Before producing the trailer we planned out the main paradigms which all horror trailers include they are:
Blood
Death
Killing
Victims
Villain
Haunted and isolated locations: e.g. House, grave yard, woods etc.
Evil
My group and I then decided what scenes the audience would want to expect and what scenes would subvert their expectations in order to create a spooky effect for e.g. bussing scenes etc. We decided to use a isolated house typical setting for a horror film. We also decided showing the victim being attacked and showing flashing images in pain and distress and decided to make one other main character oblivious to the whole attack. We decided to use diegetic sounds to create a sense of realism. We chose to incorporate the fact that there was a Villain chasing after the Victim.
My media product, is a horror film trailer called 'Beyond the grave', which uses and challenges forms and conventions of real media products by following the stereotypical conventions of existing horror film trailers, however I have also incorporated my own forms and conventions in the trailer to make it creative.
My understanding of the codes and conventions of a real media product came from watching a multitude of real life media texts. My media product obeys the trailer convention, as I discovered a trailer is usually no more than 90 seconds long. I felt my trailer met the conventions of real media produt through mise-en-scene and camera this is common in horror trailers for e.g. "The Strangers" I decided to follow Tzvetan Todorov's conventional narrative structure which starts the equilibrium and follows through to the moment of disequilibrium and finishes of the period of disequilibrium and then the new equilibrium. However the equilibrium is usually 10-15% of the narrative which equals to about the first 15 seconds of the trailer, in my trailer our equilibrium lasts for about 10 seconds to allow the audience to become engaged and aware of the events taking place in the trailer, the conflict is that the Antagonist wants her sister's fiance to herself and jealousy drives her in to a psychotic frenzy, however the Antagonist's sister the heroine ignores this not taking her seriousy and carries on her romantic relationship which states the complication, as the Antagonist takes drastic measures to get her point across which ends in fatal conseqences. The idea of having the Antagonist rise from the dead and send messages beyond the grave creates a supernatural and spooky effect. Especially as it seems unreal and subverts the audience expectations as they may believe that the evil is over after the Antagonist is dead, but infact "evil will do anything to live" which is the slogan of my film and connotes well with the name of my film "Beyond the grave" and the story behind it. I developed forms and conventions of media products and incorporated my own forms and conventions to add creativity but at the same time challenged this, I transformed the sister in to an Antagonist. Majority of film trailers have a Protagonist but in this case the heroine's fiance was oblivious to the horrific events that took place in his fiancee 's experience therefore he did not help her or try to save her in any way and instead believed she was mentally ill due to the great loss she suffered (death of her sister). At 40secs till 1.27secs final cut I decided to interlink all mishappenings which illustrated disequibrium in a series of events, I believed this would add a stir between my audience and with the music becoming faster it would add that spooky factor needed to attract my audience. I relate the crisis to the moment of disequilibrium, for it shows multiple clips and scenes that are unnerving, the crisis for my horror trailer was the when the heroine is vulnerable and alone and she is being stalked by her sister in the comfort of her own home and runs out of her home. The moment of disequilibrium strikes from the moment the Antagonist is burning the photo of the happy couple in my horror trailer. My trailer slightly differs from real media products as in my storyline I don't show one surviving character and the heroine survives after suffering the worst form the Antagonist which is unusual as for most horror trailers the heroine is usually the passive victim that dies e.g. in "Drag me to hell" the heroine dies after suffering supernatural attacks from the Antagonist.
I used a real media product which was the green banner at the beginning of the trailer as well as the universal logo to show, that my trailer meets the conventions of a real media product by using a well known distribution company.The equilibrium commences with a long shot of the couple holding hands and walking and facing away from the camera so its as if they are unaware of the camera it also captures the scenary and mise-en-scene, however this challenges the codes and conventions of real media products as normally the equilibrium is introduced with an establishing shot of a building seen in most trailers (according to my research) where the events of the trailer will occur, so we decided to follow differ from this feature.
We applied panning which is a very common shot type in trailers which explores a particular scene and narrates the story behind it; for the second scene in the trailer where the photo is burnt out i decided add an effect and solarized it which again challenges forms and conventions as it is not usually used in horror trailers. The constant use of cross fades in a series of scenes intelinked the chain of events that took place because the audience's interest lingers between multiple scenes more. The use of close - ups of facial expressions narrated the story rather than using dialogue and short and sharp mid shots at the illustrated particular scenes. Upon furthrer resarch I discovered most camera shots disallow the smooth motion of scenes but at the same time convey notions of emotions presenting exactly what the actor is feeling this is an advantage as it creates a sense of realism this usually happens after the moment of disequilibrium, and includes shaky cams, long shots, mid - shots, close - ups and disturbed hand held camera and extreme close - ups; my trailer conveyed a series of different camera shot types after the disequilibrium. The moment of disequilibrium showed us a mid-shot of the Antagonist which later moves on to be a close-up. During the period of disequilibrium we used a series of jump cuts and a feature known as razor blading to present a series of horrific scenes which created an eerie atmosphere but at the same time it subverts the audience's expectations and still gives that current effect used in real media products which engage and attract the audience.
