Evaluation Question 1

Our media product supports many of the conventions of professional media products. The reason for this is because while we where filming, we kept all the specific rules in mind and made sure we didn't break any rules.

For example the 180-degree rule when we are filming, we have many shots throughout our media piece where we panned the camera and when doing that it is very easy to break the 180-degree rule.

We found ourselves filming scenes many times over, this was not always because we messed up the filming, sometimes the characters minor facial expressions were not suited for the scene, the scene was instigating horror but their facial expressions suggested otherwise, to keep consistency and the horror theme going we had to re film and make sure everyone knew the how they had to act specifically.

Another way, in which we have stuck with the conventions of a horror movie, is through the use of sound. Almost all horror movies have a high content of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. The sound alone is usually enough for the audience to distinguish what is going on in the trailer, I believe our trailer does this too as without video and sound it is possible to distinguish between a tension building scene and a shock scene.

One thing that we have done is kept our whole media production in black and white, from the people who have viewed it we have had the same feedback. We are fully aware how this may challenge the conventions of a real horror trailer. However there are two ways to look at this, you can look at it in the form of consistency, in that sense we've stuck to the book and kept the whole horror trailer in black and white. However when you look at other horror trailers they are never all in black and white, they may be mostly but there is always a scene that has colour and this adds effect. The one issue we had with filming was that the times we got together to film tended to be during the day, so the scenes we did film had to be darkened and when using the Mac computer and darkening the scenes, it did not always look to good when they where darkened so we had to play about with the balance of the colour, so by making them black and white and then messing around with the darkness of the scene we where able to come up with the darkness we needed, that is then when we applied it to everything because at the time it was consistency that we where looking to achieve.

Another way me have challenged the conventions of a real media products is the dialogue, we don't have much throughout our piece. This was the case last year also; we personally feel that we are able to achieve quite a professional piece without having much dialogue. When our media piece was viewed by our teacher this is one of the first thing he picked up on immediately which could have possibly been floor in the piece. So we made plans to do some voice over. One thing which I personally noticed was how we act when we are in front of the camera, we pay generous amounts of attention to how we act to be able to give as much detail away as we can through our actions, this is one as to why we don't have much dialogue in our finished media product. Dialogue

For example one of things we included was a P.O.V shot, and when we filmed this and reviewed it on the Mac computers it was obvious due to the shadow on the floor that the camera was in hand however we re filmed the scene and although in the second take we filmed it exactly the same however you could not fully tell that it was a camera in hand it looked as if the character was having a drink, which then brings us onto the other idea behind the filming, the characters have been previously drinking, instead of having dialogue to show this we show it through their actions. In the media piece it is shown through the silly mistakes and the dopiness that the characters portray, for example going to the wrong vehicle, walking in a strange slurry manner. Also the scene where the two main characters enter the vehicle, one of them instantly shuts his eyes in the car before the shock of something in the back seat scares them back out.

Another way we may have challenged the conventions of a typical horror trailer is with some of the scenes mentioned in the previous paragraph, although it is a horror trailer and the intention is to scare yet interest an audience, however the part where the two main characters are portraying that they are under the influence brings an element of comedy, because they go to the wrong car and then have a tug for the car keys and this comes across as quite funny because they aren't sober and they are not aware. this may challenge the conventions of a professional media product however i personally think it may be a good thing because it shows something slightly different and bending the conventions is not seen as a bad thing by us a group.

What may be seen as a flaw in our product as previously mentioned is we do not have enough monologue however we do try and make up for that with the filming. i can only be accounted for so much however because the narrative and the story need to come together and as we have not paid full attention to monologue we may have to add parts to make up and explain in our piece more of the story line, in the first few draughts of our media piece it was pretty obvious to ourselves and the people who viewed it that the story was not fully clear, and we did more filming to help clarify what the story was about however as I said there is only so much filming you can do for a trailer that is going to last roughly 2 minutes.

As well as our movie trailer our movie poster and magazine cover also challenge and support many conventions of horror texts.

Firstly our poster consists of dark bold colours throughout this is a very common aspect of most horror trailers and is instantaneously recognizable to the audience to be a visual metaphor for danger and evil. The use of colour on our magazine cover is also in support of horror conventions as it also uses large amounts of dark colours, however the magazine cover also utilises the common connotation of red and uses it to symbolize blood, which is an easy link to make with death or injury.

Furthermore our poster also challenges horror text conventions through the central image. In most horror posters the central image is often a very large and busy image. However in our poster the eye is very simple and blends into the background very easily. The reason we decided to this was because we believe our mind is capable of creating a unlimited amount of scary thoughts where as a poster can only show so much so by using a small image it makes the audience think of there own ideas of why there is a lack of imagery and opens up there mind to think of various scary scenarios.

In addition our magazine cover also challenges horror text conventions in many ways such as through the use of the smoked background. The way in which this challenges common convention is because with most mainstream film magazines such as empire have a blank solid coloured background unless the background is part of the central image. I believe challenging this convention resulted in a better magazine cover as it added another element and was visual more engaging.

Overall through out all of media products I think the combination of challenging and supporting convention has resulted in us creating a new twist on a classic horror. I believe this to be a positive thing as it still includes all aspects people love and associate with horror whilst simultaneously added new unexpected features, which catch the audience off-guard, or by surprise to heighten the entertainment or the way in which they take in information.