1. Trailer Analysis
In what ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real
media products?
In our trailer we had to follow the conventions of a typical horror trailers in order to clearly present
the genre. We aimed to create a slasher trailer, to convey this genre correctly we used conventions
such as the sound and how it can influence the tension and sense of fear in our trailer. When we
considered sound we had to think carefully how we could make it effective and how we could create
stigma and change the equilibrium throughout the movement of our trailer. For example when
editing sound into our footage we had to careful think how we could successfully create a sense of
fear and tension, this lead us to using a very sharp and quite chilling sound nearer to the end of our
trailer. When adding this sound to our trailer we made it so it became more rapid and fast pass
nearing to the end of our trailer, by doing this we had hoped to achieve a sense of enigma and to
speed up the viewer’s imagination and curiosity of our trailer, to make them think what might
happen next? As a group we decided we wanted to create a slasher trailer this is why we had to be
very considerate as to how we captured our audience’s attention. Because of our decision we had to
look more into our genre in order to fully understand it, for example the slasher movie A Chainsaw
Massacre is a very good example of the conventions we wanted to convey throughout our trailer.
From looking at A Chainsaw Massacre we were able to see how we as a group could create
equilibrium to disequilibrium, for example our setting was placed mainly in a woods. The reason we
placed most of our scenes in the woods was to create the sense of isolation with nowhere to go, to
create a ire atmosphere and to put the audience on unsteady grounds. When we began our filming
we made it so that our victim was in a open field with nothing surrounding her, we did this to create
a sense of equilibrium at the beginning of our trailer, to make our audience feel calm and to make it
appear as if nothing bad could happen. By putting our Vitim in a open space it creates a form of
safety because she is able to see at all angles and get away if trouble came along. This sense of
equilibrium is similar to that of A Chainsaw Massacre, for example in Chainsaw Massacre a similar
form of equilibrium is create at the beginning of the trailer, making it seem as if the victims are safe
from danger, but as the trailer goes on this equilibrium changes into disequilibrium, for example the
car in the trailer breaks down and they are stranded in the middle of nowhere. When looking at our
trailer you can see we too have attempted to create a form of disequilibrium in a similar way to
Chainsaw Massacre. In our trailer we made it so our victim slowly gets lost into the woods and is left
with nowhere to go and lost. By doing this we have tried to create a sense our victim is being
watched and is slowly falling into the hands of danger. When making our trailer we tried filming on
days where the lighting was dull making the atmosphere and surrounding seem bleak and giving our
trailer a uncountable feeling about it. By using different conventions in our trailer we are creating a
element of fear, our aim is to make the audience fear what they might see next and to draw them in
and make them want to see more.
We had to consider how we would portray our victim who in herself is too a major convention in
horror movies and trailers. To follow the convention we had to make her appear weak and small but
still give her sense of intelligence. For example in our trailer we dressed our victim in smart clothing
with a posh looking coat and bag, by doing this we have already made her appear as if she is well off
and quite wealthy. This in turn leads to an appearance of intelligence. When filming our victim we
wanted to make her seem as if she was small, weak and scared, this is common in all horror trailers

2. depending on the character being portrayed, for example in our trailer the main victim is aimed to
be a intelligent young girl who just happens to walk into the wrong situation. To make our victim
appear weak and defenceless we had to consider what type of shots we wanted to use in our trailer,
for example to make our victim seem weak we had to take shots such as above shots, by doing this it
makes her appear as if she is small up against her surroundings and looked over. Our victim needed
to look as if she was weak, to create this we considered her meise-un-scene and the way she
appeared, for example our victim is wearing glasses, by her wearing glasses we have created an
innocent appearance, this is because glasses are very much looked upon as something young geeky
people would wear, this makes it seem as if she is a hard working overly protected young girl. By
giving her glasses it makes it a lot clearer to the audience that she is aimed to be a fragile and
innocent character in the trailer and movie.
To create a successful slasher movie trailer we also had to consider the main aspect of a typical
horror genre, which of course was the villain. In contrast to the victim the villain had to appear more
threatening and strong, to create this effect me and my group again had to consider the different
aspects of appearance and other technical appliances we needed to use to portray this. To make our
villain appear a dark and threatening figure in our trailer, we had to focus on the costume, for
example looking back on our trailer we decided that dressing our villain in a big bushy coat, with a
white hockey mask would make our villain seem anonymous, odd, threatening and evil. By using a
mask we were able to conceal the identity of our villain making him seem more hidden. By using a
mask we also created a question for our audience, this question was “what or who is behind the
mask, and will we ever see them?” we wanted to create stigma towards this character, giving our
audience something to anticipate. By creating this kind of anticipation we have drawn in our
audience and made then want to see if they were right, resulting to them watching both our trailer
and film. We wanted our villain to wear a big bushy coat due to the fact is conceals our character
and makes him seem darker, more hidden. We basically wanted to make it appear as if our character
is trying to appear anonymous, this is more threatening due to the fact this kind of concealment
means our victim can’t identify their killer resulting to more fear of their villains appearance. It was
difficult making our villain follow the conventions of a typical Slasher trailer, this was due to the
gender and appearance of our actress. When filming we had to use a female actor because we were
unable to access any male actors, we had to be very considerate due to this. For example we wanted
to follow the general conventions for a slasher trailer like A Chainsaw Massacre for example, where
the Villain is a strong appearing male who has a threatening appearance, to assure we could create
this in our own trailer we had to make the build of our actress appear larger and bulkier to resemble
a males body, we had to make sure we could hide any evidence of our actress to be female to allow
a successful outcome for our villain. We also had to consider camera angles for our villain, for
example we used higher angles on our victim to make her appear weak and insignificant, but we had
to use the contrasting angle for our villain, for example lower angles to make him appear taller and
more significant, by making him appear taller we have created a looking over effect on our victim
maker her seem small up against our villain, looked down upon, this in result makes her seem
helpless toward our villain who appears threatening. There is also the factor of alpha male, by
making our villain seem stronger and our victim seem helpless, we are portraying the typical view
across society that the male is stronger and in charge, where as the female should stay obedient to
the male. This type of characteristic is generally presented in slasher films, but most try to make
twists making the victim stronger then the villain, resulting to more enigma.

