Evaluation question 1

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

When creating any media text like magazines; trailers; films; newspapers and TV programs the encoder must refer to the code and conventions of media products to ensure that the decoder receives the preferred meaning from the media they are presenting. When creating our film trailer we followed the codes and conventions of horror by including aspects that apply to that genre like blood, darkness and weapons; we chose to present our trailer in this way so it would signify the genre we were trying to create and to attract our chosen target audience.

Horror being a common genre found in the film industry, made an easily applicable choice for our trailer; this genre is also easily received within its targeted audience therefore we wanted to create something that the encoders could enjoy and find thrilling. In some genres there can be found many subgenres which individually are not very defined, this however does not apply to horror. Horrors being such a stereotypical genre lead us to create a product based around its codes and conventions because it is something that is simplistically received by the decoders. We named our film ‘The Man in the Mask’ a name which has the connotation of the unknown, this being an element of fear means that it is found in all common horror products.

We underwent a lot of research on previous horror products to help our creation of something that applied with the genre and the codes and conventions of trailers in general. There are certain elements that an audience expects a film trailer to include like a voice over, a narrative, characters, dialogue, music and on screen graphics, things that can be found within my product. The reasoning behind including all of these conventions within our trailer is to ensure maximum understanding from the decoders so they are lead to the cinema to watch the film we are presenting.  Our narrative was presented through a series of interesting camera shots, some of which were ragged and messy to signify the horror and the fear we were trying to present, we began with a dark opening scene to captivate our audiences’ attention.  The shots were anchored by suspenseful music that worked as a signifier of fear to set the right ambience for the audience and the mood of the trailer. The voice over was also used to anchor the meaning of the trailer to help the audiences’ understanding of the text. We used on screen graphics like titles to signify the narrative of the story, we used such phrases like ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’ and ‘a curse becomes reality’ to show the reader the type of film they were going to receive. The captions also worked as advertising for our trailer as we used them to show quotes from famous reviewers and magazines to signify that our film had been positively received and reviewed, something that truly influences an individuals’ opinion to go to the Odeon. Lastly we challenged the code and conventions of trailers through our editing by making it a little different from the normal; we made it more jerky and speedy to add suspense and atmosphere into our piece.

We used the media code of stereotypes within our trailer to keep to the genre of horror; the typical ‘Killer’ and ‘Victim’ can be found within my product and they are well represented through dialogue and Mise en scene. Within our trailer the victim is presented using dialogue like ‘what do you want from me’ a cliché line that is commonly found within horror movies, this works as a signifier of the stereotype I was presenting; The killer on the hand is presented with blood on his hands and knifes to signify the stereotypical villain of a horror story. Characterisation in horrors don’t differ through time therefore no one character is represented badly in the media so negative acceptance from our audience wasn’t something that we had to worry for our target audience. We represented such characters that are found in most if not all horror films but most importantly we tried to represent such characters found in movies like ‘Scream’ and ‘Marble Hornets’ the film we were inspired by to create this product in a horrific way.

The biggest impact we received when making our product was from the theory and Encoding and Decoding model presented by Stuart Hall. We chose the codes and conventions we chose because they were the best signifiers of the type of film we were trying to present and they applied to all trailers and specially the genre of horror leading to our target audience receiving the preferred meaning intended from our text and therefore enjoying it.