1. Question 1: In what ways does your
media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
By James Bowman-Spink

2. • My Media product is a horror film
trailer about a teenage boy who is
brutally murdered by a gang of
bullies and his psychotic twin
brother who comes and avenges
him, slaughtering every member
of the group (apart from the final
girl) and anyone else who gets in
his way.
• The trailer in my opinion follows
the forms and conventions of other
media products in its field such as characters, colours/fonts/styles, narrative and
content.
Introduction

3. Use of characters
• My media product develops and uses the typical horror characters in its own unique
way.

4. Teenagers
• My trailer ‘Revenge’ has a
cast which consists entirely
of teenagers. A typical trait
of a slasher horror is for
the central characters to be
teenagers as this is mainly
what the audience consists
of. Using mainly teenage
characters puts the
audience in the character’s
film, supposedly making it
more terrifying as the
audience think that that
could be them. However unlike most trailers, mine consists purely of teenagers,
without any key adult characters in it at all. I believe this has a key effect on the
audience (again which would mostly consist of teenagers), as unlike in real life, in
the trailer there is no adults to help them out, which is a frightening concept.

5. • Furthermore the
characters of the
trailer are typical
slasher/horror
teenage characters.
• The characters
consist of a main
bully (male), a
female with loose
morals, a killer and a
final girl, and a group of other people who get killed.
• For example the female with loose morals (Amanda Brunette) is not
directly identified in the trailer for wearing skimpy clothing or drinking,
having sex or taking drugs. This we believed gave her a deeper character,
giving the audience time to symphasise with her before she is killed. We
also wanted to try and keep the ‘juicy’ bits that a lot of the male audience
would want to see for the actual film. However the audience does identify
her as her character type in the movie by how she jeers her boyfriend on to
do wrong things.

6. Violence
• The trailer also includes horrific
scenes of violence, or at least
snippets of them which are placed
throughout to create a horrific theme to the trailer,
drawing the audience in and ultimately setting the
trailer up as a slasher/psychological horror.
• However, unlike the average slasher trailer our trailer
shows many explicit violent shots, whereas most
trailers end the shot as something violent is about to
happen so that the audience are in suspense and have to
watch the rest of the film in order to see what happens
next.

7. Examples
• One example of this is the way the audience are
exposed to the violent moments when my character
Gilbert is beaten with a bat and has his neck broken.
Graphical violence at this level is rarely seen in trailers
however it not unheard of. This graphical violence
stuns the audience as they do not generally expect to
find this on a trailer, intriguing them to watch the film
to find out what else is install.
• Another example of this is when one of the character’s
has had their throat slit open and we see them with
blood dripping from their neck whilst sliding down the
wall.

8. Styles, Colours and Fonts
• I also use a range of styles, colours and fonts
which are specific to the horror genre in
general. This was vital to both maintain brand
identity and the identity of the genre.
• To start with I use Serif Fonts, mainly Times
New Roman, which look old fashioned and
seem to be prevalent in many horror

9. Conclusion
• In conclusion my trailer follows and develops
certain forms and conventions of real media
products such as with certain aspects of characters
and violence. However it also challenges these
forms and conventions with certain character
representations and developments in some ways
also challenge these forms and conventions.
Collectively this helps make my media product
stand out as well as share similarities with real
media products which ultimately makes it a
successful horror trailer.