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

With our product we have created three media products - a trailer, a poster and a magazine cover. They use and challenge the types of conventions seen in real media products.

(clicking the picture opens a new window to it's Youtube video trailer)

Like any other producer, we researched into other existing products and used them as influences within our work, trailers in particular which we used were films such as; The Strangers The Ring and The Blair Witch Project, two of which were analysed in detail here

From these existing products, we have gained the knowledge of typical horror trailer conventions including the stereotypical damsel in distress character, a running scene through a forest and a male killer along with the usual editorial themes of fast editing, dark lighting, scary music, costumes etc etc. However, in keeping with some of the conventions, we have the typical fast editing, jumpy music, scary cut clothing and the typical element of narrative theory of Todorv and Propp.
Todorv focused on story not the character and believed that most stories followed the structure of;

equilibrium .... disequilibrium .... new equilibrium

                   (normality)                   (disruption)                     (closer - better version of normality)

This theory can be seen in our trailer with the flickering of holding hands which could be interpreted as the normality, along with the calm music, however when a sense of disequilibrium is introduced, (shots of the killer) things start to look wrong and the trailer picks up on the music and fast shots to give a sense of panic and disruption to the people and audience watching.

However this all talks about how we have followed the typical conventions of a trailer and not how we have challenged them; something that our trailer does quite well. 

• Female killer - our main character is female which challenges the normal horror convention of a masculine killer. This is new and different for viewers, some may see it as empowering femininity and it gives a new angle to watch from. Changing certain elements makes the trailer much more interesting.
• Beach setting - instead of going for the typical dark forest scenes, we have used a beach for the majority of our trailer. This is a place which most people are familiar with so the audience can relate and it starts to become more realistic. We wanted to do something which isn't over done and we felt this was original as well as quite creepy. The water is dark and aggressive which may fit with horror conventions but the seaside is usually a happy place so this conflicts this, intriguing viewers.
• Daylight - In our trailer, most of it is filmed in the daytime, this may seem odd as horror films are usually very dark and shadowy. Our film is more about getting inside the characters minds and it didn't need to be dark to do this. we have got some dark scenes which creates a good contrast with the daylight... but having a lighter film may be more appealing to certain viewers.

So we have challenged the media forms and conventions as well as sticking to them. We think we have a good combination or new and old, developing on from traditional horror movies. We have done this because people do not want to see the same old films over and over, youths want new and exciting. Out film trailer isn't cliche and we wanted to produce something like this to intrigue and interest the audience. We believe we have done this and think our trailer appeals well to our target audience by challenging media conventions.