In What Way Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Norms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?
Trailer
Using Conventions
We used inspiration from other trailers when planning and creating our trailer, click here to see that page.
- The first convention we used in our trailer was the fast pace. We decided to go along with your conventional horror and use a slower pace at the beginning and then make it faster as the trailer carries on, to build up the tension and make sure that the audience is captured all the way through. We took inspiration from all conventional trailers, however an example would be 'Sinister' or 'It Follows.'
- We also decided to use low lighting for the majority of the shots within our trailer to make it more gloomy. Some of the shots we used were during daylight, so had natural lighting, and we decided to make them darker in post production. We made a conscious decision not to use any high key lighting, apart from using the torch in the background for one of the shots, because we wanted it all to be quite dark. We decided to use the torch in that one shot because otherwise it would have been pitch black and you wouldn't have been able to see anything, but also because it created a silhouette around hannah which added to the creepiness and made the shot more mysterious. For this convention, we took inspiration from 'The Conjuring' and 'The Cabin in the Woods' as both of these trailers and primarily filmed in the darkness with a few shots in between in daylight.
- We wanted to keep the killer(s) anonymous within our trailer because we thought it would add a lot more mystery to the trailer, rather than knowing who the killer is the entire time. We used a mask and black hoodies to keep the faces undisclosed to the audience and even used specific angles for the shots so that you couldn't see anyones face, like for the shot in the church that is of the back of the killers heads to keep their identities unknown. We took inspiration from 'Friday the 13th' and 'Halloween' for the mask idea because we thought it would be an easy way to mask the identity of our killer(s).
- We decided to have a non-linear sequence for our trailer because we thought it would go best with the storyline. We thought a linear sequence may have been a bit boring for the audience and we wanted to mix up the shots of the killings to create excitement throughout. For this idea, we took inspiration from the 'Evil Dead' trailer (2013) and 'Pulp Fiction' as there aren't many horror films with a non-linear narrative.
- We decided we wanted to add a religious aspect in there because we originally had some shots of the church and wanted to tie it into the storyline. This idea gave us the reason as to why all of the murders are happening, and a basic start to the storyline which we could then build on top of with all of the other conventions we have looked at. We took inspiration from 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' and 'The Reaping' because the main themes within those trailers are linked to religion.
- We decided to go with multiple victims within our trailer because we wanted it to focus more on the actual death of the person, rather than the person themself (for the trailer anyway, if it were to be made into a film then there would be more focus on the characters). We didn't have a main character for our trailer and we didn't focus on any theory to do with the characters, for example Tudor's theory on having a 'main female protagonist,' we decided to go against this and go more along the lines of Wheeler Winston Dixon's theory on 'sites of activity,' but have that as a theme throughout the whole trailer, so you never get to know the characters at all, you just see their deaths. We took inspiration for the multiple victims from 'The Gallows' and 'Severance.'
- We also decided to have multiple killers within our trailer because we thought it would be a unique idea and there aren't many examples of it in your conventional horror. As we started off with a different storyline (with a film club) we started off with multiple killers and then the idea carried on to our final idea. We thought adding to the amount of killers would make the whole idea a lot more menacing than it would if there was only one killer, it makes the danger seem a lot more threatening to our protagonists. We also had the idea of having a ring leader, which is shown in the scenes of the masked killer, when all of the other killers are only wearing hoodies. We took inspiration from 'Eden Lake' for this idea because we felt multiple killers enhanced the mystery of the slasher genre.
- We decided that would would have killers of both genders because we didn't want this aspect of our trailer to be conventional. We wanted to use both male and female killers just to add something different to our trailer, but we don't feel like this should take away from the main theme of the trailer, which would be the murders and the religious aspect. Obviously, in a conventional horror, you would normally have a male antagonist, so we took more inspiration from films with female antagonists as it is very rare to find a film with both. Our inspiration was 'Bride of Chucky,' 'Carrie' and 'Jennifer's Body' as all of these movies have female antagonists.
