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

Whilst making our media product we compared our trailer to other horror trailers in the recent industry, a main example of this is “paranormal activity”. We chose the “paranormal activity” trailer, as it has the conventions of a demon which we were hoping to have in ours. The trailer also has activities, where the character becomes possessed. This is a major feature we have chosen to focus our trailer around.  

We have taken features from the “paranormal activity” trailer, as they inspired use to use them in our trailer. These features are things such as text cards, fast paced cuts and an eerie non-diegetic soundtrack. These are typical conventions of real media product; however we have developed on them by using a minimum amount of actress in the trailer as well as focusing the storyline around only one character being possessed.    

Studying the two Theorists, Vadlimir Propp and Tzvetan Todorov, we linked our trailer in with their ideas. Todorov’s theory is based around “Narrative”. It consists of five stages; these five stages are [Equilibrium, Disruption, Disequilibrium, Solution, and New Equilibrium]. As we are creating a horror trailer not all of our storyline will link in with this. We will not have a “Solution” or a “New Equilibrium”, as this means the film would give away the ending and not attract the audience to come watch it.

Equilibrium: A young girl having a dream, which turns into a nightmare.         

Disruption: The demon from the dream becomes reality.

Disequilibrium: The young girl tries to escape.

Solution: No Solution is seen.

New Equilibrium: No Equilibrium is seen.

Propp’s theory focuses more around characters within the storyline. It consists of the “Hero”, the “Helper”, the “Donor”, the “Villian”, and the “Princess”.

The Hero: No Hero is seen.

The Helper: A passer-by, when victim is breaking down.

The Donor: This could link in with the helper as they have similar goals.

The Villain: The Demon.

The Princess: The young female victim.

We discovered that our trailer links in with Todorov’s theory more than Propp’s. We believe this is because our trailer uses the typical conventions of a horror trailer rather than challenging them. Our piece doesn’t particularly involve characters; however this is because if there were many characters seen in the trailer, the audience may become confused. We are hoping for our trailer to be seen as a stereotypical horror trailer, as it consists of all the conventions such as “unknown death”, “demon”, and “a vulnerable victim”. 

Evaluation: Audience Responses to Horror Trailer

This links with the theory of Uses and Gratification by McQuail, Blumler and Katz. We have used actresses, which are at a similar age to our audience as this will appeal to the more and may want them to inspire to be like them. We also hope that our audience is into the genre of our film, as they will actively seek out to buy this because it features a world they are interested in. Therefore they want to find out more about this film and discuss it with their friends.  We have also used an attractive female actress to play the main role in our trailer, as this links in with the theory of the American feminist Naomi Wolf. She says that using a sexually attractive female model may appeal more to a wider male audience and entice them to go and view the film more. The theorist Steve Neale has said that the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of “difference in repetition”. This links with our trailer and audience responses, as they recognise the familiar feature is the demon being the ‘evil’ character and the unfamiliar element being the soundtrack of the creepy lullaby.

Evaluation: What have you learnt for your audience feedback?

Audience responses

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Final Product - Subliminal

Paranormal Activity 3

This previous released trailer is going to help us create our horror trailer, as it contains typical horror conventions, which appeal to us. These conventions were things such as card texts, and fast paced cuts. This trailer begins with the disruption of the narrative, as the camera flickers showing change to the filming of the two young girls. We also like the camera angles used in this trailer, as they are unusual and show disequilibrium very easily by placing them on an angle. There is also many high angled shots used in this trailer because it represents vulnerability of the character. We want to use daylight to represent the Equilibrium of our story and this trailer has also inspired us to use daylight shots to represents this and then have disorientated transitions to show the disruption in between. The soundtrack used in the Paranormal Activity Trailer is loud and it uses diegetic sounds. We aim to have this in our trailer to make it seem more realistic and scary for the audience.

Email to Paramount Studios

We emailed the company Paramount to get permission to use some of their soundtrack in Paranormal Activity to put in our Horror Trailer Project.