1. In What Way Does Your Media
Product Use, Develop or Challenge
Forms and Conventions of Real
Media Products?

2. When we was planning the plot for our horror trailer, we decide that our
trailer would be easier to conduct if we had a guide line. We then decided
that our guide line would be Todorov’s Narrative theory. The reason we
chose to base our trailer around this theory is because we liked the idea of
having Equilibrium and moments of Disequilibrium. Through following
Todorov’s narrative theory it guided us greatly on the structure of our
horror trailer. Additionally we thought that through using this theory it
would help get across the horror genre, however we knew that the
structure alone could not do that which is why we tried get the horror
genre across through the editing, mise en scene and setting. Through
looking into and researching many horror trailers we also decided that it
would only better out horror movie if we also followed the structualist
theory and the feminist theory of the virgin girl dying last and the sexually
active girl dying first.

3. In order to create the equilibrium we decided to have the opening part of our
trailer running smoothly with not a lot going on just a group of friends having
a conversation whilst sitting down and chilling, whilst the music is playing
slowly which helps to set the calm scene. This was continuous editing through
out the whole of the 24 to 25 seconds of the opening of the trailer. However
once the moment of disequilibrium was introduced the editing become
discontinuous, we then edited our scenes closer together in order to get the
audience feeling on edge. We used quick scene changes to give a jarring effect
and to help build fear and tension amongst the audience. You can see this in
our trailer with 33 to 34 seconds in where we added in a cross fade to make
the scene feel unsettled. Also in order to build tension in the moments of
disequilibrium, we made sure that our cross fading's happened in time with
our music so each time the music dropped the screen will go black as it’s
changing to the next scene. I believe this built tension as the music an filming
together made the overall experience of watching that part of the trailer nerve
racking, as neither the music or the filming could have had this effect on its
own.

4. When choosing our cast we considered the Propps Character theory, as
after watching several horror films and trailers we came to a conclusion
that following this theory will again bring out the horror genre as a lot of
horror films such as scream and house of wax use this theory and it
worked really well. Also by following the Propps Character theory it lead
us on to following the Feminist Theory as we had the correct cast to follow
the theory. Through following these theories we decided that the sexually
active girl who was dressed in a short mini skirt which was tight and a see
through blouse would die first. The reason why we chose to have the
sexually active girl dressed in this way, as her revealing clothing
foreshadowed her the way she reveals herself. We followed another
common code of convention of horror films when it came to the Killer. We
did this by continently having he’s identity hidden throughout the whole
of the trailer. Another way in which we followed the codes of conventions,
is by having the killers weapon be a knife. We did this as we saw that in
other horror trailers it appeared a lot more effective to use a knife rather
then another weapon. By presenting the killer in this anonymous way we
thought that it would make the audience feel afraid due to the fact that
they do not know who the killer is. We found in our surveys which we
handed out and did on Zoomerang that viewers feared the unknown, this
also attracted us to keeping the killers identity a mystery.

5. In order to make our trailer appear as professional as possible, we added
the 20th Century Fox opening and the release date of the film at the end of
the trailer. We did this in order to make our trailer seem more real as
most other horror trailers have these features. We also added tone cards
in order to let the views know the story line of the trailer. The tone cards
also helped to set the unsettling mood of the trailer. Most horror trailers
have tone cards so again we are following the codes of conventions of the
horror genre by adding them to our trailer.
Lastly we wanted our setting to be dark in order to play with the
audiences common fear of darkness. Also we made it seem as if the
people in the trailer were locked in, this causes fear through isolation as
well as following the codes and conventions.