Evaluation

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

Our trailer "The Summoning conforms to other popular horror trailers through narrative theory and paradigms which are usually found in horror trailers.

We chose to set our horror film trailer in a school/college as this conforms to codes and conventions found in several popular horror films such as "Prom Night" and "Carrie" which are both set in high schools as the charcters are the same age as our target audience. We showed the film was set in a school by beginning the trailer with an establishing shot of the school, we also showed the students in and around the school throughout the trailer.

The trailer then goes on to show the period of equilibrium which is around 1 minute long, we chose to do this as by looking at other teen horror film trailers we found that this period was quite long. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” uses a long  period of equilibrium which takes up a large proportion of the trailer, this helps to make the scary scenes seem more effective.

During the period of equilibrium all of the group besides from Sam take part in what may be considered be immoral or inappropriate for teenagers such as drinking, smoking and flirting (showing they are sexually active). This is similar to “Scream” where “Casey” is shown to be flirting, this leads to her dying as it follows the convention of sex=death.

  

In the trailer we show that the students are being watched by someone, by filming an equilibrium scene form behind a door where the group are shown to oblivious that there is someone watching them. This subtly makes the audience uneasy although nothing “scary” has happened. Many other horror films do this by showing the victims being stalked by the villain without them knowing examples of this are "Creep" where the main character Franka Potente is trapped and followed by a stalker and "When a stranger calls".

The Ouija board scene shows the group are contacting a ghost, it was important to include this scene as it establishes the idea that there could be ghosts in school. A scene like this is shown in the trailer for the film “Ouija” where the group friends use a similar home-made ouija board showing that this is a common feature within supernatural horrors. By using an ouija board and candles we were able to show religious icongraphy which is a convention found in most supernatural trailers like "Drag Me to Hell" the audience instantly connotates from this that there is something spirital going on.

 

 

The moment of disequilibrium is a feature found in all horror trailers, this scene was essential as it shows that there is something trying to kill the students and it shows “Eva's” character dying first as she is the “slutty” character which is a common convention found in horror.

 

Our trailer then goes on to the period of disequilibrium which again is found in most horror trailers, as this shows how “scary” the film will be. In our period of disequilibrium we chose not to show the ghost that the group are running away from as we felt this would make it unrealistic and villains are not usually shown in trailers particularly in supernatural horrors. For example the paranormal activity film trailer does not actually show the ghost its self it just shows signs of the ghost being there, we do something similar in our trailer in the toilet scene. 

The trailer then ends with “Sam” running alone this is a paradigm of horror films as the final character is usually a female that is seen to be more “geeky” than the other characters. This is because she does not take part in drinking or smoking and is the only character who actually believes in the ghost, therefore our trailer conforms to the idea of final girl theory.

"The Summoning" also conforms to conventions by the music that we used. When looking at other trailers we found that the music began with a slow tempo then went on to speed up with the action, we also chose to use instramental music as this is the most commonly used music in horror film trailers. Another way in which our trailer conforms to typical horror trailers is the editing that we used. We began the trailer with longer shots of around 2 seconds and used fade to blacks and cross dissolves, then when the trailer picks up pace we used lots of quick jump cuts to match the heart rate of the auidence, this is very similar to editing in the "Prom night" film trailer.