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

The first image shown is taken from our own trailer 'Abandoned' and the second is taken from the 'House of Wax' trailer from 2005. Here we a bright light in the frame however the rest of the frame appears dark and unpredictable. This follows the conventions of a horror film by created suspense and the thought of something unpredictable happening. A bright light can also signify wanting to find something specific or looking for something you don't particularly want to find.

Here is also a clip taken from the 'House of Wax' trailer. I picked this clip to show the point of view shot we tried to create throughout our trailer. The convention of horror we wanted to show was the idea of being watched. May films of the horror genre often create a similar effect, through a material of some kind, in example; a window, fencing and curtains.

 Here, both screen shots show the protagonist/final girl running, a typical convention of the horror genre. Throughout the trailer this convention makes the audience unaware at what could happen, with the hope of the protagonist will get away from what she fears or whether there is something unpredicted to come. However, in other horror films such as the House of Wax, lighting is usually low key, lit by ambient lighting such as moonlight or artificial lights in a dark environment. In our own trailer this proved to be of a struggle and we didn't manage to get the scene dark enough in comparison to the 'House of Wax' screen shot.



 In these screen shots (taken from Grave Encounters) we see a typical horror convention of a long and dark (low lighted) corridor. This is used in horrors also to create suspense with the idea that you are unaware of what is to come, a feeling the darkness also creates in this situation. The darkness is also a horror convention we associate, with fear and the fear of the unknown.



In these screen shots, the first taken from the 'Case 39' trailer, these both establishing shots show the horror convention of a setting. Here we see two abandoned/isolated buildings. Although we had difficulty altering the lighting on our own trailer, the building still represents fear and somewhere, many may not escape or feel safe in. The 'Case 39' screen shot, the building is surrounded by darkness. Abandoned buildings in horror films often connote a fear or isolation and also recreate the idea of the 'return of the repressed'. Something from the past is seen to return in abandoned buildings and often hold a story that is then discovered throughout a horror film. Which is a similar idea in which we wanted to create. 

In these screen shots the first being from our own trailer, we used candles in a frame to create a low lit room. Ambient lighting being a horror convention is also used to create suspense and tension in a scene as low lighting limits what we can determine in a scene and increases the possibility of danger.

The first screen shot here, is taken from 'The Strangers' trailer. In many horror films, a message is produced in an irregular way to create suspense and fear. In the first screen shot we see 'Hello' written on a window. This is a horror convention used to distract a viewer’s attention from the possibility that something sudden will appear. In our own trailer we used the message to show 'The end is near' to seem eerie to the audience. Camera work used he was often handheld at a canted angle rather than perfectly straight to imply the existence of an unknown person also in the building. Handheld camera work was also used to create distance from the other characters to create a feeling of being followed by another.