension. The speed towards the end of our trailer does speed up but not to a very fast speed. We could have made the pace at the end faster to fit more with this convention, however it does fit slightly. Inter-titles and voice-overs are also a convention in trailers for films. We opted to use inter-titles in our trailer as we felt this resulted in a voice-over not taking away from the sound of the trailer. The job of inter-titles in trailers is to give some information about what the film is about and to tease the film. I feel that the  inter-titles we used do this quite well. In trailers you also tend to not see clips all from a certain scene. You get a variety of extracts from a number of different parts of the film. In our trailer you see a lot of different parts that would not be from the same section of the film. Some trailers for actual films are not necessarily in chronological order. The trailer that my group produced is in chronological order as this makes the trailer make more sense and it easier to follow.