This document summarizes how the media product uses and develops conventions of horror film trailers. It analyzed trailers like "30 Days of Night" and "Jennifer's Body" to understand conventions like victims screaming, blood, and quick shots. It features an innocent young girl as the protagonist, a common victim type. The lighting gradually darkens and a jump scare is included, both common techniques. It keeps some camera shot conventions but leaves ambiguity around whether the young girl is the protagonist or antagonist, challenging expectations.

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

2. Before we created our media product, we researched the
overall horror genre, by watching a number of horror film
trailers, in order to help us understand what typical
conventions they used to create an effective trailer. Also by
looking at a variety of different horror film trailers it gave us
ideas of what we wanted to include in our media product, for
example in the trailers we analysed, ‘30 Days of Night’ and
‘Jennifer’s Body’ there was a victim, screaming, blood, tense
music overlay and quick shots.

3. In addition to watching ‘30 Days of Night’ and ‘Jennifer’s Body’,
we also looked at ‘Let me in’, ‘Orphan’ and ‘The Others’. We did
this as they all have the key similarity of featuring children,
which was one of our main ideas, as we felt that children or a
child definitely give the film a creepy element. After watching
‘Let me in’, ‘Orphan’ and ‘The Others’, we both were in complete
agreement that we wanted a child to feature in our film as the
pure and innocent connotations, which are associated with
them work so well in a horror film as nobody suspects them.
However after brainstorming an idea we felt that the child in the
film did not necessarily have to play the antagonist, which in
many films that feature demonic children are. Therefore we
decided to have the little girl in our trailer to be the protagonist
and be a warning to the victim.

4. One of the main conventions we followed was to
have an innocent young girl feature. In all films
there is a victim and we saw in many of the films
we analysed that a common victim was a young
girl, this is because this type of character is
normally naïve, vulnerable and powerless, which
makes her easy prey for the antagonist.

5. Another extremely important element that goes in to creating an effecting horror film
trailer is lighting, we saw this in both ‘30 Days of Night’ and ‘Jennifer’s Body’, however
it was done very differently in both. Since in ‘30 Days of Night’ the natural lighting was
dark throughout as it was set at night and only in key scenes to show the vampires
coming did they have the lighting change, whereas in ‘Jennifer’s Body’ the lighting was
constantly changing and as the trailer went on the lighting seemed to darken.
Therefore taking all these lighting techniques on we decided to use various lighting
throughout, for example the trailer starts off in daylight, however although it is
daylight it has a slight tint of darkness and is light is not bright instead is a little gloomy
Also when the audience are first introduced to the little girl at the top of the stairs the
lighting here is very significant. Since the lighting is much darker at the top of the stairs
where she is standing, which means that the audience can only just about make out
that there is something or someone there, creating mystery for the rest of the film and
trailer.

6. We kept to conventions when it came to some of the camera shots we used,
one being our opening shot which was of the signpost saying ‘Churchfield’
we decided to use an establishing shot as in many of the trailers they opened
with a shot of the place where the film was going to be set, also we needed
to include the sign as it was a crucial link to what happens further on in the
trailer and will help the audience understand what the film will be about.

7. Another type of shot we used was a jump scare as this is
something which is used in the majority of horror film trailers,
we created our jump scare by having quite a fast pace scene
with the character Elizabeth running and having footsteps of
mystery man shown, then the shot goes very still and the music
overlay stops. This relaxes the audience as they will think
nothing else is going to happen it is only after the title of the
film is shown ‘The Message’ a close up of Elizabeth screaming
appears on the screen, which should scare the audience and
make the want to go and see the film.

8. The pace of the trailer is another thing that is crucial to get right,
as a good trailer should keep the audience on the edge of their
seat and wanting more. I would say started of slow and fastened
up as it when on and the drama heightened, for example one of
the key scenes where the female character Elizabeth sees the little
girl for the first time is a very quick scene we decided to increase
the speed in the editing process of when Elizabeth puts her head
down and then up again, in order to create the drama and
confusion of what was there. In addition to this in this scene a low
angle is use this will make the audience question whether the little
girl is the protagonist or antagonist, since it is convention in horror
films that the person with more authority and who has the higher
angle is the antagonist.

9. As I previously mentioned the little girl that
features in the trailer is not the antagonist,
however I think that it may remain unclear to
the audience whether or not she is the
antagonist or the protagonist, which I would
say is something quite unconventional since in
the majority of horror films firstly a
supernatural or spirit would normally be the
antagonist. Secondly in most trailers we felt
that it is always made clear who plays the
victim and villain, therefore we have created
an enigma by not making the clear.