Draft Evaluation: Question One

‘In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of real media products?’

Before starting my media product I made sure to educated myself on the key aspects of the horror genre, alongside much research onto what horror conventions work the best for successful trailers. This research allowed me to have a clear understanding of what does and doesn’t work well within our particular media area. Our media product has a strong use of contrapuntal music to build up the tension and create a dramatic feel. Music became vital for our trailer due to the fact when we were looking at our style models the music was the aspect that withheld the most tension and provoked the feeling of panic more than anything else in the trailers.

Our horror trailer was mostly a psychological thriller (a sub-genre of horror) with only a few aspects of gore added in to connote danger and death. I was influenced into this particular part of horror due to the fact I have studied the auteur ‘Hitchcock’ and I believe his talent for building suspense within his films work significantly well. I tried to mimic this suspense in my own work so that the build up of tension shocked the observers. I took on board Thomas Shatz theory and understood how important genre was for the development of my trailer, and therefor researched into who my stereotypical fan was and what they would conventions they would be looking for if watching our trailer. We understood that by using a few aspects of gore we were eligible to appeal to a wider audience (both psychological and gore fans) we were able to do this by using makeup and then editing the look of the makeup by using special effects. We cleverly noticed that many trailers like to show many aspects of horror despite the fact the horror is only one genre. We took this on board and made a success of appealing to both audiences. We received feedback from our class about the genre and both psychological and gore fans said that they would want to watch the film.

We started by making our trailer have a disrupted beginning forming into a broken down suspense and emphasizing the equilibrium being destroyed and normality no longer being a security. The thought of being lost in the woods and getting further and further away from home helps to set the scenes and convey a very uncertain and sinister mood. As a group we wanted this setting to be dark and mysterious and therefor did our best to edit the setting to make it look anonymous. In addition to this we used low-key lighting and parallel music that both automatically suggest to the audience that it is within the horror genre and therefor automatically starts the trailer off with a memorable starting point. This suspense allows us to start the beginning of a terrifying sequence of events that are about to occur. Again this beginning plot allows us to emphasize the work of Hitchcock from his film ‘PSYCHO’(1960). Hitchcock also begins by using an unnerving setting of a young girl travelling alone and a feeling of disorientation being forced upon us from the lack of normality from Norman and his mother. Loneliness is a key horror convention that many auteurs use to relate to a feeling that many people have experienced and therefor sympathies with.

I did an in depth analysis from the INSIDIOUS trailer, and therefor some of my inspiration from my own trailer comes from this. Within the INSIDIOUS trailer I liked how it started of with a basic story line, and then something occurred that disturbed the equilibrium. I thought that by using this method it automatically draws the audience in and makes them curious as to what is going to happen in the actual film. The insidious trailer worked very well at building up tension due to the fact it starts of slow and gradually builds pace. The music is also a key contribution to why it’s so affective. The strong use of contrapuntal music works really well when selling the storyline, we automatically get the impression that something isn’t right, and it is distinctive for horror fans to notice.

Due to the fact we had a female dominated group it made us unconsciously challenge some of the media genres. Normally males are a very active role throughout and the females are normally relatively passive (apart from the ‘final girl’) and due to the fact we only had one male in our group it made it easier for us to challenge this genre convention and make the females become the most important part of our trailer, full of strength and drive to try and escape death. I believe that due to the fact we were a female dominated group it made it easy to reveal our key female protagonists that embrace the strength of the role of a female and are not afraid to challenge gender stereotypes. We further emphasized this by showing that no ‘male hero’ was present and in fact three blonde haired girls were representing a different depiction of the stereotypical ‘bimbos’. We also researched that the final girl normally has dark hair that is tied back or short so we decided to keep a part of this convention and make the blonde girls have their hair tied back throughout the majority of the trailer. Our psychological killer is also a female character. When researching into the horror history, statistics show that the majority of psychological horror killers are normally male and therefor we also challenged this aspect of horror. Our killer was a female however was still able to bring fear to the audience.

We used intertitles not only to signify key words and phrases, this helped to give our trailer some identity and allow it to speak directly to the audience. Not only did this aspect of our trailer work well at drawing in our audience’s attention but it also allowed us to cut between scenes without any disorientation. This is a key way of using intertitles because many real life trailers use them to change the duration of speed throughout.

The use of costumes helped us to signify a personality of each person, for the normal everyday characters we had basic everyday clothes, the pathetic fallacy of the weather meant it was cold, wet and damp and therefor we were able to automatically make our psychological killer stand out as she was dressed in a long white gown which any other person would be frozen in. The gown was originally a pure white, however had been destroyed by two colors that symbolize danger and darkness. The two uses of costumes juxtapose one another and are able to show the big distinction between the good characters and the bad.

Ending with a jump scare is most typically found is psychological thriller trailers and therefor we decided to use one in our own trailer. The jump scare is used to leave the audience wanted more and therefor has to be explicit but also affective. The trick is to cut to black before we find out what has happened to the character. This inconclusive last shot leaves us on a cliffhanger, and makes the audience desperate to know what has happened. As a media student it is important to be aware of not only the part of media we are studying into but also the influences that help to promote it and therefor we added in a intertitle of a hashtag (hashtagGOCRAZY) this shows that as group we have a deeper understanding of the intertwining that the media posses alongside the important role that social networking provides us with.

I am a keen leader and I am able to understand the importance of organization, this particular aspect contributed well to the making of my trailer because I was able to apply this skill to the importance of scheduling the work on the trailer. Alongside this skill I also have an ability to recognize if shots work well or if they needed to be edited/reshot. This is a vital part in the success of our trailer, due to the fact I did not allow scenes to be anything less than accurate, and made sure that they looked to the best of our ability. Andrew Sarris Auteur theory suggests that directors put “their soul” into the producing of their films and therefor I believe that despite the fact I am only a student it still doesn’t prevent me from putting everything I have into making the trailer to the level of success that I have in mind. I was able to recreate styles from existing auteurs alongside adding in our own individual female driven narrative. As a group we opted to create a psychological horror dominated by a feminist viewpoint and therefor I believe that we were successful in our aim to challenge the stereotypical gender roles within horror.