The
codes are the system of signs that creates meaning in the media products, the
conventions are the way you accept things that are usually done in different
genres such as slasher. When watching the real media products, such as slasher
films, they follow codes and conventions of that genre, like other genres do,
however they use them as well as develop and challenge them to fit their
narrative. In my media products I have used, developed and challenged these
codes and conventions so they would fit in with the slasher genre, as they have
identical codes and conventions but I have developed and challenged them to
give the media products a different view. Recently many slasher films have
tried to subvert codes and conventions of these genres, this is to change the
conventional feeling of the films, and however most old codes and conventions
do not change because they help with acknowledgement of certain films. I had to
use codes and conventions of a real media product to make my media products
formulaic so that they can be recognised as a particular genre. Having generic
and formulaic conventions is the expectations of a particular genre, for
example a group of teenage friends is a convention of slasher films, so within
my media product I choose to convey this convention. Another effect of
subverting conventions is that my audience will be ‘refreshed by elements which
are unexpected within the trailer, magazine or poster.
My
first media product which used, developed or challenged forms and conventions
of real media products is the trailer. This is a non-linear text to sell the
story of my film not tell the story. It conveys a sense of the narrative and
this grow enigma, questioning of the audience.
Many forms and conventions are
seen in slasher films such as Halloween or Friday the 13th, from watching
trailers and these films we understood what conventions and codes can be used
within my media product. Starting off with the most formal conventions within
the trailer, we decided to use the classification screen at the start of the trailer;
this was the screen we saw on all other real media products, that tells the
name of the film and the age classification of the trailer/film.This screen is
a conventional starting of trailers as it tells information that the audience
would need to know. Another convention which we used, feeling it was extremely
conventional to use were the logos of the production and distribution
companies, we created a production and distribution company logo, ‘Grizzly Distribution
‘and ‘Splice
Films’ as well as having ‘Film Four’ as part of
the team, through-out real media trailer we research we saw they represented
their logos at the start of the trailer, this is a convention we followed as we
felt it was an original convention seen through most trailers. As the trailer
is for an independent film, we needed to use low budget production and
distribution companies like the ones listed above, and as it was low budget it
needed various help from companies such as film four. We needed this help as
independent films need multiple budget sources, so help them with resources and
financial, this is why there is a numerous amount of
logos displayed. The last most formal convention of the creation of the trailer
was the captions, from this convention it helped to convey the narrative
through our trailer; it is helpful through trailers as when audiences see them
they know they're watching a trailer because in most films
you do not have captions. We choose to have captions within our trailer as it
feeds the audience position
of the narrative and helps them from being lost
through the trailer. One of the captions was ‘it’s all fun and games ‘after the
group of friends where partying and drinking, then ‘Until she Returned’ this
was shown before the comeback of the killer, relating to the return of the
girl. Most of the captions within the trailer helped to convey and remind it
was a slasher trailer.
This first convention within the narrative of the trailer is the final girl,
with this convention we used the forms and conventions of real media products,
the final girl in our trailer is ‘Frankie’ played by Alex, we choose to use
Alex as she fits the look of a final girl,
as she has innocent features such as
not a lot of makeup and has long brown hair, like the convention of having
dark hair colours. She is the last girl to be seen alive within the trailer,
the lonely survivor because she is the inexperienced one, she is the last girl
to have to confront the killer Within slasher trailers the aim is to build to a
climax, killing characters one by one, the final girl is the one to survive as
she virginal, this is suggested form the function analysis of this genre, by
Propps, who suggest there is character types within slasher films, the final
girl who is innocent is one of the
characters types.
It is conventional for our final girl to have a unisex name, such as
Billie. We choose the name Frankie, the name is less feminine compared to the
other female names within our trailer like Amy and Chelsea. The dress sense of
Frankie, is innocent like her character is represented, the use of costume of
characters such as Frankie represents her innocents whereas Amy’s represents
her experiences. Within slasher films, the
final girl is presented to have history with the killer, in our trailer we
conveyed this convention as coding the final girl as the sister of the adopted
‘Ruby’ our killer. Frankie and Ruby did not get along in the past, and Ruby
went missing and passed away. Her ghost presents has come back to haunt Frankie
along with her friends, this is the relationship between them both, this is
seen similarly in scream 1. The reason why Frankie is the last survivor is
because she is represented as pure, within the trailer, the reason why we
wanted to conventionally follow this was because it was easier for the audience
to understand the roll of our character. The final girl is one of the most
important characters within the trailer along with the killer, she has
masculine traits and escapes or kills the protagonist. Our final girl has a
twin sister, who is blonde headed and represented quite the opposite of
Frankie, she is a friend in the group as well as Frankie’s sisters, she is the
one who drinks and is quite deviant compared to her sister. The opposites
between Frankie and Amy are binary opposites this is a theory by Levis Strassus
who suggest there is opposites between characters within films such as good vs
evil, within this explanation I am suggest the opposite of sexual vs virginal.
