Before getting our ideas for our teaser trailer together and filming, we researched the conventions for a teaser trailer, the movie magazine front page, the movie poster and the horror movie sub-genre. During the planning and production process we decided to use most of these conventions as well as develop and challenge some of them in order to make our final products original.
Lekan: Use of Movie Poster Conventions
This is a horror film poster of the film A Nightmare On Elm Street. The conventions of a horror film poster consist of low key lighting with mainly danger and dreary colours such as red and black. As you can see the poster of A Nightmare On Elm Street the creators use low key lighting all over the poster and also use the colour red a lot which could connote a sense of danger and also blood which is the main source of fear in a horror film many horror film posters use the convention of using the obvious colour of red a lot. Another place where the colour red is used a lot is in the title, again this red could represent danger and blood, the convention of the title in a horror film poster is the position of it. To follow the convention the title must be positioned 3/4 down the poster just on top of the credits or across the top of the poster if the title is positioned anywhere else in the poster this means it is challenging the convention. Another form and convention many horror film posters have is having some sort of tag line/sentence on their posters. The job of the tag line is to capture the audience and create suspense amongst the audience for example on the poster of A Nightmare On Elm Street it says "WELCOME TO YOUR NEW NIGHTMARE'.
- This film poster is challenging the convention of the film name title position.
Many horror film posters have a convention where main focus of the poster is the killer (holding its iconic weapon) or victim as you can see with the poster of A Nightmare On Elm Street, this could be because they want the audience to know what they are in for when they come to watch the film also create suspense amongst the audience which will intern encourage them to watch the film. Another convention which many horror film posters include is having asymmetrical composition which means it is off balance which you can see in the poster of A Nightmare On Elm Street the creators did this as it will bring the poster out to be more horror. An area in which many horror film posters challenge the conventions is the font used. However this poster of A Nightmare On Elm Street follows the convention of using a dangerous/strong font. They used the font of TIMES NEW ROMAN- ‘A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET’. By the creators using times new roman font connotes the movie as being sharp and dangerous because as you can see by the font times new roman have sharp edges/corners this could also connote the iconic weapon the killer could have for example a knife.
In all horror film posters they have a small print on them also known as the ‘credits’. The credits are put in place to acknowledge all the people involved in the making of the film for example the writer, the producer and the director. The convention of the credits is usually what you write in them and the positioning of the credits. As you can see below the credits on the Nightmare On Elm Street poster in positioned at the bottom centre of the page if you place the credits anywhere else apart from the bottom centre of the poster you will be challenging the conventions. Also another way you will be challenging the convention is the font used. The typical font most use for a horror film poster is ‘STEELFISH or STEELTONGS’ and if you use these fonts for your credits you are following the conventions if you use anything else you are challenging the convention.
Also as you can see below in all horror film posters must include the date of release which is usually placed underneath the credits. This shows the audience how far away/quick the film is going to be out.
Before creating the poster our group came up with some rough ideas and rough sketches:
As you can see this is the poster I created for my horror teaser trailer called ‘liminal obsession’ to compare my poster to real media products such as Hacthet and Friday the thirteenth I have stuck to many of the horror film poster forms and conventions here was some of the ways. For example my film title is positioned ¾ down the poster and also followed the convention of the font colour being red which connotes danger/fright. Another form and convention I followed was the position of my credits underneath the title also using the font ‘STEELTONGS’ and in the credits including the production team etc. Another form and convention I followed is having a tag line on my poster “your mind is the scene of the crime”. The only form and convention I may have challenged was the lighting of my horror film poster. On many horror film posters they have low key lighting as you can see below, however my poster is not as low key as many posters such as Friday the thirteenth and Hatchet. By not having low key lighting makes my poster looks more visible for example the main focus of my poster is the victim and you can clearly see the bruises and scars the actor has got.
