updated q1 version

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.

3. Format Conventions
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.
In our research we saw that it was common to feature a memorable image for the icons to horror films on
the posters.

4. 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’.

5. Conventions - Teaser Trailer
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.
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.

6. Conventions - Teaser Trailer
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.

7. 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.

8. Conventions - Poster
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.

9. 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.

10. Convention - Magazine Cover
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.

11. 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.

12. Convention - Horror Genre
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.