Without having characters such as the final girl within horror films, it makes
the sense of narrative hard to follow, she is a main character as the killer
wants her. You can see the relationship conveyed through the Mise En Scene, of the two shots put together of the hands of alex going down the banister and hand of ruby going going down the pole. They both have red shown on hands showing the similarities shown through the use of images, this is done by Juxtapostion and montage editing.
The
next convention of real horror text we used within this product was the
‘sexually active’ girl, this is the female in the story who is the blonde and
sexually dressed girl, mainly in the colour red. We used this convention within
our trailer as the girl ‘Chelsea’
played by Rosie, she was a friend in the
group and the best friend of the final girl. This character is shown to wear
tight clothes such as shorts and leggings, in the sexual colours such as red
and act sexually with another character, the connotations of using the colour
red was to represent sex and death, the red is a sexy seductive colour however
it is also the colour represented of blood. We conveyed this within our trailer
as her and her boyfriend run up the stairs, showing they’re about to be sexual,
she is wearing a red blouse giving her a sexy look and
in tight bottoms. This
character is meant to be shown as a binary opposite to the final girl as she is
experienced and the final girl is innocent, this sexually active girl is meant
to be the first to die within slasher films, in our trailer she is not the
first to die however as the trailer is non-linear it is shown in different
shots of the actual film. The reason why the sexually active girl gets killed
is because the message conveyed in slasher films is that girls should not be
promiscuous, or non-virginal like Chelsea they will be harmed/killed. With the
sexually active girl, the theory is ‘The Male Gaze’ by Laura Mulvey that
explains it, the female that is shown in the gaze of males, the eyes of males,
we used the high angle shot
in this scene we showed the sexually active girl
going up the stair with her boyfriends, this showed her body shape to males and
that this is the way she represents herself. We used montage editing when
conveying that being sexual in slasher films leads to death, we showed her
going to be sexual and the shot of when she is going to be killed. We also
showed the girl with alcohol, wearing hoops and pouting into the camera where
we edited the video into a picture, because we wanted to display it as if a
photography is being taken so it froze of
her for a few seconds, this shot of her represented her as the ‘naughty’
character creating Mise en scene. The male gaze is by Laura Mulvey, who explains
the visual pleasure and narrative cinema, she states that in films women are typically
the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the
camera through males. There is an inequality of gender and sexualisation
of females and how they a shown in the media, the viewing reassure males of
their sexual power and deny any sexuality of women other than the male
construction. We used the male gaze by having the camera in point of view from
males, when we showed our sexually active girl we would show her from high
angle showing her body to how males would like it or we would show the camera
moving around her in a particular way showing her dress sense and her
behaviours with other males. When we have the characters look in the camera,
when there is a ‘flash and freeze’, we show the sexually active girl being the
naughty one when it comes to her Selfies, she has the red on and the one with
the drinks, with the sexual pose of her tongue out. This is also a way of
relating our audience to the trailer as this relates to their similar
behaviours as it’s like uploading to social media websites.
