The document discusses the student's analysis of conventions in horror movie posters, trailers, and magazines. For the poster, key conventions included dark colors and featuring the antagonist or location. The trailer analysis found conventions of quick shots under 5 seconds and use of black screens to build tension. Magazine covers commonly use the rule of thirds and feature anticipated films. The student aimed to conform to these conventions in their own media products to attract audiences familiar with the genre.

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

3. Poster analysis
I analysed the posters of, “The Exorcist”, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Trick R’
Treat”
From doing this research I have discovered some of the main conventions when
creating a horror poster. The main one I discovered was the types of colours used when
creating the poster, they are very dark and sinister colours and are normally blue,
green, red, grey and black. I have used reds when creating my poster to help put across
my genre.
Another convention I noticed was that most horror posters have either the location of
the film or the antagonist within the film as the main picture. I have used this
convention by using a picture of my antagonist as my main photo on my poster, I
wanted to also include the location behind my antagonist but I ran out of time to
achieve this.
I conformed to these conventions as I know from seeing professional posters that they
help to put across the genre of the film. I believe that I have achieved these methods
within my poster.

4. Magazine analysis
I analysed three different magazine covers, a TOTAL FILM , an EMPIRE
and a HORROHOUND cover.
I discovered the main convention of magazine covers is the rules of thirds
used to draw attention to different parts of the magazine In a certain
order. I conformed to this convention by putting the most popular articles
of my magazine at the top of the cover to keep my viewers attention and
hopefully make them buy my magazine. I think I have achieved this effect
from audience feedback saying they would buy my magazine.
Another convention I found was that the leading article in the magazine
(normally being a well anticipated and massive film) would be the centre
of the cover having a picture of a character as the main background image
on the cover. It would also be surrounded by puffs talking about the film.
I conformed to these conventions by having a picture of my films
antagonist as the background and also included puffs about
interviews with the cast of the film.

5. Trailer analysis
I analysed three different trailers, “Cabin in the Woods”, “The Woman in
Black” and “Chernobyl Diaries”.
The first convention I noticed was that the trailers shots are no longer five
seconds long, this is done to create adrenaline and tension throughout the
whole trailer and normally climaxes with seeing a glimpse of the antagonist or
hearing a scream of one of the victims. We conformed to this within our
trailer by not having any shots longer than five seconds and also with
finishing our trailer with a scream. We have achieved the effect we wanted by
conforming to these conventions.
Another convention I realised was the use of black screens within horror
trailers. This is also used to help build tension within the trailer by using the
fear of the unknown against the viewer. I feel that we didn’t use as many black
screens as we could have in our trailer but the ones we used worked to create
tension.

6. QUESTION 2
How effective is the combination of your
main product and ancillary texts?

7. FONTS
The font I have used for my poster and magazine are
linked with the name of our film “Trespassing” there is
a spiked outline to my film name text which relates to
the theme of trespassing as fences are normally
installed with barbed wire at the top of the fence. The
other fonts I used within my poster and magazine
were all different apart from keeping with my horror
genre, I did this so that the audience will know that all
the articles mainly on the magazine are different and
don not link with each other. I kept my second
favourite font for my tagline on my poster as that is
one of the main features within it.

8. COLOURS
The colours throughout my magazine and poster are
different. I didn’t mean for this to happen but I have left it
till to late to be able to change this. I first completed my
poster when I started on my poster I had seen several
other horror posters that had used red, from seeing this I
decided that my colour would be red, so I then completed
my poster and handed it in. when it came round to doing
my magazine cover I was experimenting with my
magazine title using different colours and decided I liked
the colour green more than red as it fitted better to my
antagonist within my film, so I then made my film title
green on the magazine cover and couldn’t change my
poster.

9. PICTURES
The main picture I used for both my poster and my
magazine I took out of my trailer. I picked this image
because I wanted to show the antagonist to the
audience as this can help attract people because they
prefer different types of antagonists. I have kept the
background of the image black as to allow the
audience to see this space and crate their own story
around the antagonist. The pictures I chose for the
other articles, I chose these photos because they are of
popular and effective horror movies and this would
help attract the audiences of those films to read my
magazine.

