2. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms of real
media products?
Section A:
For our media product we chose to do a gory horror with zombies because they have
become increasingly popular in the last few years with the success of such films such as
Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead. The decision to have zombies in our product gives us a
lot of chances to experiment with gore effects and the killing of characters. Our trailer fits into
the genre by using similar character types such as a male hero and victims, zombies have
also become conventional in recent years like I mentioned before which makes me think
there will be a large audience to appeal to. Although a gory horror is likely to be a fun genre
to try to recreate it will also be one of the more challenging because of the high expectation
of gore. We don’t have much of a budget so creating the effects will be challenging but
there are ways that it can be done with everyday items like food colouring, water and meat
which should still make it look quite good.
3. Influence
I think that our product has been heavily influence by
‘Shaun of the Dead’ because of the mix of comedy,
horror and zombies, not to mention our main character
‘The Butcher’ who is just an average person with a normal
job just like Shaun from SOTD, the only difference is in this
case our hero is a butcher, we chose a butcher because
we thought that this job would fit in well with the
slaughtering of zombies and give it a bit of narrative e.g.
he’s good at killing zombies because his profession is
cutting up dead animals. SOTD also features a fair
amount of gory scenes in it too from impaling an old man
zombie with a swing-ball set to having someone ripped
limb from limb, these are good scenes because they use
everyday items in creative ways to kill characters which is
more entertaining than watching someone get shot.
4. Thomas Schatz Genre Theory
Butchered can be linked to Thomas Schatz genre theory where he believes there are only
two genres: ‘Genre of Order’ and ‘Genre of Integration’, Butchered fits into the ‘Genre of
Order’ because our protagonist is a singular dominant male hero in a small town which he
must help save from zombies who are the other characters who are contesting the area. The
zombies also provide the conflict which will be resolved through violence and our hero is
taking the responsibility to save his town. The only thing we have challenged in his theory is
that we have given no indication to whether or not our main character has been killed
leaving it as an open ending. By doing this we can keep the audience interested even when
its finished by making them wonder if there will be a sequel.
5. How does our trailer fit the conventions of
Horror?
Section B:
I think that we have followed the conventions for horror quite well because we have used the
same character archetypes, the use of zombies in our trailer is also very conventional as they
are the main source of the gore for our trailer because we do not want to show any
character deaths in the trailer that are important. We decided to make our trailer a hybrid of
a scene and highlights trailer which gave us the opportunity to introduce some narrative at
the beginning of the trailer (scene) and then halfway through we get to show lots of gore
and action to keep the interest of the audience (highlights). It is not unconventional to make
a hybrid of the two trailer types so id say that we where still staying with the conventions of
horror with that choice.
We also used several moments in our trailer where it was broken up with the use of text to
keep a steady pace and to let the audience know what they are in for through the use of
the text which could also be seen as comedic too.
6. What trailers did we try to recreate?
Like I said earlier we have taken some inspiration from Shaun of
the Dead because of its good balance of comedy and horror,
but I would say that Dawn of the Dead also had some
influence on our trailer because of some of the effects that we
tried to recreate such as the exploding head effect, biting
effects or any of the gunshot effects. DOTD used a lot of gore
effects that all looked really good and we wanted to get a
similar level of gore in our trailer too so we took some inspiration
from this film, DOTD also provided some characters that we
took inspiration from in our trailer. The look of our zombies are
somewhat intertextual to the original DOTD zombies because
of the time the film was made the effects weren’t as extreme
so a lot of the zombies looked like people just with green skin
and some blood splattered about while ours where near
enough the same but with pale white skin instead with some
minimal latex effects. A zombie from ‘Butchered’
7. How did we create suspense and shock?
There are several places in our trailer where we tried to build suspense a good example is the
music which I think was quite suspenseful when mixed with the shots of the butcher knife in
the kitchen slowly cutting away at meat got across the feel that we were building up to
something bigger and better which we did as the music progressively got faster so did our
clips which is when we started adding more action shots. The text we used also created
suspense using key words such as ‘Zombies’ and ‘Survival’ to break up the action and get the
audience excited. Our gore effects that we used also gave the trailer some value of shock
visually as we saw in the evaluation screening video.
8. What auteurs influenced your trailer?
Section C:
I think that George A Romero influenced our trailer through his
films by the way he used everyday people as his protagonists
instead of the conventional ex-military action hero that is used in
so many films. Romero also influenced our film through the ways
that he kills off his zombies in his films by using lots of gore. We
challenged Romero’s auteur style by making our setting an open
area instead of a secluded one like he uses in most of his films
e.g. shopping mall and underground military base.
Another auteur that we took inspiration from was Robert
Rodriguez especially on the text that we used in our trailer which
greatly resembled the look and feel of his Planet ‘Terror film’.
George A Romero
9. What did I bring to the team?
I think that I did quite a lot of work in my team and I like to think I brought quite a few things to the
team, I did all the make up for the zombies which took about 10 -15 minutes to do each person, I
started by using white make-up over the face and black around the eyes and then I ripped up
some tissue and applied it to their face with liquid latex, after it had dries I added some fake blood
to different areas on the face. I also did the gore effects in the trailer my favourite was the bite
effect, to do this I followed a tutorial on YouTube on how to make zombie bites out of liquid latex
and tissue. When I finished making the zombie bite I applied it to the actors neck with some fake
blood underneath and got another actor to bite it off. The other effect was the gunshot to the
head for which I bought a Halloween mask that had a pump mechanism and hid it under the
clothes and hat of an actor, when I said go he squeezed the pump which squirted out fake blood.
I also played the character of the Hobo and edited most of the film in adobe premier. I was left to
editing the most because I already knew the basics of how to use the programme however when
it came to the more advanced things like using after effects I had some trouble.
