QUESTION 1: IN WHAT WAY DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
TRAILER
We conformed to real media products within our trailer by using a blonde female as one of our victims however this also challenged conventions as usually blonde females are usually the first to die in horror. Blonde characters don't usually survive in horrors whereas our trailer portrays the idea that she could possibly survive. She comes across as intelligent, sweet and innocent however in most horrors the blonde female usually comes across as simple, ditsy and a bit of a tart. We also challenged real media products by using a female as the villain whereas in most horrors a male villain is used. In real media products the villain is usually male, big and strong to give a feel of fear and weakness to the victims and audience whereas we used a female villain. This was because our sub-genre is 'Voodoo' and the evil in our trailer comes from spirits and possibly the devil therefore using a petite female would give the idea that she is very powerful to kill people even without the masculine qualities of a male.
In 'The Cabin in the Woods' the character 'Jules' is the first to die typically because she is a 'dumb blonde'. In the short time she is in the film she comes across as slutty and having a lack of intelligence. We decided to challenge this convention by using Elle, who is blonde, as our victim who potentially survives.
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Another reason of using a female villain was because of the idea that males give a sense of security and safety and we wanted our audience to feel tense and exposed. Similarly to 'The Ring' the villain is female and the audience would get the idea that she is insane and completely evil which was what we wanted our audience to feel.
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As a group we decided Sarah would be a spiritual villain who used the power of voodoo and evil power to kill the victims. We decided for her to be killed in a car crash but then come back alive to get her revenge. This conformed to conventions as in 'The Ring' Samara, the evil girl, was killed by her own mother and then came back to get revenge. We used this as an inspiration for our horror trailer as even though Samara is a small girl she still made audiences feel on edge and fearful of her. We wanted to have the same effect for Sarah. However, it also challenged conventions as in 'The Ring' Samara kills anyone who finds out about her story and watches the video about her even though they have no connection to her death, in our horror we decided for Sarah to only kill the people who were either involved in her death and hit her with the car or who she hated while she was alive.
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We were originally going to use the idea of a young boy who goes crazy because of the death of his father. However, we changed this idea as it would have been difficult to challenge horror conventions as young children being the villain has happened many times in horror movie history. For example 'OMEN', 'THE BAD SEED', 'ORPHAN', 'THE DEVIL'S CHILD', 'THE RING' and many more. This is when we changed our idea to Voodoo as it isn't as common and therefore it would have been easier to challenge horror conventions and it would be more creative.
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This video shows how our trailer develops or challenges conventions via the use of location, casting, sound, pace and more.
Poster
Magazine
This is our magazine:
We wanted the voodoo doll to have some focus on the magazine but not as much as the poster which is why we made the blood less bright and vivid and didn't try to make it stand our as much. We wanted the main focus to be Sarah, the villain in the trailer, to break conventions as usually it is the good and innocent people who make the magazines. We did this as we wanted to show that our movie will be different and it would also attract more people. If we chose to have Elle, the good character, on the magazine it would conform to conventions. We used the original red for 'Empire' to conform to conventions along with the dark grey background. However we challenged conventions by adding a smoke effect at the bottom as throughout the trailer there are scenes and shots of the villain smoking to enforce the idea of evil. |
This was the magazine that we used for our inspiration was the Total Film one for King Kong. We used this as it contains lots of information that people can read at a glance if they don't actually want to buy it. However, the James Bond Empire magazine doesn't contain much information at all. This could be because it is already so successful however people would have to buy it to find out about it. We used the King Kong magazine to use as a template as we wanted to give lots of information as it is clearly an original film and not a sequel to anything therefore it is not successful yet. We also thought that the King Kong magazine looks more inviting and attractive as it contains the bright colour yellow and shows that it is not only an action film but also a romance as the main characters are shown to be romantic on the magazine.
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