The document discusses how the student's media products for a horror film challenge conventions through their use of genre tropes and inspiration from other horror works. Research was conducted on films with similar themes of split personalities. Inspiration was taken from films like Jekyll and Hyde for the narrative, camera techniques from Horns, and sound design from Oculus. Conventions of trailers, posters and magazines were also considered to make the media products as realistic as possible.

1. QUESTION 1
In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real
media products?
MOLLY TAYLOR

2. Our task this year for media was to create
3 media products to promote our own film.
These media products consist on a teaser
trailer, a film poster and a magazine cover
promoting our film.

3. GENRE
CONVENTIONS

4. The genre of my three media products is horror/thriller. In order
to make these products fitting I conducted a wide variety of
research so that my products met the forms, codes and
conventions of real horror media products.

5. NARRATIVE
During the research and planning of my media products I focused on looking at media products that held
similar storyline/themes to my own. These themes include the main character being in two heads, or in
other words having a split personality. Another theme I looked for amongst other media products was
the theme of the devil. Although my character is not a devil himself, his devil persona is a relevant theme
in my film. I found multiple media products that closely matched the theme of my film. These included
‘Horns’ (2013), ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, 1953, ‘Sweeney Todd’, 2007, ‘The girl on the train’, 2016 and ‘Oculus’,
2013. These were just a handful of the many films I took inspiration for across my media products. My
film was largely based off of the mix of narratives between Jekyll and Hyde, Horns and Sweeney Todd. I
decided to stick with the idea that our character has a dangerously split personality, where he can
sometimes be reserved and quiet or alternatively his devil like persona becomes apparent. Jekyll and
Hyde has a similar narrative to this as his split personality is more apparent in two bodies rather than
one. I further added to this narrative using ideas from Horns, when Daniel Radcliffe’s character grows
devil horns as he becomes someone else. We wanted our narrative to be slightly more subtle than this in
the sense that his split personality is shown through his actions rather than the physical being of himself.
I gained a lot of inspiration from these horror media products such as the low key lighting and camera
angles in the ‘Horns’ movie poster, and the faced paced montage editing in the teaser trailer ‘Oculus’. My
research began when I started looking into the horror/thriller genre as a whole. I found that the aim of
the genre is to create suspense for the audience, grabbing their attention with cliff hangers and loud
eerie noises.

6. STYLE
From my research I found that some typical camera angles used in the genre
includes close ups, extreme close ups, birds eye view and low angle shots. These
variations of shots are commonly used in the genre to leave the audience with
more detail however still wanting more. For example, in my teaser trailer I used a
variety of close up shots on images such as blood on a characters arm. This leaves
the audience wondering whose arm it is, why it’s got blood on it and what has
happened. We also used close up shots to leave our audience questioning who is
the mysterious character in black. For example you can see from our nine shots that
we filmed many shots of a characters feet walking, or simply cropped out the top of
a shot so that the characters face remains a mystery. We tried to keep this element
of mystery running throughout the trailer as I found from my research and planning
that many horror/thriller teaser trailers often left out key elements like what the
antagonist looks like etc. We further built on this idea by blurring out shots as well
as cropping like I said before. We are hoping that the result of all these different
camera techniques would be that the audience think that the antagonist is
someone else when really they find out in the film it is the main character
himself. We tried to keep with a dull, dark setting throughout our teaser trailer as
we found this was common in the likes of horns and other horror thrillers.

7. SOUNDSCAPE
We found that a handful of horror trailers didn’t have a music
backing track. Instead they had built up sound effects to create
an eerie soundscape. ‘Oculus’ did this exceptionally well where
they used a drone suspense noise as the base of their
soundscape, layered with eerie door movements and other
creaks. This type of soundscape was also apparent in ‘The bye
bye man’, 2017, where they also did not use a backing track but
instead layered a variety of different sounds to create an eerie
soundscape. Similarly to ‘Oculus’, we used very little text
throughout our trailer. When research and planning we found
that titles and credit were mainly found at the end of a teaser
trailer, and even then there were very few. The voiceover is one
of the main aspects of our trailer.

