The document discusses the process of creating a horror film trailer based on analyzing existing trailers and films. Key conventions from the genre were incorporated such as using teenage characters in a school setting and a runtime of around 2.5 minutes. Props like alcohol and cigarettes were included to portray teenagers realistically while knives and blood were avoided to keep the supernatural focus. Editing techniques like jump cuts added tension without explicitly showing demons or ghosts. The trailer was also shot during the day to challenge conventions.

1. Evaluation – Question 1<br />Before our trailer was made I watched and analysed many other trailers and horror films. These trailers and films gave me the knowledge on how to construct our main product. For instance many of the trailers were between 2 and 3 minutes long, so we decided to make our trailer 2 and a half minutes long. Convent ion is a widely established and accepted custom and there are many conventions within the horror genre. For example the character convention, teenagers were widely used characters in many trailers’ I viewed like Texas chainsaw, jeepers creepers and also Scream, which our trailer is partly based on. Therefore we decided to use teenagers as the characters in our trailers, as they were the most accessible and also favoured by our target audience. We set our trailer within a school which is also another convention of the horror genre, a school is seen as a safe place where these children are nurtured and carted for so to turn that on its head and make it a place where these children are4 getting terrorised and hurt makes it scarier. Also since the characters are teenagers it would be relent to set it in a school, and also our target audience are teenagers so they can relate to the story which makes it more effective. Some of the props that were used in our trailer were alcohol and cigarettes and alcohol. The hand-held camera was used because our trailer was partly based on Paranormal activity, so some of it was hot in hand held. It was included because Naima character ‘Sam’ was a geek so it displays how teenagers are technologically savvy in this day and age. <br />However we did not have many of the most common props that are used in the horror genre, things like knives and blood and religious imagery were not included in out trailer. Because our trailer is partly based on ‘Paranormal Activity’, it’s more about the supernatural, ghosts and demons. Because we wanted to make our trailer believable we did not have anybody play a demon or a ghost, this added a realistic element to our trailer and showed that it can be just as scary without the villain being seen. The Ouija board was a very important prop because it told the viewer what was happening once that was shown it was apparent they they were participating a séance.<br /> The form of my trailer is like many other real horror trailers. We followed the Todorov narrative structure; we showed our period of equilibrium, the moment of disequilibrium and the period of disequilibrium, none of the trailers I viewed showed the period of new equilibrium so my main product did not either. This is to add suspense and mystery and to leave the viewer guessing which is what our viewers wanted according to my feedback on the questionnaire I gave out. We tried to include as many shots as possible in out trailer because in the trailers I analysed they had a huge number of different shots some had up to 100 shots. My group also tried to include every angle and type of shot, medium, close-ups and extreme close-up shots. Shots from high angles, low angles and even canted angles, and all the shot types were used in the appropriate place as not to confuse the viewer and to make it look cohesive. A range of editing techniques was also used in our trailer. We had fade to blacks during our period of equilibrium and used mostly jump cuts during our period of disequilibrium to add pace and terror to the content. Cross fades and dissolves were included and as our trailer and some hand held scenes we used a camera blur to separate some scenes which I believe worked very well. Unlike many horror trailer our trailer was shot in the daytime and mostly in the light. We challenged this convention to show that horror trailer set in the daytime can be just as scary as one set at night-time. <br />Question 2<br />The ancillary texts which are my poster and my magazine and the trailer are very effective as a combination of Scream and Paranormal activity, so far my poster I used scream 2 poster as a template for my poster. The simplicity of the scream poster is effective and when used on mine made it look more realistic. Since Naima is the lead girl in the trailer we used her on the front of the poster just like the scream 2 poster. I used the same image for the magazine because I believed the picture was very effective and would also be the link between the poster and the magazine. My magazine was based on the look of many other Empire magazines that I analysed. I used the same fonts and placement that I saw on the covers on my magazine. <br />Question 3<br />From the audience feedback I have learnt that my target audience are 16-20 year olds and although the real media products gave me many ideas to base my work on. I believe my questionnaire helped me find out what my target audience actually favoured. The 14 questions in my questionnaire allowed me to see what conventions were preferred, and to see the different opinions of the horror genre and the elements within the genre. I learnt things like the decline in interest for monster and zombie movies; also that torture porn was very popular among teenagers. However teen slashers and the supernatural were the most popular so we decided to combine the two genres to please as many people as possible and allowed us to use a number of conventions that added variety to our trailer. <br />Question 4<br />Throughout the whole process of developing our product I used a number of new media technologies to construct it. During the planning I used YouTube a lot to watch and analyse different horror trailers, all my research and planning material was uploaded to my blogger, which was my very own blog site where all my work and knowledge on the horror genre could be seen by anybody. I also used slide share to upload pictures and presentation onto my blog site. Facebook has 500million users making it one of the best ways let people know about our trailer. We created a Facebook account for our trailer, which is also what real b ig budget movies also do. When creating our trailer we used a camera to film, but we shot it in two different ways. We used steady shots and hand held shots. When we had finished all the filming we edited our filming on the Macs on the programme final cut. Final cut was much easier to use then I predicted. The tools are easy to understand and once I got the hang of it, it’s very simple. When creating my magazine cover and poster I used Photoshop. I have used Photoshop many times in the past so I found it very simple, to add certain icons and logos to my ancillary texts I also had to change the format on the files so it would work on Photoshop. <br />