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

For this question I have taken screenshots of real films and put them alongside shots from our trailer to compare their uses of mise-en-scene, shot size, framing, character use and so on.

Trailers are made to make people want to go and see the film, if the trailer is good then people will go to see the film. They are very important when making a film as they hope to excite and intrigue the audience to want to know more about the film. If made correctly, it will attract the audience that the producers have targeted. All trailers share the same ideals and they also share the same conventions when it comes to structure. Our trailer, which was one for a horror film, had to create a sense of uneasiness and fright whereas one of a more upbeat manor would have to make the viewers laugh and excite them into what happens.

This frame is from The Boy, I chose this shot as it was of text. Although the text is part of the rules for the narrative, I used this example because this part fades in and out much like the text in our trailer.

I decided to use a clip form Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension as it has a hand held camera part. It may not be a running scene but it still has the 'wobbly camera movement that we needed.

For a long shot I decided to use a shot from The Woman in Black as it shows her standing far away from the window looking into the window where Arthur is standing. In our trailer we tried to recreate this scene but obviously with our killer standing outside.

The next example is one that came from Krampus in the scene where they're in the loft and the toy clown comes alive and their torches are shining on it        

For this screenshot I have decided to use Frankensteins Army as an example as it contains a shot that flickers on and off, much like the one in our trailer. This was used to create tension in our trailer.

Although this doesn't show the news report full screen I feel that our report looked similar to the one in the trailer for The Purge. This is because they are both giving information as to what's happening at the time of the trailer.

This shot is from the 2009 Friday the 13th as it shows, as a jumpscare, one of the girls screaming. Again this isn't entirely the same to the shot from our trailer, I feel it gives the same effect.

I chose Cabin in the Woods for the next shot as the music in this shot and the scene surrounding it is very tense, which is what we wanted to create when coming to the music in our trailer.

Again I have used Cabin in the Woods as at the end when the name of the film comes up, it is in the style that we wanted, which is why our trailer ends in the same way this one does.


I feel that the sound in our trailer kept to conventions of real horror films as it built tension throughout and then ended on a more climactic piece.  When trailers are done right, the music and SFX can, and will be the reason as to why people jump. If the trailer and the music don't work well together then the film won't work. This is why we made sure that we took extra care when making the music to go along with our trailer.

Overall I think that our trailer worked well and that it kept fairly close to classic horror conventions. Although there were a few points during it it that I would improve further to make it fit to conventions even more closely, I still think that it work well and am proud of what we have produced.