Evaluation 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Directors Commentary from Francesca Roncoli on Vimeo.

Denis McQuail (2010), a theorist, talks of the commercial and industrial significance of genres and suggested that genre helps target an audience for producers to capitalise on the success of previous films as they may choose to see a film based on the genre. Identifying genres means you are then able to target your audience and try to cater to their likes, you are able to understand your market to the full and incorporate aspects the audience will enjoy for example, fans of horror may prefer to see gore and blood.  Ryall proposed the genre triangle which links the institution, text and audience. Genre films like horror are reliant on the success of other horror in which make money to produce more horror films. Bearing this in mind we used the success of other horror films to generate ideas for our own trailer.

Initially our group decided on a thriller, as our initial brain storm revolved heavily around the thriller genre as we had experience of this genre through past productions.  When Gabby joined the group and our ideas were merged we decided on the horror genre. This was convenient for us as a group as both group’s primary research indicated that horror was one of  the preferred genres people would choose to watch. Our primary research allowed us to not only identify the most popular genre, thus using Ryall’s idea of the genre triangle, but also what themes and conventions audiences would like to see. We particularly focused on the role of the antagonist and protagonist and found the majority of our target audience would prefer a female hero. This is often seen in horror films and in particular oriental horror where a lot of our inspiration was taken. This meant we were then able to cast a female protagonist whom in return would attract a particular audience. Our secondary research allowed us to identify the conventions of a horror and fully focus in on how they are used. I identified a number of conventions such as isolated locations often places such as mental asylums or lonely mansions, chiaroscuro lighting, and binary oppositions. We continued to plan the production ensuring we followed the conventions of the horror genre.

In many ways our production conformed to genre conventions; when looking at horror trailers I found ours to be extremely similar in terms of themes. We chose to focus ours around a paranormal entity who was trying to attack our hero through her dreams. Paranormal activity is often a recurrent theme in many horror films especially oriental horrors. The idea of the ghost is quite a symbol of Far East horror films such as ‘The Grudge’ and ‘Ring’ lending themselves to their eerie nature and the theme of the unknown. This is something we have adopted in our own trailer with the Propian villain character of Evelyn. In terms of lighting ours adhered massively to the horror convention of low key lighting which employed a theme of mystery and again that theme of the unknown. With regards to editing we varied the pace in order to intensify the scarier parts and create an air of complacency in the calmer parts to make the frightening parts more shocking. The music and sound effects used adhered to the conventions; the soundtrack used was slow and extremely eerie and this allows the audience to feel on edge throughout ensuring they become interested in the advertised film. Sound is extremely important in the horror genre as Daniel Blumstein found out as it is the sound that actually scares the audience. He stated that the use of loud bands and irregular chords ‘triggers a biologically ingrained response by making us think our young are threatened’. We included these kinds of sounds in our trailer to intensify certain parts to scare the audience for example the loud bangs used within the titles. The greys and black as a colour scheme follow horror conventions also as they connote mystery and create an atmosphere of fear and death.  On set we decided that using reflection as a theme could be extremely powerful. Reflections are symbolic of a distant past which is representative of Evelyn haunting Rosie’s life.

Vladimir Propp’s theory stated that each narrative will have certain character types. Our trailer employs these types our antagonist, Evylyn and our protagonist, Rosie. In many ways we challenge gender conventions by having a female antagonist as women are usually seen to be submissive and the weaker sex whereas Evelyn apposes these conventions by being dominating and threatening, however a female antagonist is rather common in horror films with films like, the grudge, woman in black and Alien. We used enigma codes throughout the trailer, these codes were proposed by Barthe we particularly focused on the symbolic code with the reflection. We also employed Strauss’ binary oppositions the main of which was good vs evil, which is seen in all horror films but also the oppositions of dream and reality and the alive and the supernatural.

Unfortunately we were unable to thoroughly audition actors although in a sense we did have a selection method in which we chose the most suitable actors. Overall I was extremely pleased with how professional and competent the actors were. They fit the roles perfectly and put in their upmost effort. They adapted well to the hair and make up process and this enabled them to really take on the role. Although we didn’t hold auditions we ensured that all our actors had a background in acting which then made them more apt for the role, in the future I would consider auditions however it is a question of time and I was thoroughly pleased with their performance.

I believe our trailer was extremely successful in adapting the conventions and making them evident. 100% of our audience recognised it was a horror which meant the conventions were clear. The majority said they would see the film in full if it were to be released and the minority who didn’t wouldn’t see it due to their dislike for the genre. Overall I believe our trailer follows the conventions of a horror and in return attracts a certain audience.