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Elis
We used a Big Masthead in red because it went with the conventions of a horror film magazine front page cover. The red on the masthead is a colour associated with horror and it goes with the dark look of the page. If we look at the front page below we will see Fangoria has a red masthead as well for both of these front pages. In both these front covers we see a male character in an evil pose and this is what we put across in our horror magazine cover as this was an important factor of making the magazine. This is what could turn heads as they walk by the magazine because as soon as you see a face with such an expression it comes at you the same way they pop up in horror movies.
As you can see in our magazine we decided to follow the convention of having a red masthead making it more appealing to horror fans as the red is conveying blood evilness and many other negative imagery. There's a colour scheme of white, red, yellow and a black background and this makes the page look organised because there not too many colours about and there not too many bright colours except yellow which makes it easier for people to read and which is used in many horror film magazines. we made the layout simple to emphasise on the killers face which was included to create a scary look for the magazine.As you can see in the top right hand side of the front cover we've decided to leave the website there in case readers wanted to find out more about what the magazine was about, it's a vital point when familiarising your audience with other services you may offer which brings in more profit for the company. As you can see at the bottom of the front cover it says "100 Best Horror's of All Time", we have challenged the normal conventions of putting pictures at the bottom of horror film magazines. This was a choice that would make our magazine look professional, another convention we challenged was the positioning of our barcode, as you can see in the two examples above they are all vertically positioned but ours is more horizontal which gives a bit of a different look to the page and takes up less space.
As I've researched for horror film magazine front covers I've noticed that the writing on the front covers are usually yellow and red. As I said earlier red is used to symbolise blood in horror and yellow would compliment this. It also stands out after using dark colours it can make the page easier for people to read. Our writing is in caps all the time, we thought this would be suitable for a horror film magazine since it stands out and come at you as a reader. It also comes across as being masculine which would attract most horror movie fans. It is important we portrayed masculinity in our front cover because most hardcore fans would be male and any signs of softness or femininity would turn some readers away.
Low Key lightning was used as this is a convention and this is mostly used to create a dark and scary effect as you would associate this with horror. The person on a cover is wearing black and red and this goes with the page, it blends in and gives more attention to the face. On most magazines the face occupies the whole cover there's a lot of focus put on the face and that's what we did to make it look like a typical horror magazines. To attract readers we put a puff saying exclusive look to make it appealing to fans who are used to reading magazines regularly. We thought having a coverline saying "Best horror issue ever" would make it hard for readers to ignore and this is why we included so people wouldn't just look over our magazine but would pick it up and read. This type of technique can be found on a lot of horror film magazines to make readers look inside their magazines.
Ashley: Use of Horror Movie Sub-genre Conventions
Our group decided to make a slasher teaser trailer. We Followed both conventions of horror films as well as those of a slasher horror sub-genre, but however also challenged and developed them to a some extent. As researched from our summer holiday, horror films are defined as 'unsettling movies that attempt to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from their viewers'. Movie producers mainly achieve these by making sure they follow, develop or even challenge the conventions of horror films as they are what makes a horror film. In other words without following these conventions you may not be able to classify your film as a horror movie.
A horror film convention we decided to follow is a female victim who is usually attacked and killed. Looking at the storyline depicted in the teaser trailer we can notice that our horror film is going to include victim/s being attacked by an antagonist. We are given this idea by some of the shots that we decided to use in our teaser trailer, one being a low angle shot of the victim running down the stairs and another being a P.O.V shot looking at the writing on the wall that says 'HELP ME' that is written in blood. Another is also of the victim's head being forcefully dragged back (see image below).
We decided to follow this convention because when we were comparing our storyline to other horror films such as Nightmare On Elm Street and Prom Night the main victim/s were girls that got attacked by the Antagonist.
The image below shows a the victim from Prom night being attacked.
We however developed this convention by including a victim that is not blonde with big boobs. This is because we felt as if we did not want our storyline to follow this typical convention used by many horror films.
Another horror film convention that we decided to follow is to include music and footage that that create tension. Research has shown that many successful horror films need to have unsettling sound and footage in order to make the audience feel disturbed. We therefore tried our best to follow this convention in a simple way in order to show that we created a teaser trailer that showed a film from a horror sub-genre. Like many horror films such as Saw, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street, we made sure that we did this by using quick cuts as well as POV shots. Doing this helped to keep the audience in suspense.
