1. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Alex Roberts
2.
3.
4. At the beginning of a trailer, an ident (or multiple idents) will be shown to identify the
companies associated with the films creation. As of recent years, idents have been adapted to
the genre of the film in order to match its mood and atmosphere more. For example, the
Warner Bros. idents below are clearly different – the one on the right is the standard, regular
ident featuring a light blue sky and shiny logo, whilst the ident on the left is from the latest
Hobbit film’s teaser, and is darker, with a more worn and textured logo to bring a darker
atmosphere and theme that reflects on the film.
Our ident follows that convention and tries to create a sinister atmosphere with the dark
blue colours and black font. Thunder generally creates a feeling of tension and suspense,
synchronizing well with our horror genre that tries to put the audience on edge. The lightning
creates a feeling of danger to make the audience feel unsafe.
IDENT
5. As well as in our trailer, we included
our logo on our movie poster at the
bottom. Unlike the ident, the font was
white in order to be visible on the black
background.
In this media the logo isn’t even close
to being the center of attention and so it
doesn’t need to be wildly altered to fit a
style. It keeps continuance in font choice
but is otherwise completely different from
the ident.
IDENT
6.
7. Camera angles are utilised in many different ways to give different effects, whether to show positions
of power or highlight something important. In horror trailers, tension can be created by a camera angle
positioned high up looking down upon a lone character. It creates space in the shot to give the idea of
vulnerability, as well as the idea that someone or something is watching the character as per the horror
genre. Generally it involves the character not looking towards where the camera is, which leaves them
unaware and the audience on edge to see what happens to their ignorance. An example of this technique is
in the JESSABELLE trailer (screenshots below), where the character is being haunted by a curse.
We took this and used it ourselves at the beginning of our trailer, looking down upon one of the
characters who’s oblivious to the threat above them. We decided not to be as subtle and included slow
dialogue from the creature watching to raise tension and give some character to the antagonist.
CAMERAWORK
8. Camerawork is used in our other media, too. In our movie poster
we use a head-on shot of the doll to have it looking directly at the viewer
in order to create discomfort. This is a typical convention of horror movie
posters, that more often than not feature the antagonist staring forward
at the audience, as exampled below.
Meanwhile in our magazine cover we used an image of Alden
looking to the side, choosing this angle to connote the character being
unable to face the fear-inducer in the film. This is further implied by the
image of the doll incorporated into the back of his head that he’s turned
away from, and the style of the image leaving Alden with black-filled
‘blind’ eyes.
CAMERAWORK
9.
10. It’s quite a common convention to split up different shots within a teaser trailer with
different types of credits. Usually they state the month and/or year that the movie will be
released, exampled below by the “This May” screenshot from the ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’
trailer. Other times they will name the director, or refer to them by their previous work
experiences. In the example from the latest Hobbit trailer, it makes reference to the “director of
The Lord of the Rings trilogy” which is a memorable film series that gives status to the director.
We used this convention in our trailer, breaking up the scene at the start with a credit title
for our director. Our movie and director aren’t well-known and are relatively new to the industry,
so we simply named the director instead of using a previous film title to show prior
accomplishments. The font we used is easy to read and stands out appropriately from the
black background.
CREDITS
11. We used credits in our movie poster, at the top where we put our main actor’s
name, and at the bottom where we put our billing block. Both are large conventions
of movie posters, and we included them in order to have a more accurate poster.
The billing block was made using the SteelTongs font.
CREDITS
