Thursday 26 April 2012

EVALUATION - How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

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

Whilst in the process of creating our media final media product we compared a variety of horror trailers which had similar conventions which featured in our trailer. We chose Insidious as our style model simply because the conventions which were featured within it of a mysterious figure were also used in ours. Insidious depicts a young boy who plays the victim similarly with ours we have our victim being played by a young girl as we wanted to convey her vulnerability.We researched two theorists Vladimir Propp & Tzervetan Todorov, and linked their ideas to our trailers. Todorov’s theory is based on the narrative structure of horror trailers. His theory consists of 5 stages (equilibrium > disruption > disequilibrium > solution > new equilibrium) With our trailer I found that it challenged Todorov theory as horror trailers would not contain a ‘solution’ or a ‘new equilibrium’ as this would then give away the plot of the film.

Our initial equilibrium is the girl has a dream which quickly turns into a nightmare. Our equilibrium quickly changes into disruption where the demon she is dreaming about turning into a horrible reality, the girl tries on numerous occasions to escape this is our disequilibrium.
Another disequilibrium which is also a typical convention of a horror trailer is the lack of lighting we had within our trailer, we did this so it would make our audience feel very unnerved and want to know what's going on. When we eventually started our editing process we incorporated the opening title from our style model Paranormal Activity which reads Paramount Pictures Production. We don’t have solution or a new equilibrium as it is very unlikely with a film trailer to have a solution as it would give away the plot of the film. With Propp’s it’s mainly his theory of characters, which he has gained from most films which are the hero but they aren’t apparent in the trailer.

As a group we decided not to have any dialogue throughout our horror trailer this is because we wanted our acting sd well as non diegetic sound we chose to give the audience a chance to form their own interpretation without any other influences. Instead of this we used snippets from a few soundtracks from Paranormal Activity and a lullaby as well as some diegetic sounds like the doors banging and screams to make our trailer seem as professional as possible by using both diegetic and non-diegetic music.Within our horror movie trailer the villain is played by a demon. We also have the helper who is the passer-by, who sees the victim in a fragile state and lastly the donor who is the helper and the princess which the girl who is the victim. We found that Todorov’s theory linked more with our trailer than Propp’s. This was because our horror trailer fits in with in the conventions which are associated with horror trailers which don’t challenge those ideas.



Our trailer also does not contain a lot of character as most conventional horror trailers as it adds a sense of hysteria and fear of the unknown which we wanted to convey.Lastly we wanted our trailer to be a stereotypical trailer which contained typical horror conventions. Strauss’ theory focus on the binary opposition which are known as opposite values which reveal certain focuses on media texts. For example good and evil or known and unknown, showing the concept of how the binary opposition works. Strauss doesn’t really focus on the order of the events which take place within it. He focuses much more on the arrangement of the themes. Compared to our trailer where it sticks to one theme which contain typical horror conventions.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Email sent to Paramount Studios

As a group we sent an email to Paramount Studios asking for permisssion to use cwertain sections of Paranormal Activity soundtrack within our horror trailer.