1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

To produce our media products (teaser trailer, poster and website), we had to consider the codes and conventions of the horror genre. We deconstructed a number of trailers, posters and websites to identify these codes and conventions and hence either follow and/or challenge them in our product.

TEASER TRAILER

For our trailer, our location used forms and conventions from similar trailers of the same genre such as Chernobyl Diaries and Grave Encounters. When researching these films, we found out that both of these films had groups exploring around derelict/abandoned buildings which are haunted or contaminated. After some extensive location scouting, we decided on using the Klinger Factory in Sidcup which has been a derelict building for a number of years. 

The mood and atmosphere within the factory (derelict, has an eerie and austere presence) allowed the audience to identify that the genre for our film was horror. We felt as though it followed the convention of genre because it was a large, vast environment which gave the characters more areas to explore and more places for the exploring to go wrong.

Another important convention of horror is the use of sound in the trailer. When deconstructing sound in horror trailers such as Paranormal Activity 4 and Chernobyl Diaries, we found that throughout both trailers, a mix of diegetic sound and sound effects were used to make the horror trailer seem realistic and relatable yet make the audience uncomfortable at certain points in the trailer. We applied this research to our trailer where we used diegetic sound such as voiceovers but used a number of sound effects such as screams and booms using synthesisers and compressors on logic to emphasis certain scenes in our trailer.

We also used a number of narrative theories to relate to our teaser trailer. We challenged Todorov’s Theory of starting and ending in equilibrium and subverting his theory with our trailer beginning in equilibrium and ending in disequilibrium. When researching trailers such as Hill Have Eyes and Session 9 we found out that a convention of horror is to end suddenly in disequilibrium to give the audience a shock. We also looked at Syd Field’s three act plot structure. Due to our coursework being a teaser trailer, we only used two of the three acts (setup and confrontation) and not the third (resolution) to not give away too much of plot to the audience. This is similar with Freytag’s dramatic structure where he divides his act in five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. Our trailer did not reach a resolution and concentrated more on the first four parts instead with the exposition of the Klinger factory, the rising action throughout the film of the exploration of the factory, the falling action of a scene of silence with one of the characters being terrified and the climax with the fast paced shots of the characters towards the end of the trailer.

POSTER

When researching for our poster, we saw in posters such as Quarantine and Children Of Men that there was only one victim on the poster and so we followed this convention in our poster where there is only a victim in a cold dark basement. We then see a light shown on the victim to show the contrasts between good and evil (binary opposition) which is a convention in horror. 





We also used a big and bold typography for our poster. We researched other films such as Orphan and Amityville Horror, they both used classic or clinical colours of their genre and then had a twist on their typeface to relate to the plot of the film. 

We then found different typefaces such as "Masterplan" and "Scorched Earth" that would be suitable for our trailer, poster and website and agreed on "Seedy Motel" because the erosion of the font looked similar to the abandoned factory and the stripes that run across the letters also reminded us of the blinds and the symbolisation of being trapped in the factory.

However, the colours used for our typography and poster subverted the normal conventional colours and even modern clinical colours used in horror films. We used a rusty brown to show the erosion in our typeface and a mix of brown and black in the poster to relate to our location in our trailer.  

We also researched a number of taglines when trying to create our own. In the posters we researched, we found that the tagline was all in one line and not separated around the poster. Here, we decided to subvert this where the first part of our tagline "They thought they were alone..." is above the victim and the second part "they weren't." is in the middle towards the right-hand side. This would then make the audience look longer than half a second at the poster (the normal time for someone looking at a film poster in general).

WEBSITE

For our website, we decided to challenge the normal conventions of a website and use our time lapse as a moving background instead of a plain background or picture because it showed the factory in all its entirety and again related it back to the teaser trailer. We also decided to challenge the conventions of colours used for our genre with the brown used in our typography but used clinical colours of horror such as the blue sky of the location of the factory in the time lapse and white text/links in the website. 

However, we followed other conventions of a website to make the website look like it is easily navigable and user friendly, we had the links to different pages, reviews to our film, our production companies and social networking links. We also had our trailer playing automatically on our homepage which meant the audience already had access to our trailer without them having to find it.