The document discusses conventions used in the author's teaser trailer, magazine cover, and movie poster for a psychological thriller film. For the teaser trailer, it follows conventions for duration at just over a minute, uses a fast-paced editing style, builds narrative tension, and includes eerie non-diegetic sound. The magazine cover includes typical layout elements like the title, bar code, and main character image, and trails other articles. The poster prominently features the main character and title as is conventional, and includes reviews to engage viewers without famous actors. Overall, the media products aim to develop thriller genre conventions on a low budget.

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

2. Conventions in our Teaser Trailer
Duration-
A normal duration of a teaser trailer would normally last from around 30
seconds to 1 minute and 30 seconds this Is because in the teaser trailer it’s
suppose to be a small taster of what the movie would be about without giving
too much information. For example in “Mother!” the teaser lasts up to 49
seconds. In our teaser trailer it lasted around the 1 minute and 5 seconds area,
therefore we fit the criteria for the duration of our teaser trailer with the
conventions of a teaser trailer.
Editing Style-
For the editing style in a teaser trailer it normal is quite fast pace especially for
a thriller, this is due to it building tension and engaging the audience. The
reason for it being fast pace is that it might be a chase scene within the trailer
which is normal to use as it’s giving the questions such as, “Who are they?”
“Why are they running?” “What just happened?” For example in “Mother!”
the teaser consists of one long shot to build up the tension, and once that door
closes the quick edit of fast pace shots flood in, making the audience question
on what is occurring. In our teaser trailer we attempted the fast pace editing
style however, we felt it wasn’t needed in the beginning, as it starts off slow
then progresses onto a more faster edit due to the female character (Jane)
being captured and is desperate to be released thus she runs around the house
attempting to find an exit.

3. Conventions in our Teaser Trailer
Narrative-
The narrative in a typical teaser trailer consists of a build up, especially in thrillers,
they will consist of an antagonist preying on the protagonist, and nearer the end of
it will be a somewhat a cliff hanger, therefore reinforcing that thriller mystery. For
example in the Purge, it starts off harmless, and once the car breaks down and
that’s when the build up starts as they know bad stuff are about to occur.
Sound-
For the music in a typical thriller teaser trailer it can be one of two ways, rather fast to fit that fast editing
pace of a chase scene, or slow to build that tension before the big cliff hanger, for the voice over, normally
they are used to get a bit of context of what the scene in the trailer is currently representing so no one is
confused yet it makes it a mystery, however there are thrillers in which they don’t use voice overs and would
use purely diegetic and non-diegetic sound to get that eerie feeling. Within our teaser trailer we didn’t feel
the need to include a voice over as it the teaser trailer explains the situation, however, it might have been
nice to include just to get the reason of why she was there in the first place. Nevertheless, we used eerie non-
diegetic sound to get that sense of mystery in the beginning however around 33 seconds the non-diegetic
music starts which is introduced as fast pace and quite nerve racking as it’s in sync with the character moving
around the house in a panic. We also included a few diegetic sounds such as the door handle rattling, Jane
banging on the window, and keys dangling as the antagonist fiddles with them.

4. Conventions in our Magazine Cover
Layout conventions-
For a typical Magazine cover you are required to include certain features such as the barcode,
title of the magazine make (for example “Total film” in this case) and typically it would have the
main character as the main image (Splash) for the magazine, for example in the Star Trek total
film magazine, we have what looks like Captain Kirk (?) as the main image for the magazine thus
we similarly did the same with our main character Jane. For the Magazine title “Total Film” we
attempted to find a similar font which would look realistic and I believe we have done just that,
as when you look at the difference between the two, there are a few differences however they
aren’t majorly visible. A typical magazine would include a headline and a strap line to reinforce
it, for example the headline for the Star Trek is “Star Trek” and the strap line would be “The
boldest and coolest film of 2009” and similarly we included the title of our teaser trailer as the
headline and the strap line would be “A chilling psychological thriller”, we also have a second
strap line “Inside the mind of the ultimate abductor” this is because we wanted to be different
compared to a typical magazine cover, and it helps engage the viewer more into what our teaser
trailer is about. We also used the red to create that brand identity between teaser trailer, poster
and magazine cover. Lastly, in a typical teaser trailer you’d normally find a article trailed,
meaning that it’ll include another small article about something similar within the magazine,
this is only to engage viewers to want to read more in the magazine, for example in the real
Total Film magazine cover you can see “Lesbian Vampire Killers” and “The A-Z of comedy” these
are both trailed articles that are included in the magazine, for ours we used “100 of the best
movie moments” still in the same theme of the black, red and white font colour. When creating
out magazine cover we used the Star Trek magazine cover as a guide line as we liked that black
and white theme with the hints of red, it feels like a thriller-themed magazine cover as red can
be represented as danger.

5. Conventions in our Poster
Layout Conventions-
In a typical poster you are required to include the title and who produced it, directed it,
starred etc. For example in “The Box” poster you can clearly see that the title is there and the
person starring in it is located at the top of the poster, this is to initially grab peoples
attention as Cameron Diaz is fairly famous and is easily recognisable therefore her fans would
add to the view count. Typically in a poster you’d find a image of the main character on the
front of the poster – normally they’d stick out the most, for example in “The Box” poster
Cameron Diaz is the main character therefore she has the most spotlight, and the guy located
near the bottom is mostly like a side character (yet still important to the story line) therefore
he has less spotlight on the poster. This was purposely created like this so people could also
get the gist of the story of the movie, as the strip of red in the middle could suggest danger
or blood, thus making it a thriller. We used a similar look with our red strip, however ours is
not as intense so perhaps this could suggest that our movie isn’t surrounding around the idea
of blood, yet only danger. Normally a poster wouldn’t include reviews, however some would.
For us we decided to add reviews from popular companies, as we don’t feature famous
people, therefore we could use reviews to engage more viewers to our poster.

6. Genre Conventions
For our type of genre which can be established from our three products – Psychological Thriller –
it normally consists of a protagonist and antagonist, in which they might be the same gender or
the opposite, however stereotypically the protagonist is mostly female and the antagonist is a
male. The antagonist typically stalks the protagonist while before striking them in a back ally or
while the protagonist is most vulnerable. The typical setting this would be located is in a area
where it’s mainly quiet as then the antagonist can strike and not get found easily as the majority
of movie consists of people trying to find the antagonist or having a chase scene of some sort.
Institutional Conventions
A low budget film would be created with a more indie vibe as it isn’t like your normal Hollywood
film, as a low budget film would be most likely created with self-made sounds as they don’t have
a massive team to create advanced sounds, so they’d have to keep it to a minimum, where as a
Hollywood film would tend to have more of a realistic feeling, and would include a lot more
advanced effects such as colour correction or a blur here and there. Another thing is that a
Hollywood film with special effects (for example, Harry Potter with Dobby) would look realistic
whereas if a low budget film wouldn’t look great unless they hired a professional, however due to
them being on a budget is slightly difficult.