8. FILM POSTER IMAGE
When deciding the central image for our film poster, we looked at numerous different media
products for inspiration. ‘Sweeney Todd’, 2007, had similar themes to ours in that the character
had a change of personality and almost re invented himself. The central image on Sweeney
Todd’s film poster portrayed the character to be menacing and intimidating through his facial
expressions. We didn’t want to portray our character as a murdered like Sweeney Todd’s,
however like the idea of just one character being on the film poster. This was a common
feature on many of the film posters we looked at as it introduces the audience to the main
character of the film rather than multiple. We looked at the likes of ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, 1953, as
this is where our original idea flourished from. Their film poster consisted of a mid-close up of
the character. This allows the audience to ‘get to know’ the character in slightly more detail.
This camera shot was also found on the film poster ‘Horns’, 2013, which also had similar
themes to our film. We decided to stick with a mid-close up shot as we thought it was effective
in existing media products. We decided that we wanted the lighting in our central image to be
harsh and sharp contrasting like the likes of ‘Horns’. The effect it had on this media product was
that it portrayed Daniel Radcliff’s character to be hiding away from society/him. This idea is
similar to our character that is hiding away from his split personality. We chose to use a largely
black, plain background for our poster like the likes of ‘Combust’ and ‘Flesh-eater’. My research
and planning showed me that a large majority of horror film poster used this black background
technique to really focus on the central image.

9. FORMAT
CONVENTIONS

10. Throughout the research and planning of our media products, I
discovered that there are numerous different codes and
conventions that come with every media product. Although
every product may be different, simple things such as the central
image and masthead make a magazine a magazine. Without
these basic features our magazine would not at all be classed as
a magazine. To create authentic and realistic media products we
researched in great detail the codes and conventions of real life
media products, as well as finding out some common trends
amongst them.

11. LAYOUNT FOR FILM POSTER
The layout of our poster came across to me as one of the most
important conventions of all film posters. From the research I carried
out I discovered that almost all film posters are made to be
symmetrical. The film poster for ‘One missed call’, 2008, consisted of
a central image, a tag line centred at the top of the page and billing
blocks at the bottom. All of these features seemed like they were
well thought out to symmetrically harmonize on the page. We
decided that we wanted to follow this symmetrical convention in the
layout of our film poster. We opted for a landscape design as our
most favoured image was landscape with a lot of background area
either side. Like the film poster ‘Flesh-eater’, we positioned our
billing block on our characters body, in a lowered opacity text. We
did contemplate on filling the whole of the bottom of our poster with
the billing block but this would overlap our text background as well
as it would upset the balance of our film poster. We decided to place
our title of our film above the character head as there was lot of
background room above the image. Our film title would most stand
out above the head rather than over the image. We decided to fit the
actor’s names in either side of the image and directly under the title
to fit with the convention of being symmetrical and having a
‘balanced’ poster.

12. INCORPORATING OUR FILMS
THEMES INTO OUR FILM POSTER
When research and planning I noticed that each media product would not
fully give away the storyline of a film, only hints to the themes in the film.
For example ‘The Blair Witch Project’, 1999, had a film poster which
consisted of a central image and some woods. This simple poster doesn’t
give anything of the film away but does however tell the audience the
setting and the theme of a presence that remains in the film. My group
wanted to incorporate the large theme of blogging that lies in our film. To
do this we placed a light opacity text over our black background as well as
a mouse cursor next to our tag line. We also wanted to give hints to our
audience on the split personality of our character. ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, 1953,
did this by layering and image next to their character in a green hue with a
lighter opacity. We gained inspiration from this idea however wanted to
give it a sense of subtly. Instead we layered our image at a tilt over our
original image, giving the effect of a glitch. I think that we were effective at
giving the audience some idea of what our product is about without giving
the whole storyline away.

