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

In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?Jessica Thompson

Due to the feedback from our questionnaire, we decided to make our horror film a thriller. In order to make ours, we looked at existing thrillers and a variety of other horror trailers, as well as websites and posters to see the generic conventions that we would need to include in our own media product.

TrailerWhen researching horror trailers, we found that they had an animated production logo at the start and credits, as well as the release date at the end, therefore we incorporated these conventions into our trailer.

We also discovered that certain horror film trailers used captions to inform the audience as well as breaking up different scenes. Therefore, we used various captions throughout our trailer as opposed to having masses of dialogue as there doesn’t tend to be a lot of talking in horror films. The captions were also in keeping with the horror theme as we made the font distorted/appear and disappear as well as them being on a dark, scary background.

During the start of our trailer, we used longer, more continuous shots which show that everything is calm and relaxed. As the trailer progresses and the danger/horror becomes more apparent, we used fast cuts, short clips and more cut to blacks. These editing techniques add to the tension and make the trailer appear scarier. This is a common convention that we found in most horror films. It is clearly seen in The Purge: Anarchy trailer.