Q1. In what ways does you media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?(ljosiah+joel)

(Josiah)
Our whole media product consists of three separate products; The main teaser trailer, movie poster and movie magazine. We decided to keep the poster simple but effective, the black background is employed to connote fear, darkness generally fits and develops the horror theme we are attempting to create. Black is commonly used in horror products to gain an uneasy feeling and a sense of suspense. The use of the bright red text for the text seen on the poster was done to allow it to stand out from the black background and the image of the bloody hand. The colour decision was again fueled by the connotations the inclusion of passionate red implies, in our case danger, blood, fire, aggression which we felt was useful to our media product. The image of a bloody hand up against a window pane gives the impression the person is desparatley trying to get out and the blood obviously suggests he/she has been hurt by something or something creating ambiguity, tension and suspense in the viewer not knowning who the protaginist is. 

We developed a similar idea from the movie poster from 2007's 'Amercian Zombie' as an inspiration for our poster as we felt this poster was very effective in how it is set out. However we thougt it was necessary to develop on this poster by creating an more mysterious atmosphere. The group felt that the white background did not initiate as much mystery into the audience as we set out to do therefore, we chose a dark background that would compliment our title. The dark background implies something dangerous is lurking in the dark which should create a good buzz around our poster.


























JOEL

The group enjoyed the idea of following Gorezones convention of using blood on their artist. Rather than using fake blood on our actor we decided that we would add the blood effect on Photoshop. This proved to be difficult because a majority of actors in horror films are white, which makes it easier for blood to standout whereas, our actor is black which made it extrememly difficult to find the right settings for the blood to look real. The spray of blood across the page is a convention we decided to challenge but thought it was unique because it added to the psychotic killer's messy character. We also took a risk with the skull in the top right hand corner but we thought that it was something that stood out in the magazine which contributed towards giving our magazine a 'cutting edge.'

Firstly, we followed the conventions of text in trailers that alert readers  of when the film will be released. This adds to the suspense that we intend to create. We decided not to put too much text so that the audiences attention will not drift away from the footage. However we thought that we would try something unique which was to allow a slow transition of the text to run onto the footage. We also used no dialogue because we did not want our trailer to become too narrative because we wanted our audience to be unaware of what the plot is which corresponds with the title of the film.

Graeme Burton, a media theorist, suggest we can learn alot from film genre by looking at a number of key concepts such as the the protagonist, stock characters, stock situations and icons. Blood, gore and violence are all identifiable as horror conventions. Considering that there is a strong connection between blood and violence we used blood alot to convey actions of violence by our antagonist. This screen shot is POV shot of our antagonist character crossing the names of his victims name in blood. This implies that all the names crossed out is a result of deceased victims

this also alerts the audience that our horror theme is based around survival. The effect of a POV shot also puts the audience in the antagonists' position and makes the audience feel that they are the killer of several people. Media theorist have argued in the past that camera shots such as these can trigger psychological problems with some audiences due to the thrill of being a killer.

This screen shot is a technique used in many horror films and trailers. This is called dramatic irony because our protagonist in the storyline that a demented killer has his eyes on him, however the audience does. This is a stock situation in the horror genre which usually leads to the audience screaming 'look behind you' audiences expect to see these situations to believe the narrative of the genre.

We used a very common convention which was introducing our teaser trailer with an image of our production name"Stern Productions" This is an key feature to a trailer as the audience will be able to recognize our production company which has produced similar products of the same genre. This is effective because the audience will already have a created a familiarisation with what genre our production compny is associated with. what to expect from them.

Our teaser trailer uses, develops and challenges the forms of conventions of real media products in many different ways. During our research of mainstream teaser trailers we asserted that the length of other teaser trailers was between 35-55 secs.We analyzed that there was a correlation that a majority of teaser tarilers duration was under a minute. We felt that it was imortant to do so so that we did not give too much of our storyline away so that the audience will be more curious and find it more appealing if they didnt know the outcome of our story.There is also no dialogue in our teaser trailer which adds to the element of suprise. This creates an tense atmosphere which is overlayed by a piano soundtrack, this suits the storyline anticipated and helps create a nail biting experience.We also thought it was necessary to hide the identity of characters, the audience is unaware of which character is the killer, this should help contribute towards the buzz surrounding the title 'The Unknown' This is a convention of a horror teaser trailer. I think the trailer is successful in following the conventions of a teaser trailer as the genre and a brief glimpse of the storyline is shown but nothing else is shown and it is made to make the viewer curious about the upcoming film.

In some scenarios it is a useful convention for some scences to have low key lighting. It accenuates the contours of an object by throwing areas into an shade. The predominance of shadowy areas heightens the sense of alienation felt by the viewer. We also challenged the conventions of race in the horror genre. We hoped to get rid of stereotypes such as the 'black guy always dies first' we done this by the majority of our actor being black. Inevitably some black characters will eventually die but with the majority of the cast being black it will be an oppurtunity for more black actors to act more in horror films which is mainly influened by white actors in hollywood.

At the end of the trailer we provide the audience with enigma adding to the element of suprise. This technique is similar to a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter in a story. The bloody hand on the glass door leaves the audience guessing the outcome of the hand which entices the audience and may influence whether they decide to watch the film.