Evaluation Question 1

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Whilst I was analysing horror trailers earlier on in my blog, I began to notice a connection between the trailers. They all share similar forms and conventions, just like I think our group trailer  has with professionally made trailers.

I believe our group horror trailer has the similar qualities to a professionally made trailer, we have pointed out the features and typical lay out of horror trailers and used them in our own trailer. One of the first things we noticed was that there is always a slow start at the beginning of a horror trailer. I think producers do this to set a calm atmosphere which will then make the build up much more powerful. The slow starts will usually consist of sunny scenes with lots of clear lighting, maybe a laughter shot of one of the characters and if not pop, happy music then no music. Around about thirty seconds into the trailer the mood of the music and setting will change. There will usually be a title come up, this is a clear sign that the build up is about to begin. Produces use the build up to show what the audience should be expecting in the film, the calm start was merely to explain the storyline. Once the trailer has started speeding up, scene shot will start becoming shorter and faster. Producers do this to raise the audiences reactions and have them feel the atmosphere becoming more tense and scary.

Our group trailer has done this, the calm atmosphere is set, we have a slow start with sunny well lit scenes. The scene begins with a couple of friends driving around the countryside having a chat listening to the radio. Once it starts getting darker we have cued for the music and action to start then. Just like a professionally made trailer we gradually start speeding up and shortening our clips.

The atmosphere at this point in our trailer has started taking a turn. From a calm mood to now quick shots of the two boys wondering round the church and witnessing the killer. For this build up the music played a huge part, the audio we found started off slow and slowly sped up and got loud. This audio track ended up fitting in perfectly with out trailer, we were able to cut it down so the audio would build up with the clips. The audio in professional trailer is always in perfect timing with the clips and almost reflect what is happening in the clips at the time.



There will often be a finishing scene that the producer will add to make the audience jump, or leave them wanting to see more. This end clip is key because it's the last shot the audience will see and remember, if it makes the viewer jump or wanting more then the viewer is more likely to remember the trailer and want to go see the film.

The setting for our trailer worked really well with our storyline, finding some old ruins of a church would make an interesting place to investigate. Old abandoned ruins are always a typical place for a horror film, for example Chernobyl Diaries took place in the ruins of Chernobyl. The reason is because the cast think the place is empty, this is usually the calm part of the trailer and then once they see someone it's a shock to the audience and then the producer can build up the tension using chase scenes and clips of people being captured or killed.

The date and title of the film is always shown at the end of the film so there is more chance of the audience remembering the name and release date of the film. This is another thing we took inspiration from, we put our title and dates at the end of the trailer just before the finisher clip. Another reason we put the title and dates just before the finisher clip is so the audience think that trailer is over and then hear and see a loud quick clip of the horror character, scaring them more because it was unexpected.