Evaluation part 1

Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product compare to real life films? 

How did your horror trailer fit the horror genre? 

We had many conventions of horror in our trailer, and the importance of this was written about by Thomas Schatz in his book "Hollywood Genres" (1981) which he says is important in determining films into categories to make them easy to define as one type of film.

 

In our trailer we had many key conventions that we also saw in films we researched. in our trailer One example of this is the villain is feeling outside the CDI because for the Scarecrow (Lenny) seems to have no friends and only knows his Parents or family and this has driven him insane. This is also used in "Psycho" (1960) with the character of Norman Bates, who also lives alone with only his mother which drives him insane. In our trailer Lenny’s parents get killed in a murder and this seems to tip Lenny over the edge and makes him a lunatic. Also, another convention of the trailer is of the isolation which can be seen when one of the characters says they can’t get a signal on their phone. This is used to get the feeling of horror with no hope of rescue and these characters can’t escape the enclosed location. This also seen in comedy/horror film "Cabin in the Woods" (2011), a spoof of the film "The Blair Witch Project" (1999), in which the characters enter the forest with the cabin, knowing there will be no mobile phone signal.

Furthermore, we have point of view shots in the trailer with the attacker looking down on a victim and a reverse shot eye line match of the victim looking up at the attacker. This is a good shot for it makes the audience feel like predator then makes them the prey and a change of emotions between the audiences. This is used in "Psycho" (1960), when Arbogast enters the Bates’ household, the first shot when Arbogast opens the door and looks into the hallway is a POV shot. In addition, we have a low key lighting shot when one of the kills happens in a bush. This is a really interesting shot because it makes the Scarecrow appear in a silhouette which is really effective and adds to the Scarecrow’s menace because darkness connotes evil, death and mystery because we cannot see his facial features with only a splat of red on his mask revealing his location. Finally, Body Horror was extremely important in the trailer for it gives a feel for the film itself. With all the gore included in the trailer including the spit on the camera and the knife to Aaron’s neck gives the feeling of a gore but the quick sequence of shots means it has the pace of an action horror.

How did your horror trailer fit the conventions of trailers? 

Our trailer had a slow build up to explain the story and set the scene and then have faster shots towards the end to build up the action to the trailer. We decided to make a highlights trailer because we didn’t want show a scene of the movie because it would be difficult to find a scene that would be suitable and would be exciting enough to get the audience excited. There were many trailers that inspired us some examples of this where "Evil Dead" (2013) and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2013) for their style and effects they used and the order of events in those highlight trailers used in ours. Also the fact the trailer was a highlight and not a scene trailer is the pace needs to fast to reflect modern day action horror trailers example of an action horror. An example of this is "REC" (2007) and this trailer has a lot of fast montages similar to ours.

A highlights trailer also gave us the freedom to shoot inserting shots without being shackled with a slow and possibly boring scene with an exciting bit in at the end. It also allowed a lot more creativity with the trailer as we didn’t have to worry about continuity in the trailer just as long as it makes sense. If the character dies early in the trailer, they shouldn’t appear for the rest of the trailer.

What auteur influence did you bring to your trailer? 

Our trailer was to follow the style of the modern horror, a fast action horror with quick shot transitions and action paced music. However we also wanted to have body horror to be a big part of the trailer so we decided to have a little of older gory horrors in our trailer like George Romero did in "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) when the bikers are being killed by the zombies it doesn’t hold back on the gore and shows all the guts and blood.

Also in our trailer we wanted to have silhouettes of the added menace/mystery of the scarecrow and it is used twice in the trailer to good effect. We also wanted a lot of scares with the action so we had a calm scene following a violent death and so forth, creating the effect of collision cutting. This is in new remake of "Dawn of the Dead" (2004) in the scene where they are in the car park and are running away from the zombies and it cut to them in a calm elevator with them just standing still.