A2 Media Studies Coursework

2. Our film poster took inspiration from existing horror movie
posters such as The Conjuring and The Eye. We mimicked
the layout of these posters as these existing posters are real
examples of the conventions of the horror genre, as well as of
a typical film poster. Comparing our poster with these
existing posters, we feel that it conforms to the typical
conventions in terms of layout and appearance as it has a
dark mise-en-scene, as well as a bit of a grainy effect like in
the poster for The Conjuring.

3. The image used in our poster conforms to the conventions of a horror poster as it uses a close-up of an eye
with something in it – we decided to choose this as this is a typical convention of the horror genre and we
liked the idea of it and therefore decided to produce our own version of it. Although the 2 examples above
have images of a hand in the eye, we thought that this wouldn’t really link with our short film and so we
decided to use a photo of the moon instead, as it links our title due to the use of the word ‘midnight’.
We also decided to blacken out the eye so that it looks quite demonic –
this looks quite similar to what has been done in ‘The Return’ as they
have removed the pupil and has connotations of possession. It is also
similar to what was done in the poster for ‘Final Destination’, which we
thought looked quite spooky. However, we felt like we developed this
convention as we combined these 2 elements together.

4. Our typography for the film title conforms to the conventions of the horror genre as it has a has an
appearance that makes it look like blood, quite like the typography for ‘Chopping Mall’ – we think this
makes a sinister appearance and makes it clear to the audience that our film is a horror poster due to the
blood effect. We decided to use the colour red as this has connotations of blood, horror and danger, which
are relevant to the horror genre.
Additionally, when a title contains the word ‘The’, it is typically positioned above all the other text or
presented slightly smaller than the other text. For our title, we decided to take inspiration from The
Conjuring and place it above the rest of the text in order to conform to the conventions. It also allowed the
‘Midnight Man’ to be bigger on the poster, which helps draw more attention to it.
After looking at a variety of horror film posters, we discovered that a lot of them contained an R-Rating on
them and so in order to conform to the conventions we decided to include an R-Rating symbol on our
poster. We positioned this at the bottom right of the poster as this is typically where it is placed on a poster.

5. We have conformed to the conventions in the tagline as it has reference to a mysterious person through the use
of a pronoun: ‘he’. We took inspiration from the first example ‘He knows where you sleep.’ as we thought it had
a mysterious and chilling effect due to the audience not knowing who ‘he’ is – the mystery of this puts the
audience on edge as the use of the adjective ‘watching’ paired with the adverb ‘always’ produces a scary and
sinister effect as they may feel like someone is constantly watching them after watching our short film due to
how scary it is.
In our opinion, we have developed this convention as we changed the ‘always’ to a red colour and put it into
italics to make it stand out, as we felt that this adverb produced a chilling and creepy effect as the idea of a
mysterious person always watching you is quite scary and so we wanted to emphasise this.
Furthermore, at the top of the poster we included ‘From the Producers of Forbidden and Ghoul’ as this was a
convention included in posters such as The Conjuring and Sinister. Therefore, we decided to include this
convention in to our own poster as it portrays success in our previous films and so it shows how we are
experienced in this genre of film-making and so it creates a good image for this upcoming film. It also helps to
attract a wider audience to this upcoming film as they may have watched the previous films and enjoyed it,
therefore they may assume that this new film will be as good or better and so be more drawn to watch it.

6. We took inspiration from a range of posters such as The Conjuring, Sinister and Smiley
when choosing whether to put ‘Coming Soon’ or the date of release. In the end, we decided
to go with ‘Coming Soon’ as it has a more ominous and mysterious effect due to the use of
the word ‘Soon’ as no one is sure when it will be out and it will come as a shock when it is
released; it symbolises how the ‘Midnight Man’ may appear when unexpected, which
produces a scary effect.
Followed by ‘Coming Soon’, we inserted a website underneath it as this was used in several
existing posters and produces a method of convergence as the audience can go to this
website to find out more about the film.
In addition, we included social media links to a Facebook page and a Twitter hashtag as this
was used in a few posters – it provides another form of convergence as the audience can look
for our page on Facebook to find out further information and they can also look on Twitter
to find out more information through the hashtag whilst allowing them to tweet about the
short film using the hashtag. The hashtag also allows them to view tweets by other people
who used the hashtag in their tweet, which may create word of mouth for the film. We
decided to include these social media links as they are more popular with our target
audience and it also conforms to the conventions of a film poster.

