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

The genre of my media product is a horror thriller, reminiscent of films like PSYCHO(1960). I think that my media product fits this genre very well as there are lots of scenes which create suspense especially as the montage in fairly slow at the beginning

of the trailer to create tension, but at the same time it has some body horror aspects through the make-up effects to create

slashes to the husband's(John's) face and neck. The pacing increases in the second half of the trailer, this is typical of a horror trailer as it helps to build suspense but then also make it exciting, it also makes the quick end seem even quicker compared to the slower beginning. Another trailer that uses this is the ABANDONED (2010) trailer, the pacing at the beginning of the trailer is fairly slow as the mood is still ‘happy’ to an extent then when her husband goes missing the trailer speeds up a lot more as the trailer gets more violent and ‘actiony’ this creates excitement for the audience. Collision cutting is important for this to work well as it cuts from a quiet, empty shot to shots that a quick and full of movement and noise.

It is important to have a genre to media products as this helps you to direct your product at the right audience and also for it to be understood by the audience. Thomas Schatz wrote ‘Hollywood Genres’ in which he states that genre is a powerful tool to appealing to a target audience. We knew we needed to include lots of stereotypical horror features for the trailer to succeed, such as; suspense and tension, body horror and editing such as collision cutting and

montage to create excitement for the audience.

The psychological element of my media product was inspired by the film BLACK SWAN (2010) such as the fading mirror scene, this was inspired by the scene from BLACK SWAN (2010) where Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) looks in the mirror and her reflection is looking somewhere else/standing in a different position.

I wanted to include something like this in my trailer as I thought that it would really fit the narrative, and let the audience question even more who actually killed John and what is happening/happened to Susan. Instead of using the same effect used in BLACK SWAN (2010) where the reflection stays there but moves around and in a way torments Nina, I chose to use Susan's reflection disappearing as it would make the narrative of then media product

a lot more mysterious and adds another element of suspicion to both Susan and the audience. I think it makes the audience question if what everything Susan see's is real or just a hallucination.

My media product contains a number of powerful horror features such as low key lighting. This is used in the media product to make the atmosphere seem more 'scary' and suspenseful because the audience cannot see everything in the shot clearly and anything could be hiding in the dark, watching or waiting. For example the shot where ‘Susan’ walks in to find her husband dead, this scene using low key lighting to suggest to the audience that something ‘bad’ is/has happened, also by using low key lighting in this shot, has made it harder for the audience to see clearly what exactly Susan is tripping over and creates more mystery. A second generic feature used is parallel sound, the music that I have decided to use in my media product is quite eerie this helps build the suspense throughout the trailer and also helps keep the pacing in the trailer, I have edited the music in certain parts so that it fits better with the events that are taking place in the trailer such as when Susan turns round like she has been surprised the music here is a bit higher in tone which suggests that she is scared/worried by whatever has made her turn round, and also when the pen is clicking there is a slight clicking edited into the background music. A third generic feature used in my trailer is the use of body horror, which works subtly in the media product as the audience doesn't actually see extreme body horror but not quite restricted narration I think this balance between the two works very well. I got this inspiration from the film PSYCHO(1960) the shower scene in the film uses great restricted narration when Norman Bates’ mother is stabbing Marion, I think that restricted narration is more effective than gore as it lets the audience imagine themselves what is happening, and in some cases this can be much worse than what is actually happening, but it lest the audience decide themselves. The scene in my media product that uses this is when we see ‘John’s’ face getting slashed with the murder weapon, the audience doesn’t actually see the scissors going into his face due to editing between the shot of his face getting slashed and then his face moved to the side and spitting out blood.
 

My media product is distinctive as it is a thriller with only touches of body horror, this is from my own auteur influence as I definitely prefer thriller movies, such as PSYCHO(1960) and

ORPHAN (2009). I like the suspense and the narrative behind the media product compared to lots of body horror but at the same time I felt that this narrative needed an extra element to make it more distinctive from the original style of thriller trailers.

I was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock who is an auteur himself especially for thriller films (PSYCHO(1960)) I also liked Tom Savini's body horror effects, such as the more gritty effects shown in DOTD(1978), I also liked creating them myself which is another reason why there are some scenes with added body horror such as the slashes to 'Johns' face.