In what ways does your media product use , develop or challenge forms of convections of real media products?
Challenging forms and convenctions
We chose Lionsgate for our distributor because it is one of the most successful film distribution companies of all time and helped make the Saw franchise such a success. We didn’t design our own logo as we wanted to enact what would happen in industry – i.e. create our own production company but then work with a real distributor to market our product.
In our opening shot we used an overlay of lights to convey a sense of otherworldliness and to represent the light of the candles. This cross dissolves into the Ouija board scene – a prop commonly associated with horror films, such as The Unleashed or The Pact – in this way we firmly conformed to convention.
Our titles helped us explain the background to the story without giving too much away, and we used classic horror language such as “opening the gates” and “whatever came through”. The language of the titles were inspired by the use of language used in the Saw 5 trailer, for example “His message is righteous.”
We also helped convey a sense of regret by writing about wishing we hadn’t! This is classic employment of the Barthes enigma code – the audience would be asking “what came through?” and then hopefully come and see our film to find out!
The motion background we used we colour corrected to appear “hell-like” and this also ties in with our use of candles and flame imagery. Again this commonly associated with horror by creating low-key lighting, most notable seen in ghost stories such as woman in black or possession types movies such as The Possession or The Devil Inside. Filming in the cellar for our Ouija board shots was also inspired by the Devil inside, which the first exorcism taking place in a basement. Later when our candles blow out it is symbolic of some-thing else in the room or death.
We cast 3 young women in the role of séance participants. Our market research told us women tend to be more interested in séances and the occult that men, and this helped audience identification. We didn’t include a male because we wanted them to look really serious about what they were doing. This is a devel0pment of the genre – normally it is young people messing around with Ouija boards that gets them into trouble – our shots suggest they had a purpose.
we deliberately filmed in an old dilapidated house with very old fashioned medieval style leaded windows to create a sense of history and the potential presence of ghosts. In this shot, we see our victim looking out for help and have our ghost appear behind – a shot that pays homage to The Woman in Black.
The shot of the curtains blowing also creates a ghostly atmosphere, suggesting something is there but can’t be seen. This is used in Paranormal Activity, Sinister or Insidious, and again shows us closely following convention.
We also pay homage to another classic ghost movie The Others, with the creepy shot as the camera approaches the ghost boy. The audience would enjoy recognizing this kind of pastiche and would associate our film with the success of The Others.
Our montage of quicker images at the end of the trailer follows classic narrative patterns of trailers as the music climaxes. Again, this, accompanied with the final scare of the ghost boy, follows the conventional structure of a trailer.
Our poster is also a classic style of horror including all the institutional information found on a poster for example credits and production company logos as well as key stars and the title. Our central image is the child ghost, very reminiscent of The Orphan, The Omen or Poltergeist.
Our magazine compares to the image from the poster of "The Unleashed" has the victim looking up to show the audience that something has got them as well as indicating that something is wrong. We choose for our text to be red to help represent blood and danger commonly used in horror.
For our poster we have used the image of our ghost child as our main focus as well as using the symbolic image of the ouija board. For our background to help show the genre and form convention.
Our teaser poster was created in order to give the audience a preview/glimpse of the trailer.Again we focused on oscar as he is the key character in our trailer as he is shown the most. From making it black with a spot light on oscar would represent the reductions of light and only use of candles. This would also be seen to be typical paranormal horror from focusing on the spirit.
In our opening shot we used an overlay of lights to convey a sense of otherworldliness and to represent the light of the candles. This cross dissolves into the Ouija board scene – a prop commonly associated with horror films, such as The Unleashed or The Pact – in this way we firmly conformed to convention.
Our titles helped us explain the background to the story without giving too much away, and we used classic horror language such as “opening the gates” and “whatever came through”. The language of the titles were inspired by the use of language used in the Saw 5 trailer, for example “His message is righteous.”
We also helped convey a sense of regret by writing about wishing we hadn’t! This is classic employment of the Barthes enigma code – the audience would be asking “what came through?” and then hopefully come and see our film to find out!
The motion background we used we colour corrected to appear “hell-like” and this also ties in with our use of candles and flame imagery. Again this commonly associated with horror by creating low-key lighting, most notable seen in ghost stories such as woman in black or possession types movies such as The Possession or The Devil Inside. Filming in the cellar for our Ouija board shots was also inspired by the Devil inside, which the first exorcism taking place in a basement. Later when our candles blow out it is symbolic of some-thing else in the room or death.
