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

Film Trailer

The film trailer in total challenges a few conventions like we have the mother as our main source of horror within our film trailer. Normally within a horror film you find that the dad is the fear for the family but within ours we wanted to try challenge this and using the mother, we gained inspiration for this due to it being the same within the film ‘The Conjuring’ It was very successful as a film trailer displaying how the mother changes and how she is the fear for the family where the mother is meant to be the most nurturing for the family but all of a sudden turns into the hell of the family gradually breaking them apart. The father challenged conventions where a male is normally stereotypically a tough and thick skinned but because of the mothers transforming into more of a demonic figure. This means we had to challenge conventions of making the father more of the caring and nurturing figure of the family rather than being the strict parent and dominate; he is being dominated by the figure which the mother has become and has to try and restore order within the family.

Conventions We have used a teddy bear within our film almost as an actor as he has

a strong role to play with keeping the narrative together referring to the child and how he should be able to trust his closest toys but as things get worse the toy has a mind of its own and is able to move within help. This was recently featured within the film Annabelle, they use a family doll which they have purchased and it is very similar to the roll which our teddy bear has in our film. It has a mind of its own and changes position with no assist. This follows the conventions of a horror film with having an iconic toy or item which is to try abuse the friendliness a toy is meant to have but instead has the opposite effect within the film trailer.

Conventions The soundtrack which we have playing over the top of our film trailer is

not very conventional due to it being rather slow paced. We were inspired for the idea of a slower paced trailer from ‘The Women in Black’ trailer. This has a very slow an eerie pace but is very effective due to the dark mysterious figure which can be seen throughout. This may not be conventional of a film trailer but due to its success of this film we attempted to mimic what had been created and link this in to our own soundtrack, there was quite child’s music in the background of the trailer in ‘The Women in Black’ and we attempted to rein act this with the child within our trailer singing twinkle twinkle little star. This turned out to be successful and extremely disturbing to listen too.

Conventions We incorporated a shot which we found as a group within the film

‘Deliver us from evil’ where a women is seen scratching at metal monument on the floor, this shot was extremely effective on the audience as when I was watching it, I felt extremely disturbed whilst watching this. We attempted to mimic this shot with the mother and the ashes which she had destroyed on the floor. We tried to show the mother in her possessed state collecting her ashes which were split and collecting them together in a frantic state. I have not seen this before in any film trailer I saw other than Deliver us from evil so it is not a conventional shot with it being quite difficult to portray the reasoning why you could display that shot. I feel it was a very effective shot and helped us increase the scare factor of our film trailer.

Conventions

The final shot within the film trailer is a shot of the child panicked in a corner holding the teddy bear, this has been replicated within the film ‘Deliver us from evil.’ Using the child’s fear to show horror is effective to an older audience as the parents can relate to the fear of the parents in the film, Our trailer the mother is the monster so it could show that he is either scared or confused by what is happening. This is a rather conventional shot due it being notorious within the horror genre.

Conventions Within the scream shot we used examples from The possession of

Michael king, where it had a quick snap from sane to completely insane, we transferred this into ours with a scream which was extremely effective during the focus group as it caught people off guard. Follows the conventional scheme that a horror will be loud and disturbing to show an audience.

Conventions

A shot we included is one of the mother pulling back the father, we got the shot inspiration from the film deliver us from evil where the man is looking anxiously and is jumped on and surprised, we transferred this into our trailer, this helped us develop that she is tearing the family apart by attacking whoever steps in her path when she is possessed. This follows conventions of main horror film trailers by a jump scare to surprise the audience.

Conclusion

Overall I feel my movie did challenge a few conventions but overall followed paths of other film trailers already created. We incorporated the demonic figure of the mother well even though we challenged the conventions of her being the monster within the film. I believe we adapted to conventions and codes which we broke effectively and made them work to target our target audience successfully.