10. QUESTION 3
What have you learned from your
audience feedback?

11. The first type of audience feedback I have done is I have created two polls on my blog,
which will allow me to gain feedback from my audience about certain queries I have
gained.
The first poll I did was what you expect to see from a horror. I gave my audience four
choices, happy endings, blood gore and explicit language, funny catchphrases and
speeding races. From the results I got my hopes were supported that my audience
would be looking for Blood gore and explicit language. To make sure that I asked a
range of people I picked some people myself to visit my blog and answer my poll.
The second poll I used asked the question “which name do you think is the best for a
magazine?” I was happy that I chose to ask this question as I was stuck on four names
for my magazine, Scream, Paranormal Scream, The Weekly Terror and Corrosive. But I
have now directly tapped into my audience preferences of what they expect a horror
magazine to be called. From getting these results I have decided on the name of my
magazine to be “THE WEEKLY TERROR”. I did the same with this poll as the last to
make sure there were a wide range of people answering my polls.

12. • I created a questionnaire as my second type of audience feedback.
The questions I asked were “what is your gender?” I asked this
question to hopefully help show the differences between the
genders preferences and thoughts. The second question I asked was
“what age are you?” I asked this question because this would help
show the range of people I would be asking with my questionnaire.
The third question I asked was “what are your top three genres of
films?” I asked this question to help show me how many people
enjoy horrors even if their not their first or second choice, from this
feedback I can see that there are many people that enjoy horrors
which helps our audience size to grow. The fourth question I asked
was “what age rating do you expect to see on a horror?” I asked
this question to make sure we selected the right age certificate for
our film, from the feedback I can see that we picked the right
certificate.

13. • The final audience feedback I did was a focus group. I gathered some of my mates
with a wide type of personalities and got them to watch my trailer. I did this
audience feedback to directly tap into my audiences thoughts of my trailer. Once
they had finished watching it I asked them questions on it such as “do you feel my
trailer was effective and got the genre of horror across? And if so how?” I was
given positive feedback such as “yes because it helped build tension with the pace
of shots and the heartbeat sound throughout” I am very happy to get this
feedback as this is the effect we were hoping to get from our trailer. Other
feedback I gained from this question was that my trailer was of a professional
quality with the range of shots and quality of shots. This was also positive
feedback to receive as it backed up my confidence in our trailer. The second
question I asked was “did you enjoy my trailer? And would you watch my film in
the cinema?” I got positive feedback from all the participants saying they would go
to see my film in the cinema; this helped my feelings toward attracting a wide
audience as some of the participants were not massive horror fans. The final
question I asked was “does my poster portray my film?” from this question I gained
feedback such as “yes the picture of the villain on your poster portrays the mood
around her within the film”, this gave me confidence towards my poster as I was
unsure on whether or not it contained enough information, but from this feedback
I can see that it does.

14. QUESTION 4
How did you use media technologies in
the construction and research, planning
and evaluation stages?

15. • I found the cameras we used, to be user
friendly allowing us to make full use of our
times with the camera and not be fiddling
with the functions and menu and wasting
time; it would have been nice to have more
attachments for the cameras which would
have allowed us to do more of a variety of
shots like a crane for aerial shots.

16. • The editing software we had to use was
iMovie for our trailer was very basic in to
how far it allowed us to edit our shots, for
example we wanted to add in an if we had
better editing software I think our trailer
could have increased in a grade because we
would have been able to do what we
originally wanted to do with filters and
sound effects, such as Sony Vegas or
Photoshop.

17. • When doing all of our analysis tasks we used
Microsoft office 2010. I wouldn’t say that this
gave us more options but it gave us exactly
what we needed for the tasks. We used a blog
to allow us to interact with our audience and
receive feedback from the audience. The blogs
we used were very good the only problems I
had around them was not having enough time
within class to familiarise ourselves with them
and understand some of the things we could
do with them better.

18. • When uploading our work to our blogs there were
some technical issues we ran into such as it wouldn’t
allow us to upload pictures straight to our blogs so
we had to find a way round that, we did that by
using Picasa which is picture uploading website so
once we uploaded our images to Picasa then we
could import them into our blogs through it. When
we had used PowerPoint for pieces of work we
uploaded our slide shows to a website called
Slideshare then created a link on our blogs that
would take the user to the correct web address,
allowing them access to that piece of work.