For my media coursework I looked rigorously at real life media texts in order to establish some of the conventions that are used, and therefore it helped me to decide which conventions I wanted to implement into my work, and also some of the conventions that wanted to reverse and change. I believe that as a result of looking at real life media texts, and conventions that it helped to make my work both relevant to my target audience and unique enough that it surprised my target demographic because it had surprises that they were not expeecting.
Firstly my target audience was the 16 to 24 age group. This is because our trailer contained blood and murder and I thought this would be unsuitable for anyone below the age of 16. Also I targeted this age because this group have factored in some of the biggest box offices grossing movies in the horror industry. For example two of the media texts I researched was paranormal activity , which in 2011 got 50 million on opening weekend.
Secondly, I made sure that my work incorporated real life norms and conventions. To achieve this I looked at movie trailers both past and present to learn about the codes and conventions that were needed to make my work as relevant to my audience as possible. Some examples of old movie trailers I looked at were “Halloween” and in particular “scream”. What I learnt from these trailers were the stereotypes that were utilised. For example the uses of superimposes that helped to establish to the audience the narrative of the story and also how superimposed helped to increase the tension of the trailer. For instance at the end of both trailers it would reveal to the audience the release dates of the movie. So I decided to conform to these conventions by adding a lot of the superimposes into my trailer. Not only did it improve the amount of tension but it helped to show my intended target audience what my movie was about. Other conventions that I learnt were imperative was the use of music. In almost all the horror trailers I looked at the music was one of the key elements of making the trailer as suspenseful as possible. The more loud and piercing as possible, the more effective the trailer was at frightening its audience.
Other conventions that I conformed to were the use of music. Trailers like saw and Prometheus use high pitched music to elevate the tension and to make the trailer much more striking. So I used a high pitch sound in the most of the trailer, so that it would scare the viewer. However to go against the conventional use of music I used a slow piano music at the very beginning to create a false sense of security and at the end to create a feeling of sombreness. By adding this unique twist I believed that my audience would be like it more because it had an element of surprise, and in contempary media and film, movie goers are always on the look for something different and rewarding. A primary example of this was my research of Cloverfield, which had the surprise of a handheld camera technique which paid off because it earned 35 million on its opening weekend. The other conventions that I followed were editing style. I used lots of cuts. The effect of this is that it distorted some of the scenes so that the audience could not see everything in the trailer clearly, which would force my target audience to watch it more than once. One of my inspirations for using this technique was the Saw series where all its trailers follow this technique which has led big box office success. I also added a muted colour palette of the trailer, especially in the opening establishing shots, which had hints of red and grey in them to create a feeling of gore and dread and to immediately foreshadow the death and murder that was to come. In terms of stereotypes I chose to use 2 blondes. As in some of the most popular horror movies they blonde are the typical damsels in distress. And therefore as soon as the audience saw such characters it would add the tension as they knew that something shocking was about to occur. For camera shots I used a large range, to make sure it was not too simple. For instance long shots and establishing shots close ups, extreme close up, over the shoulder shots etc. But I combined those camera angles with other conventions like Dutch angles which are tilted angles, this helped to create a feeling of disorientation. Dutch angles is another good way to show how I used existing conventions because Dutch angles has been used in film for over 60 years, and one of the pioneers of it was the famous Albert Hitchock.
Also the length of the trailer helped to conform to type. I chose a sub 2 minute trailer because I wanted our trailer to have its own sort of story. With horror trailers there is always a choice of choosing a short 1 minute teaser trailer or doing a 2 minute and a half theatrical trailer and I chose the latter. The first victim in our trailer is killed in the first half of the trailer which helped to shock the audience early one during the viewing experience. And I wanted the second victim to be gradually lead closer and closer to her death, and thus a longer time running time helped to make the narrative as clear as possible.
I also looked at other mediums like music to learn whether they use similar conventions and to learn how they developed them. I chose to look at in particular the song disturbia from Rihanna because the video revolved around horror and used effects to great effect. What I learnt was that that music videos use the stereotypical conventions of the genre that I had chosen, such as low and high angles, quick editing etc. But it developed this conventions by making them more graphic so that the perverse images would linger in the viewers head for a long time. And therefore in my editing process I tried to add subtle effects to replicate this style to a certain extent. For example my first establishing shot is shrowded in intense white. However ultimately I did encounter trouble trying to add the effects that were used in the video. Because the editing program final cut express was soo complex I couldn’t learn how to add complicated effects to my trailer.
In terms of my teaser poster I conformed to conventions by using the stereotypical colours. Red, black, and white. I did this because as soon as my target audience saw these colours they would be able to identify with it. For example the colour red is synonymous in the horror genre for blood. I also tried to connect my teaser poster as much as possible to my trailer. So I deliberately distorted the image of the creeper in order to reflect the flicker effect that I used in the my film trailer. Another way in which my teaser poster was conventional was because of its simplicity. I used simply 1 image because I thought it was the most effective. For my magazine cover I also made everything connect by using the same 3 colours and similar font sizes.
In addition, my film trailer also challenged existing conventions. Firstly I chose not to include any real dialogue. This is because for a film trailer to be able to properly entice I thought that it would be better to show the more action horror orientated elements of my trailer. Another way that we challenged conventions is that we eluded the ending of the movie, although we didn’t exactly reveal what happened the audience was still left with the impression that the character was almost certain to die. Also we developed on conventions with the 2 types of music. Although it was not necessarily going against horror conventions per se, they way I implemented it possible did. The piano music at the beginning and end was evidence of this.
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