This document discusses the media product created by the student, which is a horror film trailer. It summarizes that the trailer follows conventions of real horror trailers in its sequencing, sounds, and plot. Though the plot is unoriginal, it uses sounds to create tension and jump scares as typical horror trailers do. The trailer is also not in chronological order to avoid revealing too much. It then discusses how the student's magazine and poster promoting the trailer use similar conventions like dark edges and featuring the main character. Various media technologies like YouTube, Adobe Premiere Pro, and SoundDog were used in planning, research, and evaluation stages.

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
My horror trailer follows many codes and conventions of a real horror trailer, in terms of sequence,
sound effects and plot. Horror trailers commonly include a scary soundtrack to emphasis it’s genre
and to set the scene at the beginning. My trailer isn’t edited to be in chronological order; this is to
make sure not too much of the film is given away in the 90 second showing. The main storyline of
the film is a psychologically deranged man who’s grown up in the woods since a child; he feels it’s his
territory and doesn’t welcome visitors. This is a very unoriginal plot for a horror film, as a lot of
horror films are set in the woods and have a male killer. The sound effects we’ve used for this horror
trailer are used to make the audience “jump” and to feel a sense of tension, which follows
conventions of a typical horror trailer – they get the audience to stay on the edge of their seat.
This is a screenshot taken from The Blair Witch Project; the film which inspired our settings and
ideas of our own horror trailer. The opening scene of walking into a forest sets the scene and makes
it clear to the audience where the film is taking place. It also makes them think why it’s gone from
the home tapes at the beginning of the small child on the swing to 3 teenagers going into the woods
– maybe it’s the same woods as what the child at the start walked into?
The sudden appearance of this symbol surprises the audience as it’s an unexpected event – in my
trailer; it’s the sudden appearance of the psychologically effected villain that surprises the audience.
This is at the beginning of the trailer; it notifies the audience the reason for the group of people
venturing into the woods – without it, there would be many questions unanswered. In my trailer, I
have included text telling the audience there’s a 100 year old legend about the forest; without it,
people wouldn’t know why we were going into the woods in the first place.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?
The combination of my main product and ancillary texts has been both successful and effective. In
both cases, I have used the same person from the film to represent his importance; it tells the
audience that this character is the lead role of the film. I haven’t taken clips from the trailer to use as
still images, as this would give a small part of it away and if all the motion picture is left to the
imagination, it will encourage the audience to watch the trailer.
My magazine and poster both use some similar conventions, such as the black inner glow around the
edges to give a ‘darkness’ feel, suiting a horror poster/magazine; both photos have a background of
the location used as the main setting in the trailer and they both feature the same person which
suggests he’s the main character in the film. He is wearing his hood up in both cases; this may be
because it’s his identity and it’s what people relate him with.The layout given to the font is in a way
that shows the image without any disruption; the words are set around the main images – this gives
the audience something to focus on and justifies its importance. I’ve used white text on the poster
as it stands out from the background, making it easy for the audience to read. Red text was used
with the magazine, alongside black and white, as it suits the horror genre and resembles ‘blood’ and
‘danger.’

3. How did you use media technologies in the evaluation, research, and planning and evaluation
stages?
Throughout my coursework, I have used various sources to gain
information and footage to assist me in my studies. In order to plan for my
trailer, I had to use YouTube to get the footage of trailers for my 3 film and
trailer analyses. This is because YouTube is a reliable source and the trailers
up on show are very likely to be the real trailers for the said films. My group
and I were very familiar with this website, so we could get hold of the
videos we wanted easily. I also got in contact with some YouTubers and asked them for permission
to use their sound effects and music for our trailer.
The program I used to edit the trailers and put them together was Adobe Premiere
Pro – by using this I learned many skills and techniques with making a project look
more professional and higher in quality. I was very unfamiliar with this software as
the previous summer for my media projects, I used Final Cut. After a week or so of
getting used to it, I found it rather easy to use and knew my way around it. The
range of editing tools and transitions available makes this program very top range
and gave us no excuse to come out with a poorly made trailer. It gave us a lot of flexibility with what
we created.
Aswell as YouTube, I also used SoundDog to obtain sound effects for my trailer. I
found this website to be very useful as it offered free downloads for sound
effects whereas most needed to be bought. This website has a load of
categories for sound effects and so it was very easy to locate the sound effects I
wanted.I used the categories ‘horror’ and ‘tension’ to locate the effects I
required. Without this website, the trailer would almost certainly be less lively and the sounds
wouldn’t be as high in quality.