- We made a conscious decision towards the end of post-production to have a minimal amount of dialogue in our trailer because I had seen the trailer for 'Hush' and thought it would be an interesting element to add in there. We think that the shots speak for themselves and do not need to be explained with the addition of dialogue, but also we feel that adding dialogue over the top of the non-linear narrative and the sound effects we already had in mind would over complicate the trailer in the end so we decided against it.
We used inspiration from other trailers when planning and creating our trailer, click here to see that page.
Movie Poster
When creating our poster, we decided to use a dark colour scheme to make the poster seem more sinister as opposed to a lighter colour scheme which would create more of an eerie and mysterious effect. This would mean that we developed this convention as colour schemes on horror movie posters have generally been fifty-fifty in the last decade. For example, 'Mirrors' and 'Scream 4' have very dark posters to represent them however 'The Forest' and 'Sinister' have much lighter colour schemes within their posters, we definitely took more inspiration from the darker colour schemes when it came to creating our own poster. Overall, I think that using the darker colours for our poster links well with our storyline and represents our trailer appropriately. We decided to add in some hints of red within the text, and this would follow convention as most movie posters involve the colour red to represent the blood and gore within the movie.
For the image on our poster, we decided to use a still of our killer to represent the themes of the trailer. We wanted to use the killer as opposed to our victim because we didn't really have a main victim to focus on whereas we had a main killer (that acts as a leader for the other killers throughout the trailer) and we thought he would represent the trailer well. This would be a developing convention as many horror trailers use their killer as their main feature for their poster, however it is also common to use the victim as the focal point. For example, 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'Saw 2' both use their killers to create a menacing image for their posters however, 'The Gallows' has used their victim to create a poster that shows the vulnerability of the character which then foreshadows the events in the trailer. Some posters may have both victim and killer on the poster, such as 'The Reaping' which shows both the creepiness of the possessed and the unknowingness of the other leading character.
We decided to have our poster landscape because we wanted to use a still of the killer from our trailer as the main image. This challenges convention because famous movie posters are almost always portrait because that would mean they are easier to display for advertising and in the cinemas when they are released. Because of our vision of the image we wanted, we had to change the conventional composition to create a poster that was both aesthetically pleasing and informational for the advertising aspect. Whilst laying out the text we decided to follow the conventional layout and put the actors names at the top and the credits at the bottom of the poster, and because of the way our image is, we put the main title to the middle right of our poster so that the composition overall was pleasing to the eye.
When it comes to the tagline of the poster, we used the same tagline that we used within our trailer "Fulfilling God's Will" and we wrote it out below the main title of the poster. This generally follows convention because all movie posters include their tagline, however the layout of the text varies from poster to poster. Most movies have quite short taglines such as "Rest in Pieces" for 'The Final Destination' Movie and "Terror... in the Flesh" for 'Cabin Fever' so our three word tagline does follow convention in that sense. We didn't want to over complicate it as no-one will want to read it, if it looks too long and boring.
The font we used for our Poster was 'Calisto MT' which is a very simple and clear font, we decided not to overcomplicate it and pick a more artistic font because we didn't want it to stray too far from the font in our trailer. We wanted our poster to best represent our trailer in all senses so kept the font uncomplicated like we did in our trailer. We took inspiration from a few different film trailers for our font and layout such as 'Sinister' and 'Mirrors' because they had simple yet effective fonts on their posters. This may be a developing convention as many horror movie posters have clear fonts, whereas others may rely on their font choice to represent their movies, such as 'The Ring' and 'Poltergeist.'
For the image on our poster, we decided to use a still of our killer to represent the themes of the trailer. We wanted to use the killer as opposed to our victim because we didn't really have a main victim to focus on whereas we had a main killer (that acts as a leader for the other killers throughout the trailer) and we thought he would represent the trailer well. This would be a developing convention as many horror trailers use their killer as their main feature for their poster, however it is also common to use the victim as the focal point. For example, 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'Saw 2' both use their killers to create a menacing image for their posters however, 'The Gallows' has used their victim to create a poster that shows the vulnerability of the character which then foreshadows the events in the trailer. Some posters may have both victim and killer on the poster, such as 'The Reaping' which shows both the creepiness of the possessed and the unknowingness of the other leading character.
