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. 
