Evaluation Pt.1

Evaluation Pt. 1

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

Genre theory is a very important part of categorising films, and the main critic behind this was Thomas Schatz, the writer behind the iconic study ‘Hollywood Genres’. He saw genre as ‘the most powerful force’ in films because it helped sell movies to an audience of fans, and enabled them to have clear expectations of what to expect in the film, and it also helped them to understand the film itself. Filmmakers also would know what was going to appeal to their target audience of ‘genre fans’. Taking this into account our group’s horror trailer fits the horror genre very well, it contains a lot of the most familiar of the horror generic conventions that are to be expected from a horror film. Our trailer featured a Psycho/Serial killer which helps to place it within the horror genre. We also included slow editing to create tension, and in the highlights we used quick montage to build excitement. The mise-en-scene of our horror trailer includes blood and gore (body horror), restricted narration and low key lighting. This all helps to keep the trailer within the horror generic conventions, and because all of the conventions that I have mentioned are included within the trailer, horror fans that prefer gritty serial killer style horrors will be able to deter that this film will be one that they would enjoy, because the trailer shows all of the conventions that they prefer to watch.

                Our horror trailer fitted well within horror trailer conventions but also it had some distinctive features to keep it interesting and different. Our trailer is a scene trailer, but we also showed highlights in the form of flashbacks, so it is a hybrid of both as we felt this would be the best way for the audience to understand the narrative and get the general idea of what the film is about. So at the start we included a slow build to increase the tension, and this helps to better understand our main character Keith, and what he looks like and how he acts. The scene section of the trailer is slow throughout, it aims to keep the character of Keith mysterious and sinister, and ends with a shot of Keith’s face emerging from the darkness. In contrast our highlights show examples of quick montage and the trailer finished with one of these quick, fast highlights. In comparison to real life trailers, our is like a mix between Cloverfield (2008) (as this is a scene trailer and like Keith, it gives the audience a really good introduction to the film and the characters) and Dawn Of The Dead (2004) (as the use of highlights show important scene of the film so the audience get a better idea of the content and also clues to the story). 

                As a group we all preferred the same type of horror film, we all liked horror films with an interesting and distinctive main character, we liked gritty horror films, and one particular film the influenced the making and content of our trailer was Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) directed by John McNaughton. This film follows along similar lines to Keith, and at certain points of the film, Henry is a fairly likeable character, as was the ambition with Keith. However the characters kill for very different reasons which sets Keith apart from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. We tried to make our trailer distinctive, and not ‘just another horror trailer’ the use of a hybrid scene/highlights convention is one that I think has helped us achieve this, most horror trailers are one or the other, but our trailer gives a much better view of the narrative than other horror trailers. Also the use of a high quality camera with a wide aperture value set on the lens makes our trailer more aesthetically pleasing, and gives it a more detailed and realistic effect than other trailers. We also shot our highlights in black and white so the audience would know that they were flashbacks of Keith’s past, we added grain to these to make them seem grittier and highlight that these are ‘bad memories’ and are the cause of Keith's psychotic actions. As far as taking influence from auteurs, we looked at George Romero’s work and took inspiration from his use of gore and body horror in his films and included this in the trailer. We also looked at modern horror for action and context, as domestic violence is a common issue in modern times, so we used this as a key idea in our trailer and narrative and used this to try to not only shock people, but also connect with people.