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| Left: Cell 17 Right: Samples Conventional lighting, angles and text. |
Media products are made with extreme amounts of effort and precision, if they do not match up to the standards of previous/existing products then they are not adequate for public consumption. Therefore, it is wise to adapt my own product to the 'conventions' that previous products have established, that way my product is performing the functions it is meant to do when the audience interact with it. I will illustrate the way that my products have developed/challenged the forms of coventions of real media products in regards to the Horror Teaser Trailer.
Teaser trailers are created for the purpose of 'whetting the apetite' of the target market. The trailer is meant to display the conventions of the genre and make it clear what the audience should expect but is vague as to the storyline and the chronology of the plot. Our trailer displays many conventions of horror trailers, such as shooting in dark, tense locations, using inter-titles to hint at the storyline and using a varied pace to make the trailer more exciting. Our trailer tries to conform to the conventions that media companies have created because they have proven to be successful. Media companies follow the standard convention as guidelines in order to ensure that their product is as successful as trailers that have been made before. As much as following conventions is important to our media product, diverting from these conventions is also a good way of getting the viewers attention. For example, our trailer uses a psychological horror theme that requires no gore and very minimal casting, this would immediately appear unusual to the viewer and they would begin to question why this trailer is different from the rest. The point here is that conventions are good to follow but it can be rewarding to break them.
The sample shots from our trailer, I believe, shows how we looked into existing products and analysed what makes them effective. We have borrowed many effective shot types and editing ideas from existing trailers as this gives us guidance as to how we can present our ideas in a way that will have a powerful effect on the audience. We made sure we included a collision cutting moment, where we hear the iconic horror scream (Top images), This shot is important as it is a conventional shot that's associated with the horror genre. The second set of images shows how we have used shots that highlight the expression of the character, this gives the audience something to relate to. This is also shown through the fourth set of images as it is once again an example of how expression is used to convey the emotion of the character. I believe this is important because this way the audience will feel more empathy for the character and then understand the fear that they feel in that situation. Empathy and situations that the audience can relate to are some of the features that make horror effective so it is important that out trailer conforms to this and uses these features in order to make it a useful advertisement.
A common convention of horror trailers is to have no voice-over as the use of voice seems to take away the impact of what is happening in the scene. Diagetic sounds give the impression of everything being close to the character and because of this the audience can believe that the character is genuinely in fear of what is happening around them. it is better, for the purpose of a horror teaser trailer, to use inter-titles to hint at the storyline and punctuate the trailer with diagetic sounds, such as screams, breathing and powerful music. Extensive dialog in a trailer is not effective either because it takes away the impact of the shock elements that are in the trailer. Our trailer uses very minimal amounts of sound. We are focusing on screams and a soundtrack to enforce the dramatic elements of our trailer and have no voice-over to follow the conventions. Our trailer does not use as much sound as a standard horror trailer as we want the audience to feel a bit isolated from the film as this goes well with the psychological theme of the trailer. This is the way we have attempted to challenge existing product's conventions. I think sound is a powerful tool for horror and we have spent a lot of time on our soundtrack to make sure it matches the pace of our visual information and gives the trailer a rhythm and pace.
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