Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Trailer• Throughout our trailer we included a wide range of different horror conventions because it

was necessary in making our work as suited to the genre as possible, not following horror conventions could have resulted in the trailer looking like it’s a different genre such as a thriller.

• Our narrative follows the typical horror convention that Todorov explains in his ‘Narrative Theory’ which we took inspiration from but also it is the most common horror film structure because it is the most effective in scaring the audience as it starts off with an equilibrium that is then disrupted etc. and we followed this fairly closely with our narrative

• One of the most obvious conventions of horror that we followed in our trailer was the build up that heightened at the end of it, I noticed when researching contemporary horror trailers that these build ups are commonplace because they help to create intensity and the audience react to this with fear. To do this we chose music that got faster and louder which combined with quick editing and short clips made our trailer seem scarier as it went along.

• We also followed the typical convention of dark and dinginess, however we did also challenge this with certain scenes such as the summoning of the demon where she is in brightly lit white bathroom. To follow this convention, we had the Skype calls in the dark, the alleyway scene was dimly lit as well as scenes such as the cellar or woods having a dark colour overlay put on top to help make look more dim.

• The use of the alleyway scene we felt followed and developed conventions regarding isolation or loneliness as the character is alone in this damp, enclosed alley that is covered in dirt and graffiti. The use of mise-en-scene here is very important because it heightens the creepiness of the villain appearing behind her due to the isolated location that is also run down and dirty/unpleasant.

Poster• A common convention discovered in my research is that on horror posters the

villain tends to be the main image or focal point and we chose to follow this convention by having Akumu San on our own poster. This can be seen on posters such as Insidious (2010) or Friday The 13th (2009). We followed this by having a close up of our villains and with an eye line match that meets the camera which can be seen on Insidious’ poster again but also The Grudge (2004).

• We subverted the typical horror convention when it comes to promoting of keeping our villain somewhat secret. Instead we chose to reveal her completely because the audience will then fear her from the start. Also in the trailer there are no close ups of the villain and we don’t completely reveal her despite full body shots from afar so we chose to reveal her on the poster instead

• We challenged the more common convention of having black as the main colour on the poster because we felt white would go better with our narrative due to the water theme and scenes filmed in the bathroom. Overall our colour scheme fits better with what we had envisioned and suits our collective products better than black, especially as our magazine consisted of mainly darker colours and we didn’t want these two products to look too similar.

Magazine Cover• Our magazine cover follows a lot of conventions typically seen on existing film

magazines such as Empire or Total Film and we chose to follow most of these as it allowed our final product to look more realistic and professional.

• The placement of the masthead and image is typical of Empire magazine is the masthead is large and bold but behind the main image. However we chose to subvert from the typical red masthead and manipulate this to have a grey smoke effect that links in with our narrative, also seen in the trailer and poster.

• Most of the Empire covers we looked at included a pull quote or piece of text referencing to an interview with whoever is featured on the front cover and we chose to follow this convention by including that there’s an interview with Ruby inside, who plays our protagonist Lilith.

• We also typically followed the general layout of more recent Empire covers by having the film title at the bottom of the page and in a large, different font to everything else to make it stand out more, we didn’t challenge this convention because we thought it was important for it to stand out and help promote the film featured

• We also noticed that the recent covers tend to have a very busy image and background and to follow this convention we decided to change our background to a blue/grey smoke in order for the magazine to look more put together as a whole but also so it fits more to Empire’s style.

• When putting text on our cover, we removed some because we felt it didn’t look professional so we challenged this and now our magazine looks a lot more realistic than before. Even though this was a convention we challenged, we did notice that occasionally when there are special edition covers, Empire includes hardly any features of the front and just focuses on the main image and film title.