We cast 3 young women in the role of séance participants. Our market research told us women tend to be more interested in séances and the occult that men, and this helped audience identification. We didn’t include a male because we wanted them to look really serious about what they were doing. This is a devel0pment of the genre – normally it is young people messing around with Ouija boards that gets them into trouble – our shots suggest they had a purpose.
we deliberately filmed in an old dilapidated house with very old fashioned medieval style leaded windows to create a sense of history and the potential presence of ghosts. In this shot, we see our victim looking out for help and have our ghost appear behind – a shot that pays homage to The Woman in Black.
The shot of the curtains blowing also creates a ghostly atmosphere, suggesting something is there but can’t be seen. This is used in Paranormal Activity, Sinister or Insidious, and again shows us closely following convention.
We also pay homage to another classic ghost movie The Others, with the creepy shot as the camera approaches the ghost boy. The audience would enjoy recognizing this kind of pastiche and would associate our film with the success of The Others.
Our montage of quicker images at the end of the trailer follows classic narrative patterns of trailers as the music climaxes. Again, this, accompanied with the final scare of the ghost boy, follows the conventional structure of a trailer.
Our poster is also a classic style of horror including all the institutional information found on a poster for example credits and production company logos as well as key stars and the title. Our central image is the child ghost, very reminiscent of The Orphan, The Omen or Poltergeist.
Our magazine compares to the image from the poster of "The Unleashed" has the victim looking up to show the audience that something has got them as well as indicating that something is wrong. We choose for our text to be red to help represent blood and danger commonly used in horror.
For our poster we have used the image of our ghost child as our main focus as well as using the symbolic image of the ouija board. For our background to help show the genre and form convention.
Our teaser poster was created in order to give the audience a preview/glimpse of the trailer.Again we focused on oscar as he is the key character in our trailer as he is shown the most. From making it black with a spot light on oscar would represent the reductions of light and only use of candles. This would also be seen to be typical paranormal horror from focusing on the spirit.
From this we can see during answering this question which words we used most commonly to answer the question 'In what ways does your media product use,develop or challenge forms of convention of real media products?'. The most popular words would be the biggest seen on the page, from this we can see 'Ghost', 'Horror' and 'Used' are.
Using classic horror convection in our trailer
From the above mind map we can see theorist sayings which is linked to our trailer. These have gave us an insight in to the conclusions about horror. From 'What appears to be a safe place is an actual prison' would suggest that from what you first see would make you believe that the house is a safe place however when inside it is seen to be hell like a prison which would make the audience believe 'bad things happen in safe places' which would also link to our horror as the old historical house would suggest it is a safe home however when inside it all changes.
The theorist saying 'The place are terrible not just because of their physical state but the terrible families and histories inside them' is highly relevant to our trailer as from the house being seen to be historical as well as a family home would show a lot of history happened here therefore by the audience being able to discover this from the setting helped to make our story line more real.'Walls in houses which at first seem safe by keeping the killer out soon become prisons holding the room, closet,car' From our killer being ghosts would show how this theory would apply to our story line as from our two killers being ghosts would suggest they can appear anywhere.
The theorist saying 'The place are terrible not just because of their physical state but the terrible families and histories inside them' is highly relevant to our trailer as from the house being seen to be historical as well as a family home would show a lot of history happened here therefore by the audience being able to discover this from the setting helped to make our story line more real.'Walls in houses which at first seem safe by keeping the killer out soon become prisons holding the room, closet,car' From our killer being ghosts would show how this theory would apply to our story line as from our two killers being ghosts would suggest they can appear anywhere.
We decided to make a timeline of when different horrors were made. All the trailers displayed are influences to our trailer.
By talking about the use of Lionsgate in a animated character format would show how we used different websites in order to advertise how we produced our media trailer. By talking about Lionsgate would tell the audience how we used this for our trailer and created our own production company 'Ghost house productions'. The idea of doing this was to inform the audience of how we decided to market our product in order to advertise our trailer. From using Lionsgate would help advertise 'The Crossing' by it producing several films already for example several saw films,'The last exorcism' and 'Cabin Fever'. By the distrubtion company making several well known horror films would also advertise our trailer as it would be known as well used distrubtion company encouraging the audience to watch their films.
From the above video we have shown and explained our following decisions we have made when making our trailer these consisted of which distrubtion company and productions. From the videos it would show the audience the questions we had to consider when making our trailer. From this it allowed us to make decisions best for our trailer related to horror.