Evaluation Q1 - How Our Media Production Use, Develop or Challenge Conventions

When deciding on our trailer and agreeing on the idea we had came up with, we had to decide on what horror sub-genre would best fit the content of our trailer. We realized that because of the story idea being based around a boy who creates drawings that come to life, it would be of a supernatural sub-genre – but we would end up with a hybrid of both supernatural and slasher because of the fact that there is a main killer who using a knife as a weapon – one of the main conventions in the slasher sub-genre.

The idea of having a killer in the movie came from watching trailers and movies from the Friday the 13^th Series. I was really interested in how the trailer for 2009’s trailer for the Friday the 13^th remake done well to build up the Jason character, and how it is only at the end where we see Jason attack his victim with a weapon. (SEE TRAILER ANALYSIS): http://slamproductions4.blogspot.com/2011/12/textual-analysis-of-teaser-trailer_13.html)

Watching trailers from the supernatural horror sub-genre helped us to understand the trend that is seen in the trailers. One of the main conventions in the supernatural/psychological sub-genre is the idea of appealing to the audience’s mind. It tends to make them think that situations brought up in a trailer/film may actually be real, and allows them to feel paranoid as to what may occur in the trailer/film.

        Referring to the conventions for slashers, we decided to use the final girl convention by having a girl being attacked by a man with a knife in the shadows, and this would be at the end of the trailer. This would be the only instance of violence in the trailer, and we chose to put it at the end so the audience could pay attention to Eric’s disturbed mind, and to also build paranoia in the audience, helping us to achieve our supernatural and physiological convention. The knife is a common convention used in slasher movies, and so we decided to use this weapon in our trailer for this scene.

        The female would help us achieve our target audience of 18-34 year olds. We also chose to keep simple clothing for costume, and the girl wore a tank top, to follow the theory that the females in horror tends to dress slightly revealing. The killer, who is male, grabs the female victim by the neck and drags her away, showing him to be dominant, thus representing males as the dominating sex – something that Slasher films tend to do. When filming, we also made sure not to show neither the artist’s, nor the murderer’s face, another convention of the killer’s face being hidden. We used the Diva Lite to light up the actors in order to see them, but during editing we adjusted the colour correction to create a low key lighting effect. Blood is another convention seen in Slashers, so we applied blood on Eric’s hand and paper to make it seems as if he had killed people already, a conclusion which the audience would automatically draw to, especially because of the drawings on the wall. We realized that there are hardly any slasher movies that have a black final girl, so we chose to do this instead of the common innocent Caucasian female.

        Supernatural and psychological films are usually created to give the audience a level of realism. It is to get the audience to react to what is being showed to them. The reaction the producers are looking for is for the audience to feel as if what they are watching is actually real and they are part of what is going on. Within our teaser trailer, a number of drawings are showed, except for the main drawing shown which actually comes to life at the end of the trailer. This would have the audience imagining the drawings coming to life in their heads. We decided not to show the main drawing as we believed the audience would be able to figure out the idea of the story, through the final girl’s reaction, and the attack at the end.

        Another convention that supernatural/psychological trailers tend to achieve is disturbing the human mind. Within our teaser trailer, on the psychological side of things, we used quick cuts showing different drawings and Eric's hand in drawing motion and with his hands covered in blood, helping to give an insight on how dark his mind is. Also the background music that was used was to help build up this image to let the audience know that he is indeed a disturbed soul. To create realism, we exposed Eric’s insane viewpoint. We used tracking shots a lot when it came to showing the pictures on the wall. This was because we wanted the audience to feel as if they are walking in the room and looking at the images.  

TRAILER CONVENTIONS WE FOLLOWED/ CHALLENGED/ DEVELOPED :

·    30-1 minute trailer – the trailer is 30 seconds long

·    Quick cuts – there is quite a few quick cuts in the trailer as it progresses, eventually returning

·    Colour correction – we adjusted the colour of the trailer to create a much darker, cold mood

·    Minimum footage to make people want to see more – we have a shock part at the end of the trailer where the female victim is attacked by a hidden male killer, and we cut it at this point.

• The main character is a young Asian male yet our trailer is not a J- Horror genre, which tends to use Asian actors.
• Captions were used to create suspense
• Tension is built throughout trailer, the scream of the final becomes the climax