Another horror film convention is the use of Low Key Lighting. We also decided to follow this convention as it is used in many horror films, therefore showing how important this convention is.
For instance the Print screen on the left from the The Crazies' teaser trailer shows the shot consists of low key lighting.
An example of when we used low key lighting in one of our shots is also shown below.
Follow this link to watch a video on me talking about the conventions of the slasher horror sub-genre. I decided to make this video because our film falls under the Slasher horror sub-genre and follows, challenges as well as develops some of these conventions.
Nadinene - Conventions within teaser trailer
Within our teaser trailer we mainly followed the conventions to ensure our teaser was most definitely established as a teaser trailer. Following the conventions helped our planning, as we as a group knew what types of things we had to include in our trailer. Below is a video showing how we used the conventions within our teaser trailer.
We also made sure we included the "Coming Soon" title towards the end which is a key convention amongst teaser trailers to ensure it is clear to the audience that the release date is soon and they should keep an eye out. We decided not to put an actual release date in our credits as we felt including "Coming Soon" was more conventional to a teaser trailer whereas release dates link more closely to the convention of a theatrical trailer.
Further conventions we used within our trailer was the use of dramatic irony. This is commonly used in trailers to emphasise tension as the audience know something the characters within the film don't. We portrayed this within our trailer with the use of the over the shoulder shot of our antagonist watching/stalking the protagonist. The editing effect of a video recorder added in final cut pro also helped us create dramatic irony, as it gave the notion of secret filming which the protagonist is unaware of but clearly shown to the audience. The use of dramatic irony we used also linked to a horror convention of the "male gaze". The "male gaze" is a theory created by Laura Mulvey, the male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may linger over the curves of a woman's body, for instance. Mulvey argues that, in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence which we have portrayed within our trailer. The film Psycho was one of the first horrors to portray this idea of the "male gaze".
Our teaser trailer followed the conventions for even further reasons. The idea of a "beautiful" female "damsel in distress" as the victim of torture and distress is shown through our actress Ashley. The stereotypical view of the female victim who is bloodied and has NVC of anxiety, pain and confusion with the correct body language which suggest struggling. We see blood and bruising upon her face and hair which looks like it has been ruffled and dragged as well as blood smears along her neck and chest which connotes a form of sexual lusting torture also. These elements of mise en scene work perfectly together to give the stereotypical female victim seen time and time again in horror's. Our killer not being fully revealed was also a convention we chose to follow with a shots of only our killers back ever being revealed. As this added to the suspense and mystery of a trailer as it would require the audience to ask questions such as "Who is this guy?" "What does he want?" "How does he get in her dreams?". Our trailer consists of a variety of camera shots that are conventional within horror teaser trailers such as low angle shots, which we used when filming one of our the running scenes. Also the use of close-up which is very conventional were included within our trailer as it helps with the revilement of characters NVC'S, adding fear with the close visual of iconic weapons and generally helping the audience get a closer view of the action, intensity and suspense which is present.
Our female character was also also wearing quite revealing clothes in the form of her PJ's (Ashley was continuously in her very short PJ shorts) this is a common convention in horror films as horrors generally tend to appeal to the male audience.
Our teaser did not stick to every convention their was regarding teaser trailers. To make our trailer different and original we developed some existing conventions as well as challenging them also. The sound in our trailer we felt was a convention which we developed. We had a soundtrack which generally all trailers have with an incidental score. However we decided to keep our soundtrack quite simple and decided to use the noise of the clippers to be the main focus in our soundtrack instead of alot random non-diegectic music mixed together. Our chosen genre is a slasher, our trailer has challenged the initial conventions of a slasher teaser trailer as not a lot of blood and gore has been broad casted as well as violent scenes, which within slashers you usually see numerous amounts of to portray how different characters will be killed. We instead used mainly abstract shots of settings and of our protagonist as our trailer is not meant to be scary, which is unusual for slashers, but instead is meant to gather suspense and confusion.
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