The document discusses the conventions of real media products like film trailers, posters, and magazine covers and how the student's media products both followed and challenged these conventions. For the horror film teaser trailer, the student followed conventions like short length (1 minute) and incorporating a mix of slow shots and faster, more intense shots that build tension. However, the student challenged conventions by only using music from a Christmas carol rather than additional diegetic sounds. For the film poster, conventions like placement of title, cast, and tagline were followed, but using a graphic bloody image of a household figure challenged expectations for posters aimed at general audiences. The magazine cover feature followed conventions of featuring the main character

1. Question One.
In what ways does your media product use develop or
challenge form and conventions of real media products?

2. Format Conventions
“Conventions are the "normal" or standard way of doing things, like taking off your hat when you are inside.
It's what people in a certain culture tend to do. It especially applies to publishing.” - VCE IT
The format conventions over the traditional conventions of each of the media products created, the
magazine cover, the poster and the film teaser trailer, each of which have their own conventions. All three
products are very wide in range of conventions, the conventions of a horror teaser will be different to a
teen drama teaser but there will still be general conventions made the same, these are the conventions
that as a group we followed or decided to change and confroma against.
We tried to incorporate a mix of both following the format conventions but also to challenge them, this
meaning that it ,makes our work seem professional from having the consistent style typical of the work but
also have a note to it which stands out and is memorable from where we went against the traditional
conventional rules.

3. Conventions - Teaser Trailer
There are many different conventions for teaser trailers in general, from the duration of the teaser,
to the editing style, the use of music and the graphic elements. For a horror teaser trailer the
themes were different to a teen teaser, for instance from the research we did we found that it was
common for horror teasers to be quite short in length in comparison to other teaser, and short
length would come to an end with a jump scare; we decided to follow this idea.
Making our teaser trailer short (around 1 minute) allowed us to have more quick short shots which
too was typical of a horror teaser. In some teasers we saw that there would be a constant
sequence rather than quick shot, such as the ‘Carrie’ teaser trailer, others would be a compilation
of shots from the film itself starting out slow and gradually getting faster, such as ‘cabin in the
woods’.
By following the conventions of teasers such as ‘cabin in the wood; we were able to really create
the atmosphere we wanted, from transitioning to simple slow shots or common areas to then
changing to a montage style sequence of more fearful shots, overall creating a clear message for
what out film is about and what is involved.

4. Conventions - Teaser Trailer
Along with this we saw that there were also format conventions to the music used in horror teaser trailers.
From researching other teaser of the same genre and having the same themes we were able to see that it
was a convention to have an adaptation of a well known christmas carol ( such as ‘Krampus’ and ‘Silent
Night’) and have the other diegetic sounds playing other the top, such as dialogue, screamings, and other
sounds that may come up in a horror.
This is where we began to challenge the conventions, we decided to go along with the adaptation of a
christmas carol idea because we really liked it, but this was the only music or sound effect that we had
playing over the teaser at all, we didn’t want dialogue to spoil the atmosphere we were trying to create
and I think we were successful in making our teaser stand out by not following this convention.
Another convention for teaser trailers is the level of information given to the audience from the teaser.
As the marketing for a film goes along the audience begin to learn more, the teaser trailer being one
of the first things to be released, this means that commonly there isn't a load of information in it, we
followed this convention by only giving away our protagonist character, general themes, tagline and
release time. This meant that we would keep the audience interested as they would want to know more
about the film from what little information was given in the teaser.

5. Conventions - Poster
The typical conventions for a film poster will be through the layout of the poster itself. In this sense we
followed the conventions very close, by having the main protagonist character on the front, with the title
seen at the top, billing block at the bottom and a tagline between the two. The main focus is the photo
which stands out with its style and graphic elements.
Our image used is the part where we challenged the typical format conventions of a film poster. As film
posters will be mainly seen by majority of the public it is common for the poster to be suitable for all
members of the public to see (ie children), but as our film is a horror we wanted our poster to follow the
same brand identity being shown in our teaser and magazine cover, so the poster had to be graphic,
showing a common household happy figure being turned into a creepy bloody version of itself to sell
our film.
Although this being said, horror movie posters do commonly have a fear factor to them and this is what
we did, so in general terms for poster conventions we were challenging but in the sense of horror as
genre we were quite conventional. We saw that there was a mix of either a suggestive horror movie
poster image or either a clear horror element to the image such as the carrie movie poster and the it
movie poster.

6. Conventions- Magazine Cover
For the conventions to a magazine cover feature, a film will commonly adhere to the house style of the
magazine as a brand and then has its own influence on the magazine in a slight way, perhaps through the
colouring or font style used.
As horror films go, they are not always large blockbuster moves and these are the films which are most
likely to feature of popular magazine covers for film such as Empire, Total film and Sight & Sound, this
was found through my research. This meant that we had to find a horror film magazine, which we did, and
then follow its conventions whilst also making it about our film feature.
As seen in my journal we were able to have our film style image fit well with the house style of HorrorVille
magazine, we added in our image, coloured it and then used the house style of fonts, other images and
titles from the magazine to complete the look. For horror films it seemed conventional to show the
‘horror’ protagonist character on the front of the magazine, this was done before by Horrorville magazine
so we decided to follow to make our feature seem more realistic.
This part of the project seemed more difficult as it was hard to see where we crossed the line from the
magazine surrounding our film too much which would o been unrealistic of the magazine and its
conventional forms.

7. Conventions - Horror Genre
Not only did we follow and challenge the format conventions of a teaser trailer, poster and magazine
cover feature but we also challenged and conformed in ways t the horror genre of films. It was seen that
showing the scary main character to a horror film would be used and sometimes the character wouldn't
be seen at all, we decided to show ours as it was an important theme to the film as a whole and would
give the audience information to the film which we didn't do much of, so showing this character was
important in not only suggesting ideas to the audience but also to follow a brand identity. This idea of
having the character as a main selling point was also used in the IT film and the krampus film, and this
character heavily influences the film's brand identity throughout.
We also followed the style and iconography typical o a horror film, this allowed our production to seem
more professional and realistic as a film. The main way we followed this style was through eh pae and
editing of the teaser, it is very typical for a horror film teaser to begin slow with longer shots and then
have a turning point where the teaser picks up pace, tension and becomes more fearful for the
audience to view.
Ending with a jump scare, I think our teaser was conventional as a horror teaser but also had its own
individuality to it.I think as a group we were successful in both following and challenging conventions in
our three productions.