We decided to have our poster landscape because we wanted to use a still of the killer from our trailer as the main image. This challenges convention because famous movie posters are almost always portrait because that would mean they are easier to display for advertising and in the cinemas when they are released. Because of our vision of the image we wanted, we had to change the conventional composition to create a poster that was both aesthetically pleasing and informational for the advertising aspect. Whilst laying out the text we decided to follow the conventional layout and put the actors names at the top and the credits at the bottom of the poster, and because of the way our image is, we put the main title to the middle right of our poster so that the composition overall was pleasing to the eye.
When it comes to the tagline of the poster, we used the same tagline that we used within our trailer "Fulfilling God's Will" and we wrote it out below the main title of the poster. This generally follows convention because all movie posters include their tagline, however the layout of the text varies from poster to poster. Most movies have quite short taglines such as "Rest in Pieces" for 'The Final Destination' Movie and "Terror... in the Flesh" for 'Cabin Fever' so our three word tagline does follow convention in that sense. We didn't want to over complicate it as no-one will want to read it, if it looks too long and boring.
The font we used for our Poster was 'Calisto MT' which is a very simple and clear font, we decided not to overcomplicate it and pick a more artistic font because we didn't want it to stray too far from the font in our trailer. We wanted our poster to best represent our trailer in all senses so kept the font uncomplicated like we did in our trailer. We took inspiration from a few different film trailers for our font and layout such as 'Sinister' and 'Mirrors' because they had simple yet effective fonts on their posters. This may be a developing convention as many horror movie posters have clear fonts, whereas others may rely on their font choice to represent their movies, such as 'The Ring' and 'Poltergeist.'
Magazine Cover
We used red as an accent throughout the cover and for the main title because we wanted it to link back to the accents we have in the trailer and the poster and this follows your conventional horror magazine cover because many of them use red as a main colour or as an accent. Using red represents the blood and horror throughout our storyline. We used white and grey for the the rest of the text because we wanted them to stand out from the background, this is developing convention because many movie magazine covers use white but not many use grey which makes our poster different from the rest. The image we decided to take has a green tone to it because of the surroundings within the graveyard and that challenges convention because the majority of magazine covers use black as an undertone for their images. This makes our magazine cover different from your conventional horror magazine cover.
We decided to take the image for the cover in the graveyard to link to our graveyard shots within the trailer and the religious element we decided to have throughout our clips. This challenges convention because magazine covers normally only feature the characters and not the settings that are featured in the movie. We wanted to include the graveyard within our shot because we thought only having the characters wouldn't have any context and it wouldn't have any link the the images in the trailer and on the poster. We wanted to take a more glamorous image for our magazine cover as the purpose of it is to attract people into buying the magazine. This is following convention because companies will take a higher quality image for their magazine covers to make |
the magazine more appealing to buyers, they very rarely feature a shot from the movie itself because that wouldn't have any context without other images to go with it. We decided to have two people on the cover as opposed to one because it makes the shot more appealing and it could resemble the multiple killers and victims we have throughout our trailer. This is challenging convention because movie magazine covers generally only have one character on (the main character) however, because we don't really have a main character in our trailer, we decided to use two of the girls that featured throughout the trailer. When positioning the girls for the shot we put Chloe at the front and Hannah behind because that could represent the killer (Hannah) stalking the victim (Chloe). This will also challenge convention because having two people on the cover is unconventional and positioning probably isn't a big issue when taking a picture of one person.
\We positioned the main title of the magazine at the top of the cover so that it is the main focus on the page, aside from the image. This follows your conventional magazine cover because titles are always positioned at the top so that customers will be able to see what they are buying easily. We cut out around our models' faces because otherwise they would have been obstructed by the text, this is something you will see on all magazine cover as companies will not want to obstruct a character on the front cover. We positioned the words around the girls as to not obstruct their positioning around the graves. This is a developing convention because although most magazine editors will position the text around the edge of the cover, they will normally position the main titles around the edge as well and we decided to put the title of our movie in the middle which works best in our case with the positioning of the gravestones and people within the picture. We have featured some extra shapes over the top such as the stars, the barcode and the 'EVERY NEW FILM & DVD REVIEWED' bubble, we thought including these would add the finishing touches to the cover and add that little bit more to make it seem like a professionally made cover. This is developing convention because many magazines will use this technique however, we had to decide how much we would include and how to position it to make it look professional. At the bottom of the cover and to the left hand side we have included advertising for some other movies, this follows your conventional movie cover because they all feature advertising for movies that are not necessarily featured on the cover.
