In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We decided to create our media product in the SLASHER GENRE Our Media Product is a combination of a teaser trailer, a poster and a website homepage, all of which we produced.
We bagan our process by looking further into the slasher genre, and its CODES AND CONVENTIONS, as well as some classic Slasher films. This was particularly useful as it improved our understand of the genre. The codes and conventions for a slasher film are;
Preliminary introduction into ordinary lifestyle.
Murder/death – killer is masked and unknown.
Main characters are introduced – often young/naïve
Isolated location.
Murder weapon that penetrates the skin
Only one that survives is the virginal/pure girl.
We learnt from our research that in the Slasher genre, the Killer is the main driving force of the narrative. We realised that there would be a heavy focus on our killer in our media productions, understanding that our killer would be crucial, we looked at killers from other slasher films.
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| The similarities between the killers can be seen; their masked idendity. |
As you can see from the annotations on the picture of our the picture of our killer, he conforms to the codes and conventions of a killer in a slasher film in masking his idendity.
However, it wasnt just films that we got our inspiration from for our killer. OFWGKTA are a rap group from Los Angeles, who also inspired our killer. We took inspiration from Tyler, The Creator's music video for his song 'She'. The masked charater played by Tyler is one who creates an atmoshphere of menace and fear. This is because of what he looks like, the way he moves and the nature of what he is doing. Seen particularly in the scene as the girl sleeps in her bedroom. This unsettling atmosphere is something that we wanted to recreate, just in a different setting, with different actions. We developed this idea from this real media text in an attempt to make our killer scary.
Here you can see the strong focus on our killer, this is similar to REAL MEDIA TEXTS in the slasher genre.
One of our media product's main theme directly links to its narrative, which is that of the DIGITAL AGE. This is seen in numerous shots during the teaser trailer. It can also be seen in the stylised way the title of our film is written; ∆NØN. It is ENIGMATIC and directly links to our theme of digital technology as it has conotations of the 'hackervist' group Anonymous which is sometimes shortened to 'Anon'. This motif challenges traditional slasher films, yet develops themes seen in the 2005 slasher film 'Cry_Wolf'
This poster form Friday 13th, although not showing the mask like ours, the outline of the killer is brazen and shows the CHARACTER FOCUS. Our poster differs from the 1980's 'Friday the 13th' and other slasher films because of our strong digital motif, shown here with the blue haze. it also CHALLENGES conventional slasher texts. However, our poster also conforms to the slasher/horror genre as it uses a lot of dark colours, such as black.
During POST PRODUCTION we employed a method of using VHS analogue and OVERLAYING it the FOOTAGE we had filmed. We felt this added to the 'home made' feel of our teaser trailer. In doing this, it also made the film appear GRITTIER and more INDUSTRIAL. We felt this was affective in creating unsettling the audience. However, this challanges conventional slasher films, as it is a technique not normally used in slasher films.
Our teaser trailer is 1.15, so fits to the CONVENTIONS of a teaser trailer with it being short. It also shows clips for different moments in the film. Our teaser trailer also shows production company. The poster we created also conforms to film poster conventions with having the CERTIFICATION, date of release and TAGLINE. The website we created also adds further information about the film, our website homepage also shows our teaser trailer, both of which fit into the conventions of a film website.
How the AS course is relevant to our final portfolio
As two of the members in the group had chosen to do a film opening in AS connoting to the conventions of the Horror/Slasher genre, we already had prior knowledge into how to use the conventions of the genre. Such factors like filming in low key lighting had already been acheived in AS. We had understanding of types of light sources which were effective (candles, torches and spotlights). We knew that a masked killer was a clear convention of the Horror genre and had previously looked into masked killers of real media texts:
As two of the members in the group had chosen to do a film opening in AS connoting to the conventions of the Horror/Slasher genre, we already had prior knowledge into how to use the conventions of the genre. Such factors like filming in low key lighting had already been acheived in AS. We had understanding of types of light sources which were effective (candles, torches and spotlights). We knew that a masked killer was a clear convention of the Horror genre and had previously looked into masked killers of real media texts:
This enabled us to use conventions of real media texts effectively as we had done so previously and therefore our AS course proved vital and relevant for our A2 teaser trailer.