I edited multiple scenes which present a selection of camera shots, the close-up shot was used during moment of disequilibrium to show the danger and to commence the negativity within the trailer. I decided to present the equilibrium as a proposal scene at the start of the trailer with slow light music which then became more dramatic and created a sense of realism simila to real media products. For the Kitchen scene where the actress slits her wrist I decided to use shot reverse shot in order to engage the audience by shooting the wound and then her facial expression. The Bathroom bussing scene popular in many horror trailers character continued to fit the codes and conventions of real media products. I discovered that filming the heroine from a higher angle made her look powerless and vulnerable. (55 secs and 1.06 secs)
My media product challenges the conventions of the overall mise-en-scene, simply because the characters do not fulfill the paradigms used in horror films to a certain extent as the heroine survives unlike in "Drag me to hell" whereas in my trailer the heroine is killed by the Antagonist. However it does meet the setting convention as the heroine is being attacked in the comfort of her own home like "Paranormal activity". Also the props used are of similar standard such as mobile phone, lipstick on the mirror, blood, knife, mirror, candles.
My trailer obeys the pitch paradigm of 'Paranormal activity', where the Antagonist is envious of her blood-related sister's relationship she becomes so obsessed and psychotic that she kills herself in a frenzy as jealousy takes over . This pitch paradigm usually constitutes of certain ethnic groups, which are laid out amongst teenagers in the media and the realistic world, however it challenges a particular tradition through the following:
Character Conventions
My group and I decided to use three characters in our trailer including the villain. We decided to start challenging the way the audience think by subverting their expectations. The traditonal paradigms is where a couple is attacked by supernatural powers in the comfort of their own home, however in this case I decided to make the actor oblivious to the horrific events which only the heroine and audience witness.also the surviving character contradicts the female gender as horror films kill the female characters beforehand but in my horror trailer the female victim survives. The ethnic groups associated with these group of are usually white people as the beliefs are the asian become the villains and black people always die first. According to paradigms, different ethnical categories present, the suriving character is most likely to be white, as this correlates with class and power of a white man traditionally. My media product challenged this. Instead of presenting a large number of people we chose a mixture and used 1 black female, 1 mix race female and 1 white male which stereotypically is not meant for them but we normalised this during the trailer with the help of props, camera shots and Adobe Photoshop aswell as final cut express . To obey Paranormal activity I used:
Boyfriend (male)
Girlfriend (female)
Jealous sister (female) Tradition shows how the Antagonist is always female and has the power to use supernatural powers, I challenged this but at the same time obeyed this in my trailer through appearances of the Villain showing up in scenes but without the need to present black magic/mantras and rituals as in "Drag me to hell" To conform the conventions of the boyfriend character we gave the actor a casual look with jeans and a hoodie/top and jacket to present that he is relaxed and laid back but at the same time in love.
The girlfriend character met the requirements as she was given a girly innocent simple look to increase vulnerability this meets the required codes and convetions of the victim. To manifest this look I used a number of girly outfits including, mac coat, vest, waterfall cardigan, jeans, dressing gown and pyjamas etc. The trend in horror films is that the innocent vulnerable character ends up dying first as they come across as passive, however in my trailer I decided to twist this around and make the passive character the surviving character who ends up fighting the evil Villain.
The Villain character is usually a female and is the one in hiding and only appears in front of her victim when the time is right as a threat, I manifested the Villain's look by giving her dull look using dark colours mostly the colour black as it connotes danger and mysteriousness such as a black t-shirt, black jeans and black coat. I filmed the Antagonist with her long dark hair over her face looking like a threat I was inspired by Eastern Asia horror films such as "Grudge" where this is normalised.Therefore I derived this convention from there. I discovered the hair hides the face and unveils only the eyes this makes the Villain stand out from the others and be presented as a threat to the outside world. It only draws attentions to the eyes and emotional feature which conveys to the audience that something is really wrong and alerts danger. It also presents the Villains emotions only from the eyes. Another convention my product meets is that the threatening character is usually female