We decided to use the fonts featured on a conventional magazine cover. We didn't want to stray too far from convention because that would have made the cover look unprofessional and wouldn't go with the horror genre. We used a template for the title as to make it seem like it was made by the company 'Total Film' and we recoloured it so that it would go with our colour scheme. The title of the magazine is larger than the rest of the text, with our movie title being only a fraction smaller and the rest of the text ranges from around size 26-40 (with the whole cover being A3 sized). We decided to follow convention with the size of the text because straying too far from that would have created an unbalanced cover and given it an unprofessional feel. We developed this convention by positioning the text a little bit differently from a conventional horror movie cover.
\We positioned the main title of the magazine at the top of the cover so that it is the main focus on the page, aside from the image. This follows your conventional magazine cover because titles are always positioned at the top so that customers will be able to see what they are buying easily. We cut out around our models' faces because otherwise they would have been obstructed by the text, this is something you will see on all magazine cover as companies will not want to obstruct a character on the front cover. We positioned the words around the girls as to not obstruct their positioning around the graves. This is a developing convention because although most magazine editors will position the text around the edge of the cover, they will normally position the main titles around the edge as well and we decided to put the title of our movie in the middle which works best in our case with the positioning of the gravestones and people within the picture. We have featured some extra shapes over the top such as the stars, the barcode and the 'EVERY NEW FILM & DVD REVIEWED' bubble, we thought including these would add the finishing touches to the cover and add that little bit more to make it seem like a professionally made cover. This is developing convention because many magazines will use this technique however, we had to decide how much we would include and how to position it to make it look professional. At the bottom of the cover and to the left hand side we have included advertising for some other movies, this follows your conventional movie cover because they all feature advertising for movies that are not necessarily featured on the cover.
We decided to use the fonts featured on a conventional magazine cover. We didn't want to stray too far from convention because that would have made the cover look unprofessional and wouldn't go with the horror genre. We used a template for the title as to make it seem like it was made by the company 'Total Film' and we recoloured it so that it would go with our colour scheme. The title of the magazine is larger than the rest of the text, with our movie title being only a fraction smaller and the rest of the text ranges from around size 26-40 (with the whole cover being A3 sized). We decided to follow convention with the size of the text because straying too far from that would have created an unbalanced cover and given it an unprofessional feel. We developed this convention by positioning the text a little bit differently from a conventional horror movie cover.
Below are some magazine covers that we took inspiration from, we wanted our magazine cover to be dark and menacing like the Joker and the darker colour scheme from the Marvel cover, and we wanted there to be multiple cast members on it so we looked for magazines which had that. If there is more than one person on the cover, there tends to be someone at the front and then everyone else is positioned behind. This gave us the idea for the layout of our characters on our magazine cover, we positioned one person towards the front of the image and the other behind to symbolise the killer stalking the victim. Having more than one person may challenge convention as magazine covers (especially horror) normally only have one person or feature from the movie it is representing, however when looking for inspiration with more than one person we found that different genres of movie may feature more than one person, such as the superhero franchise, 'Marvel.' In the end we took the most inspiration from the Maleficent Total Film cover because we thought the layout was appropriate, however we had to change the colour scheme because it didn't match the look we were going for.
-SB
Innocence
The presentation below will give you a detailed annotation of my magazine showing all of the different aspects. It looks over what makes it successful to the distributor and also my film. It shows the relations which I have added and the professionalism that has been included. There are eight factors which are included which are magazine information, slogan, colour scheme, layout, spell lines, anchorage text, background image and mast head.
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-BH