7. We developed the typical conventions of a horror poster by producing it into an animation.
Although this has been done before, we felt like ours was more developed as it had a glitch effect
to trick the audience into thinking the screen has malfunctioned at first – this produces a
shocking and confused effect on the audience which we felt like was effective as it has a definite
impact on the audience and helps to gain their attention. In existing moving posters, the
animation is typically quite simplistic and involves a component of the poster moving a little bit,
such as the butterfly in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ poster and so we feel like our moving poster is
more developed.

9. Our poster challenged the typical conventions of a film poster because it does not
contain the logos of companies that helped produce or distribute the film.
Although we included the company ‘White Lantern Film’ in our credits, we didn’t
insert the logo in to the bottom of the poster like most existing posters do and so
this is something we could’ve included in our poster.
However, since we are independent and did not acquire funding from companies,
we think it is acceptable to challenge this convention as we did not have any
companies to credit in our poster, unlike the big filming companies that produced
these existing films and posters.

11. Our radio trailer uses crescendos to build up suspense throughout the radio trailer. Above is our crescendo
compared to the crescendo in The Conjuring. We tried to mimic the crescendo sound effect using a
mixture of royalty free sound effects and although the result isn’t as professional or smooth as the one
used in The Conjuring, we felt like it had the desired effect and worked well enough within the radio
trailer. We generally used them after or before the voiceover as this was a convention that was shown
through the radio trailer for The Conjuring, as this is typically where they placed them.
As well as this, we also used sound clips from the film to give the audience a snippet of the short film,
quite like a teaser trailer. This was used in The Conjuring trailer and so we mimicked this convention.
However, we felt like we developed this convention as instead of inserting them between the voiceover at
random intervals, we got the voice over to introduce the actors followed by a sound clip from them as our
audience research stated that the casting is an important element to them watching a film, as so to appeal
to them we decided to introduce the cast and insert the sound clips together.

12. Our radio trailer also includes a quotation from the critics, using powerful adjectives such as ‘terrifyingly
tense’ to make our film sound as scary as possible – this is a convention used in The Conjuring as they use
phrases like ‘stomach-knottingly tense’ and we felt like it was an effective way of incorporating word of
mouth, therefore we incorporated it into our own as people are more likely to watch a film if other people
enjoyed it.
We found that sound effects are an important convention of radio trailers, especially in the horror genre
as they help to produce fear – especially if the sound effects are loud and unexpected. We incorporated a
faint scream in to our radio trailer as this was used in The Conjuring because we liked the impact of it – it
sounded like a faint scream in the distant and made you think that the scream was actually happening in
real rather than in the trailer.

13. At the end of the radio trailer, we got our voiceover to say the title of the film, release date of the film and
then the rating of the film as this is the order that they said it in for The Conjuring radio trailer to ensure
that our ending conforms to the conventions.
We felt like we developed this convention as we got our voiceover to say it fairly quickly to produce a
rushed and panicked effect as we felt like this was a convention of the horror genre and would generate a
sense of fear for the ending, as it makes the voiceover man sound a bit scared. We thought this would
produce a chilling effect for the ending so that it would stay in the audience’s mind. However, this may
have challenged a convention instead as it makes the important information sound a bit unclear and may
result in the audience not being able to catch what the voiceover said and therefore will be unable to
watch the film as they don’t hear what the film was called or when it is being released.

15. Our radio trailer challenges the typical conventions as ours includes a constant soundtrack in the
background of the radio trailer, whereas this was not used in The Conjuring. The Conjuring relies on
sound effects more heavily and so does not require the use of music as much as we did. We decided to
have a constant soundtrack in the background because we felt like the creepy music box song produced a
chilling and ominous effect throughout the entirety of the radio trailer. Also, we did not have access to as
many effective and appropriate soundtracks as a big company would and so we could not rely on the
sound effects as much.
However, we felt like this worked well in our radio trailer and we liked the effect of it as it felt a bit creepy
and ominous with the music box being played on a loop constantly.