This document analyzes and compares the author's media products to professional examples. For the trailer, poster, and magazine cover created for a horror film, the author took aspects like using suspenseful music, quick cuts, and a vulnerable main character. Color contrasts, large eye-catching images and text, and additional information boxes were also adopted. While modeling professional conventions, the author sought to develop their own unique challenges like altered eye makeup and film rating details. Overall, inspiration was drawn from real media to make the student works look professional yet still distinctive.

1. In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real
media products?
By Deane Bold

2. Professional Trailer

3. Aspects of Professional Trailer
Watching this trailer you can easily identify it is a professional trailer
through the sound, camera angles and the identification of the
companies the film has been made by. The trailer flickers from clip to
clip, this speeds up as the trailer continues which adds suspense. You
hear the music get faster and the noises get louder as the clips speed
up which creates tension for the audience making them want to
watch the film. The trailer starts with a ringing phone and a shot
zooming into the phone slowly, this is followed by a man and woman
showing a younger girl around the house. This is conveying that
everything will be okay at the beginning of the film, but things will
change as time goes on. The shots of the man in the house are very
quick and sharp so that we can’t properly identify who the man is. The
trailer ends with the music slowing down and the title presenting
itself, followed by a clip of the girl quickly turning around to find a man
behind her which makes the audience jump. The young girl in the
trailer is used effectively as it shows that she is vulnerable and an
underdog to the attacker which immediately makes the audience feel
her fear.

4. Our Complete Trailer

5. Aspects of our Trailer and
Comparisons to the
Professional Trailer
Like the professional trailer, we use Amelia as the main actor in
the trailer due to her being a young girl who is more vulnerable
to an attacker. At the beginning of the trailer we present the
companies that have helped in the production of the movie and
as the trailer continues, the clips get faster and so does the
music, this gives the trailer a more professional look and builds
up suspense. We have a shot of the car pulling into the drive and
a voice over of Shane speaking to Amelia, this is good as Shane
is speaking about the house and then this clip is followed by a
clip of the house and a sign on the wall. This makes the audience
feel as though they have the view of Shane which is a point of
view shot and creates a sense of fear for the audience.

6. Professional Posters

7. Aspects of Professional Poster
These professional Posters have a lot of similarities and differences. As
you can see, there is a close up, on both magazines, of two woman's
faces, one old and one young. On the “House at the end of the street”
poster you can see the fear in the young girls facial expression with a
scary looking house in the background. On “The Devil Inside” poster
you can see there is something wrong with the old women due to her
eyes, also the outline on the right hand side is red and it fades out
before it gets to the woman's face. Due to these effects on both
magazines, as soon as you look you can identify that this is advertising
a horror movie. On both magazines it shows the date the movie is
released in the cinema and on the top of the poster it has either a
quote, a slogan, an actors name or a statement about the film. This
gives the audience a slight bit of information about the film to help
them decide if they wish to watch it. “Inspired by True Events” always
draws an audience in as it makes them feel as though it could happen
to them.

8. Our Complete Poster

9. Aspects of our Poster and
Comparisons to the
Professional Posters
Like the professional posters, we are focusing on just one person to try and
draw the audience in. It is another female except it is a young girl. The
devils due poster focused on an old woman, and the main feature on the
woman's face was her eyes as their was clearly something wrong with
them. We took this idea for our poster by doing Annie's makeup (the
young girl in our poster) to clearly alter the region around her eyes and
darken them. We then took pictures of her, picked out the certain image
we did and edited it to make her eyes look scary to make the audience
interested as soon as they see the picture. Our title is also presented at
the bottom of the page, this makes sure that the image can clearly be
seen. We used dark colours such as red to convey the idea of danger
surrounding this girl so that the audience know straight away that this girl
is going to be a scary character in the film. The text fonts that we have
used look very professional, the main title is in the largest font, followed
by the films motto, and then all the small text at the bottom showing who
has been involved in the production.

10. Professional Magazine Cover

11. Aspects of Professional
Magazine Cover
Both magazines have large images focusing on the main
headline that the magazine contains, followed by smaller images
for other smaller stories inside. This gives the audience an
incline as to what the majority of the magazine is going to be
talking about. Both of the titles of the magazines are large and
in capital letters using scary fonts to catch the audiences eyes.
They also have coloured boxes at the top and bottom containing
information on what else is inside, how much the magazine was
and what issue the magazine was. The “SCREAM” magazine also
has a barcode in the bottom left which is a good place to put it
as it is out of the way from what the reader will be mainly
focusing on. The main feature that makes these magazines stand
out, is the contrast in colours, the white background with the
green and black text and the black background with the red text
stand out a lot.

12. Our Complete Magazine Cover

13. Aspects of our Magazine and
Comparisons to the
Professional Magazines
This is our finished magazine design. We opted for a black background with
grey and red text, this helped the magazine get that horror feel straight
away due to red and black being scary and danger colours. We took the
idea of using rectangular shapes and adding text into them, we had 2
white boxes including information on price, what issue the magazine is,
and what else is to be found inside the magazine. Like the professional
magazine on the left on the previous slides, we have placed the barcode in
the bottom left of the magazine, due to the background being black and
the barcode being white, it does stand out more than we would of
originally wised, although the audiences eyes should still firmly be hooked
and the large scary image of Annie. We decided to add some information
on the cover of the magazine about film ratings and awards it has won.
Although we were unable to find other horror magazines which had done
this, we found normal film magazines which had taken this idea. This
feature gives the audience an idea into how good the film is suspected to
be and may sway them to buy the magazine and watch the film.

14. Overall, our magazine, poster and trailer have taken aspects of
professional media products to help our products look more
professional. We have also taken ideas from other magazines
and expanded on these ideas to help us develop unique
products to challenge real media products.