3. What did I learn from audience feedback?
When making our trailer we made it using a range of stages. Throughout these stages we would ask
a group of people to come along and analyse what they thought of our progression as we went on
with our trailer, we asked them to tell us what they thought was good so far and what was needed
to be changed in order for the trailer to become successful. When we first presented our trailer to
an audience to see we were given helpful feedback, for example we were told that our progression
to begin with was at an ok position but we needed to show our conventions more clearly and chain
our footage so it was not so messy and made more sense. As a group we took this information in and
changed what was needed to be changed. We began by trying to link our footage together so that
the story of the trailer was a lot clearer to understand. As we did this we noticed gapes in our
footage and took this into consideration, this was what pushed us to develop on our film and create
more scenes. When we looked at some of our feedback we noticed that the audience we showed it
too wanted us to make it clearer what the story line was, this was another reason we continued to
film extra scenes to our trailer, we decided we had to capture more action throughout our trailer
making it more effective and more relevant. When taking extra footage we took most of it of our
villain, this was because at the time we thought that we didn’t have enough footage of our villain
and this may be why we hadn’t quite achieved presenting our story line to our audience.
As a result to adding to our trailer we then sent it out to be seen again to check on our progression.
When seen a second time we got feedback of approval. We were told we were successful at making
the story line more apparent, we had managed to link the scenes accordingly making the watching
experience of our trailer smoother and more understandable. We were told to consider
experimenting with more scenes just to allow our trailer to have more, and to present itself more
effectively. As a group we decided we should take some more scenes to allow our trailer to work to
our audiences requests. Other then expanding the length of our trailer, we also added effects to
make our trailer more effective, for example, in some areas we used a fade in and fade out
transition to allow each scene to mould into each other, allowing it to run smoothly, but it also gave
the trailer some texture and a build to enigma. We found the feedback very helpful, and it allowed
us to approve our trailer and take on new ideas and work on our own.
How have you used media technologies in the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages ?
In order to create and understand how to construct a trailer I had to use different media to allow
myself to gain enough research and resources to finally creating my own trailer. In order to research
for my trailer I had to look at different other trailer posters and footage in order to understand the
conventions of Slasher themed movies. In order to find this information I used the internet to allow
myself to look at sites such as wikapidia, wikapidia was a great help towards my research due to the
fact it provided me with multiple forms of information to do with the trailer or movie I was looking
at. A better form of information resource was from the site IMDB, this site is specialized for
providing a large portion of information on just movies and media productions but it’s main focus is
on movie information, this was a large help because it was a direct and reliable source of
information on different trailers I had researched. I also had to consider the presentation of my
findings, this lead me to using different presentational sites, for example the site slideshare, this site
allows me to create a presentation on a program such as Word and then transfer this presentation

4. onto slideshare which organises my presentation into a slide presentation, once I have made my
evaluation or research into a slide presentation I can then copy the URL from Slideshares site and
copy it to my blogger to allow my work to be presented. To protect and develop upon my work I
used the blogging site Blogger to present my work and to allow myself to upload presentations and
examples of my work to then present and develop as I progress.
To make my trailer I had to use equipment such as a recording camera to capture all my footage. To
edit my footage I used a video editing program that allows me to edit and improve my footage this
program was displayed on the Macs that were provided. I was able to transfer my film to the Mac’s,
In order to upload the footage taken I had to connect the film to the Mac using a USB connection
and transfer, once opening the footage that was of good enough quality to use, I uploaded some to
the system Xilisoft Video. Xilisoft Video is a video converter. My reasons for using a video converter
was so that the footage I had to edit was the right format for the use of Apple Mac video editing, for
example to allow my footage to be of good quality and to enable me to use Mac’s programs I had to
convert all my footage to a HD video resolution. Once I had successfully converted my footage I had
to transfer the conversion to a folder labelled “Converted files”. The folder for the converted
footage was produced to allow our work to be placed on the editing software to be safe and
organised so we could use it appropriately.