Evaluation Part 1

In what ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media product?

A media product similar to my horror campaign the trailer and the ancillary texts, must obey the correct codes and conventions of that particular genre (horror) in order to be successful. They must comply with the expectations of the legal rules such as copyright, decency and publishing. Also most importantly they must be able to attract their target audience.

When i decided that my genre for my film trailer was going to be horror, i immediately knew i had to use secondary research on other horror film trailers and analyse the codes and conventions that they had used to construct the media text. After i had done this i thought it would be a good idea to use primary research and produce a questionnaire to ask people what they thought made up a horror film trailer i carried this out in my questionnaire earlier on in my research and development, this is where i also found my target audience of 17-22 year old.

The typical codes and conventions of horror i discovered were;

• Dark composed colours
• Masked killers (particular in slasher films)
• Makes the audience jump
• Left on a cliff hanger
• Mystery narrative
• Weapons such as knifes and guns
• Blood

This picture clearly shows horror to the audience. It is indicated by the way the audience is positioned, as though they are being threatened by the girl. This is clearly done by the way the eyes look threatening. The blood is also a code and convention of the horror genre. When showing this to my audience earlier on i asked the question "how does this make you feel?" the feedback i got was they felt as though they were being watch and almost possessed by the character who may already be possessed, they also told me that there was a clear indication that this was a horror film.

I then decided to use the same ideologies of the same codes and conventions in my trailer. I have used the idea of being possessed and positioning the audience to either feel sympathetic for the character or feel controlled by them. As my narrative is different the character is tied up which indicates to the audience she is in danger and vulnerable which is a typical convention of horror. I used fake blood in order to make the character look as though she has been hurt by a weapon or the villain this can highlight the sub genre if slasher. My target audience told me that this image used in my trailer is a good indication of horror and connects with the audience making them feel apart of the trailer. I feel as though my image fits in with the codes and conventions and would be successful in the film industry and would easily comply with the legal obligations that it would face.

The idea of the masked killer is also and obvious convention of horror. This image is taken from scream which is a classic horror/slasher film also other texts such as Halloween have a masked killer. The message behind having a asked killer is that it creates more tension for an audience as we do not know who or what it is.

Again i have used the same ideologies, as the messages conveyed by the image above. I thought by having a masked villain it would create more tension for my target audience withing the trailer, and would make them want to see the whole film. Also having carried out my focus group on my trailer my target audiecnce have said that they would want to know who the masked villain was later on in the film.

When creating my trailer i found it hard to bring in the correct codes and conventions to make up the rules of the horror genre. But after researching a lot of horror film campaigns, it became apparent to me what the rules for that genre where. I feel that i have used these successfully in my trailer and i have managed to create a new artifact that fits into the market for a similar product that is currently being successfully sold today's, in cinemas and then released onto DVDs.

This image is a moving image, which i found difficult to edit to make it more "horrific" after trying different filter on i movie i finally decided to make the composition of the image a lot brighter as it would bring the possession feel to the audience a lot more. my first intentions was to use the x-ray filter however this was unsuccessful as it made the clip become too unclear of what was happening so the closer i could do was to brighten it.

My  trailer is a teaser trailer and is therefore only 47 seconds long. The codes and conventions of a teaser trailer is to not give too much away about the narrative to the audience, as it should not spoil it for them but be enough to make them want to see the entire film.