There are several ways our media products use and develop conventions from real media. We borrowed camera angles, lighting, and sound from influences like The Ring and Hide and Seek. However, we also challenged some conventions - our trailer lacked voiceovers and dialog, and our poster's title was at the top rather than bottom. Overall we aimed to conform to general elements of each format to appear authentic while also adding original elements to challenge conventions.

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

2. TrailerThere are a number of ways in which our media products use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products.From looking at our influences we can see that there are a number of conventions that we borrowed from them, this includes camera angles, lighting mise-en-scene and sound.However there are a number of ways in which we differed from them.

3. OrphanWhen trying to look at the conventions of other horror/ thriller films we found that with the Orphan they had different close up shots of the main character, which focuses on her facial expressions. Therefore we tried to re-create this same effect by having close ups of Mary, which show her as being threatening.The RingWhen looking at The Ring we wanted to focus on how conventional horror/ thrillers create excitement and suspense in their trailers.We found that there are many parts in the trailer that were fast paced and confusing, which gave the trailer an element of mystery and made you want to know moreTherefore we tried to use this convention in our trailer with the use of the quick cuts of words from the bible and the confusion of the spinning woods.

4. Hide and SeekThe main idea that we drew from this trailer was the sound that we used as we tried to make a connection between the song and the general storyline of the film much like they do in the Hide & Seek trailer as well as drawing on songs related to innocence to add to the genre of our filmBloody Mary – we used the song of ‘Mary had a little lamb’, which is much like our storyline as Mary sees her friend as the lamb she must sacrifice. Hide & Seek – the game of hide and seek is a direct link to the film and the speech at the end reinforces this

5. We also used some of the shot ideas from this trailer such as the door opening as we felt it was effective in creating suspenseWe also used drew inspiration from the shot of a shrine as we felt the use of a candle created intense lighting as made the scene more dramaticBloody Mary Hide & Seek Bloody Mary Hide & Seek

6. Challenging conventional trailersIn our trailer we decided that it would be better not to use any voice over's unlike our influences, as we felt that a voice over would make our trailer seem amateur and stereotypical of a trailer that uses general conventions. Also we felt that by having a voice over it would reduce the amount of tension and horror that we wanted to portray in our trailer. Also we did not include any dialogue, as we wanted to entice our audience and leave the storyline up to their interpretation. We did this as our task was to produce a ‘teaser trailer’ and not a full trailer.We decided not to ask our audience any rhetorical questions when watching our teaser trailer. This is unlike many other horror trailers. We challenged this convention as we felt that it was not necessary or relevant for our trailer. Also we did not want the trailer to be a cliché of other trailers.

7. PosterWhen looking at influences for our poster we tried to look for how fear and horror was portrayed from an image. We focused on how we could use the conventions of other film posters in order to make our poster look authenticTherefore we used the similar layout for credits framing of the image.

8. OrphanWe decided to adopt the idea of having a single character on the poster and focused on the facial expression of Mary. We also particularly liked the highlighting/ glow in the background of the image and when creating our poster we were able to re-create this effect from the lighting of the candle

9. The colour scheme of the text was something that we also felt was effective as white text stands out on a plain background and red is also very strikingHide and SeekWe also felt that the colour scheme was very threatening with the use of reds, black and white that stands out.We particularly liked the lighting in this poster especially the light shining from the doorway.

10. The OthersWe really liked the idea of the candle being held as this creates bright lighting in contrast to the dark background and makes the characters facial expression more apparent. We also felt that the style of writing eye catching but subtle at the same time, which compliments the lighting.Bloody Mary - Poster We also used similar text to that of The Others because we believed our poster appeared simple and not very artistic. Therefore we wanted to make the text more threatening and in accordance with our genre

11. We borrowed the colour scheme similar to that of Hide and Seek as well as The Others as we wanted to conform to our influences

12. We also focused on a single image of the character, highlighting facial expressions to make our poster menacing and striking, similar to that of Orphan.

13. We also stated a date of the film as well as having a tagline to comply with the conventions of real media products

14. We also used similar lighting to that of our influences as we wanted to make our poster to look captivating. Therefore we developed the idea of using low key lighting with the use of the candle similar to that of The Others and Hide and Seek.

15. We used credits and age certificates as well as our film logo to comply with the conventions of real media posters Challenging conventional film postersWhen looking at our influences we found that they generally had the title of the film at the bottom of the poster and because we felt that this didn’t suit the layout of our poster then we decided to put the title at the top, which is a way we challenged conventional postersHowever overall we wanted to make our poster look as genuine as possible, therefore we tried to conform to the general elements of film posters

16. Magazine front coverWe looked mainly at Empire magazine front covers to gain a knowledge of their conventions and how we should construct our magazine coverWe were focusing particularly on what types of images they used as well as the type of layout and we tried to apply this to our magazine front cover

17. X-men editionWe felt that the background was particularly interesting as it is not plain like most backgrounds, therefore this is an element we tied in with our magazine cover.We felt that the single image of Wolverine on the cover was striking and is a conventional element to most magazine covers as the focus is usually of the one character.

18. Avatar edition We felt that the close up image of the character, focusing on their expression was very eye catching, therefore we felt that adhering to this convention would be beneficial in giving our magazine cover impact.We also felt that the sticker effect used is traditional to most magazine covers and gives it a 3D element.

19. Iron Man edition The overlap of the characters head on the title was a common element that most of the Empire magazines

20. We felt that it was especially interesting that the Empire title had been modified to suit the theme of Iron man, therefore we wanted to create a similar effectWe felt that the way they this edition presents particular articles on the cover was ideal for the way we wanted to present our articles