13. TEASER TRAILER LENGTH
AND STYLE
Most teaser trailers seemed to last around one minute to one minute 30 seconds.
Slightly shorter than most, ours was 53 second due to the fact that it was largely
made up of montaged clips, a common feature of most teaser trailers. Like ‘The Girl
on the train’, 2016, we decided to layer a voice over our montage sequence to give
the audience some idea of what is happening in the clips. However this media
product was of a slow pace as it gave a full overview of the film. We based
structure/format of our teaser trailer on the film ‘Oculus’, 2013. They used a face
paced editing technique to build up to a climax. ‘Oculus’, which was 1:31 seconds,
started off their teaser trailer with a slow image layered with a voiceover, giving
some background information on the film. Their fast paced montage did not begin
until 40seconds into the trailer where the shot duration decreased as the pace sped
up. We used this as a basis for our trailer except we decided that for our trailer we
would start the montage early on, with a voiceover throughout the whole product.
We gained further inspiration for the voiceover from ‘The girl on the train’, 2016,
where their protagonist gave a brief overview of the themes of the film. We
expanded on this idea and had our protagonist give our audience some background
information of the film.

14. FILM MAGAZINE LAYOUT
My research and planning showed me that the layout of a magazine cover is one of the most important
conventions when it comes to authenticity and realism. All of the magazines that I researched and looked at
seemed to be ‘balanced’. By that I mean that the buzzwords, anchorage texts, central image, barcode and all
other features found on a magazine are placed specifically to harmonize with each other. We largely based
out magazine layout on actual products produced by Empire magazines. First of all, we added the
recognisable Empire masthead to the top of our magazine, matching all of their other media products.
Empire seemed to hold a variety of different central images ranging from long shots to extreme close ups.
We decided to use a close up on our magazine cover as our main character is the focal point and unique
selling point across all three of our media products. I noticed that Empire magazines often had a colour
scheme to match the film promoted on the front cover. Typically this colour scheme would consist of reds,
blacks and whites for a horror film, and often a bright colour for buzzwords such as yellow. I used this colour
scheme for my magazine as I wanted to match an actual media product as closely as I could. I largely based
the layout of my film magazine on this issue of Empire magazine. They have placed their close up image
slightly to the right of the magazine cover so that there is plenty of room for text on the left. On this
particular issue they place information about the issue and price in the middle of the ‘M’. I followed this
convention to make my product as authentic as possible. The anchorage text that I used over my character
holds the name on my movie. This was the only anchorage text I used throughout my magazine as I wanted
the film of my magazine to stand out to the audience, similar to the Empire issue promoting the film
watchmen. Another feature that I incorporated into my film magazine was the ‘25th birthday sticker’. This
was not originally on my layout for my magazine cover however once I added all the text, I realised that the
magazine looked slightly unbalanced. By adding this sticker to my magazine all features on the magazine
seemed balanced and harmonised to the eye.

15. INSTITUTION
CONVENTIONS

16. When I was research and planning for my media products, I
did a lot of research on suitable institutions for my media
products. I decided that for my film magazine Empire
magazines would suit my media products best. Empire film
magazine is a British company based in London, which
produces 12 issues per year showcasing film reviews and
casting interviews. Their audience consists of film and tv
fanatics ages 18-40. This closely matches my target
audience so I thought that this company would best suit
my media products.

17. COMPANY IDENT
When it came to making our company ident, we decided that we wanted
our producers to be independent. We came up with the name ‘RED Kam’
productions for our producing company. We did not use existing producing
companies as we felt that our film would best suit an independent
producer. From the research I did I found that an dents would always
match the genre of the film. For example the colours and font texture of
the Lionsgate ident changed when they produced the film the Hunger
Games to when they produced the film Saw 2. I took this inspiration when
making my company ident as I knew it should be themed/linked with the
horror genre. I used reds and blacks throughout the ident, as well as an
animation that resembled the dripping of blood. I then layered sound
effects onto of the dents to match the animations on screen. When it came
to making our film poster we noticed that some film posters had a small
emblem of their production company logo. We followed this convention
and added a very small logo of RED Kam productions onto our poster to
give the company recognition throughout all of our products.