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

Horror Conventions

In Triquetra we have tried to use a range of horror conventions to exploit the full potential of our idea. I feel that we have achieved that by ease and, as always, there are some that work better than others. In our piece we have used a vast number of close ups. There are shows in the eyes and on shots such as dragging feet. Close ups are a convention used in horror quite a lot. They give the sense of invasion of the audiences personal space and that is one of the effects we hope to have on our audience. Usually horror takes place in isolated/abandoned locations, such as factories and forests. We used a number of locations to show the audience that it is not all in one place. We did keep the 'Out of hours' theme but were able to discreetly add in a little bit more action.

            For shot 8 above we shot it at a canted angle and then rotated the clip on the computer which disorientated the audience a little bit to which Lizzie then appeared to surprise and shock them. The great thing about shooting a horror is that there is no end to the possibilities of camera angles. On 'Devil' trailer (see earlier post) the titles are shown on a 180degrees rotated city. Anything is possible and most have great effects. A quick shot on our trailer is hand held to give a sort of human perspective to the scene. Like it is an actual person and not a camera.

            1. This shot on the stairs we filmed with dimmed lights as we wanted to create tension. The low key lighting creates a shadow on the stairs that we have enhanced to create a more eerie feel to walking up the stairs.

            2. For this shot at the very beginning of the trailer we used a handheld camera to give the effect that someone has come across the body. This scene also raises questions like who is he? What is he doing there? We chose a medium shot and then panned across the whole body but only part of this full take made it to the final edit. Having a dead person with no identity and no reason why they are there is a typical horror convention.

            3. This shot took us a while to get correctly because at the time we were filming the moon was the wrong shape and size so we had to wait until it was right for us to get the target. It shows the sort of supernatural theme we had incorporated into our trailer.

            4. The extreme close up of my eye is used to try and make the audience feel uncomfortable. The closeness of the eye invades there space and gives a sense of possible entrapment, it also opens really quickly and allows us to feel the fear that the man is going through.

            5. This shot I had thought of from the very beginning. The intended affect on the audience is to shock them and make them aware that something is not right. To film this we had to get the camera right in Lizzie's face and we made the scene look darker as 'scary' things typically happen at night.

            6. This clip is one of my favourite parts of our whole trailer. We filmed Lizzie walking in 5 different places and using Final Cut Pro we added the 'Bad TV' effect which allowed us to get this super effect. To get the whole effect we placed one shot after the other and added the 'Bad TV' to every other shot which made it look like the, now possessed, girl is jumping as supernatural beings do.

            7. This scene is another effect that we were able to achieve through Final Cut Pro. We took two identical shots and placed them one on top of the other. Because they are both identical what ever moves will be shown. The male in the shot walks across so we changed the opacity of that shot down to about 35% and it now looks like he is the ghost. This is not as common as most people think because horror movies like to show what the ghost does rather than the ghost its self. In The Shining for example the ghosts are the twins yet they both appear although the kind of ghost in our trailer is a stereotypical one I think that it works.

            8. In this shot we decided to use a shot that can be used in a number of different ways. The classic mirror shot is a great horror convention and is used in many horror movies including on the poster of The Unborn. To achieve this we did the same as the ghost shot, filmed the same shot and then added Lizzie to make it look like she appeared. We want this shot to make the audience jump and to try and find them on a false sense of security as there is not a lot of action building up to this shot. The action happens after this shot and I think this breaks the ice.

            9. This shot pans to a focus pull showing our female protagonist through the bars of a steel object showing the audience how she can blend in with everyday life but we know that she is so much more which poses a threat to the world of the character. We filmed this by setting the tripod up behind the steel frame with Lizzie some distance in front. We zoomed in slightly to get a perfectly framed shot and focus pulled to reveal Lizzie blended into the society.

Trailer Conventions

To begin with a teaser trailer is normally around about a minute long to give the audience an insight into the play and make them want to see the theatrical trailer and hopefully the full length film when it is released. Although our trailer is 1:44 seconds long the actual footage in it is around 1:10 and the rest are inter titles. Trailers are designed to cause an explosion in the audience's head which entices them to see the movie. Although we do not specify that our trailer is a horror I believe by the clear drone at the start and the mood/tone of our trailer, that our intentions are clear. We include the name of our Movie and through ECU's, use of ghosts and disorientating shots that the audience can figure out that it is a horror.

            We tried to incorporate aspects that our target audience of females aged 15-18 would enjoy. As our research found out that the audience preferred psychological horror we didn't use as much blood as some horror movies use i.e around the neck and all over faces, we had some on Ellen's face and around the hands of the mysterious man. Other than this it was mainly chasing and being scared of Lizzie. Although our soundtrack worked well with our piece I felt that it could have been more dramatic and built more suspense leading up to the ending. For me it was too 'in your face' the whole time and at times could have contrasted to the visuals. In other trailers that have been created in my year I feel that our soundtrack is the weakest in terms of building suspense. Our inter-titles are distributed across the majority of the trailer, but towards the end when the action starts to really build up we thought that if we had inter-titles it would break the suspense so we decided to have shot after shot of action building up to the finale.