Chelsea’s
boyfriend Trey is ‘afro Caribbean’, in slasher films if a character is of a
different
race they will die, and mainly one of the first, in the trailer the
death of Trey is not shown but we show him running and screaming and a near
death experience, this shows that he is a main target and again how the trailer
is non-linear in the real film he was second to die as the trailer is meant to
sell the film and not tell the whole story. The reason to why black people are
first to die in trailers is because cinema industry is seen as racist, and the
camera is meant to represent this within films, if the character is not white
they are seen to die first. This convention was not fully shown within the
trailer as the character was not killer, but seeing him running and attempting
to get away from the slasher we know that he would be next. When we show Trey,
he is shown as vulnerable from the high angle of him running to the close up of
his scream. With slasher films it conveys teenagers as irresponsible, we
develop this idea with the characters Jason and Alex, and the name Jason was
intertextuality with Friday the 13th’s character Jason. These
two
characters are displayed as typical teenage young boys, who drive and drink,
the two boys are shown in a car accident because of ‘Ruby’ and negligent fast
driving. We show these boys through continuity editing, where we have put fast
pace shots together building into the accident they have, we used eye line match
shot between Ruby and Jason just before the accident to build the tension and
there is sense he has seen her in the back and she is looking in a similar
direction back at
him. The mother of the twins is the benefactor in the story,
this is another character type of Propps, she is put into our trailer to represent
the authority figure for the twins, she
is the older model. Her character role
is meant to be protecting the girls, we see
her looking at the picture of her adopted daughter, we see the different camera
angles of close-ups of her face showing her sorrow and close-ups of the picture
to know what she is looking at, this is another conventional factor within real
media texts such as the policeman in Halloween the older figure who cannot
help.
The
last character which we have challenged the conventions of is the
slasher/killer, this is Ruby, played by Roma. She plays the adopted
daughter
and sister of Frankie and Amy, in slasher films the killer usually a male,
however we challenged this as we used a female, the reason we challenged this
character role was because it fit the narrative of our story and we wanted to
see if a female role would look better playing ruby, some examples of male Slasher’s
are Michael Myers, Leatherface and Chucky however ours relates more to Friday the
13th Mrs Vouchers. The killer is usually
males because males are
masculine and seen more powerful, usually represented with weapons such as
chainsaw (Texas chainsaw massacre). Even though our killer is shown without a
mask, her face is always covered with hair making it more suspicious for the
audience as they can never see her face this is similar representation of ‘The Ring’ girl, making intertextuality
within the trailer to ‘The Ring’,
growing its success into the trailer. From this we have developed the convention
of having her face covered, but is not formulaic by a mask but still hiding
through her hair. The killer is the binary opposite to the final girl as she is
represented more powerful, the killer ruby who is used to represent women are monstrous
theory by Barbara Creed developed from Freud, this is that woman are monstrous
rather than victims, this is why we choose a women over a male killer, due to
the link from castration, The woman is feared as
castrater rather than castrated. The idea
was from when a male child
leaves their pre-oedipal space, and changes to the symbolic order, it is
traumatic and they finally understand the mother doesn’t have the same
genitals. This is where they feel vulnerable by their mothers, because their
masculinity will be gone, this results to the mother symbolising the castration
and her being bad. This has had an effect of the
dominant ideology of women, as
they are represented as castration and that men should have the fear of females.
Making a female play the role represented that females can be monstrous and in
our trailer Ruby harming the characters makes her evil. Ruby has a sound motif
of a nursery rhyme but a horror one, when she is shown to kill or on the screen
this motif is shown being non diegetic sound within our trailer. This is the
combination from juxtaposition, of the horrific image of ruby each time she
appears and the nursery rhyme.
When Ruby was
first shown she was vulnerable from high angle as she was the hurt character,
however when she changes into killing everyone she is shown from low angles
giving her power over the other characters within the trailer, as she is the
authoritative and dominating one who they will be scared of. Even though we
challenged the killer to being female, we still used conventions of showing her
from certain angles such as low angles and gave her the same presence of
killers.
Examples of intertextuality>.
The Ring ^ The Grudge^
The
trailer is based on the synopsis of the film which was written with the
beginning, middle and end like Todorovs’ narrative theory. It is conventional
to follow the story begins with an equilibrium, which is disrupted, there is
then a recognition of the disruption and then it is repaired leading to a new
equilibrium. The Trailer shows senses of this from beginning, middle and end
but it does it in different stages from the actual film. The trailers starts
with an introduction of the Missing girl Ruby, then her mother and to the
introduction of the group of teenage friends, this is the equilibrium the
normal routine. The audience are shown about the equilibrium to understand the
relationships between the characters within the trailers. It is not obvious at
the start that the girl on the swing will be the killer, however the
non-dietetic nursery rhyme hints at horror within her character. They see the
group of friends drinking, playing games such as spin
the bottle and being
careless, they are shown in British social realism, this is a genre of films,
that focuses on typical issues within that modern society of Britain, it
represents dominant ideologies of Britain like sex, drugs and drink. From
having British social realism embedded within my trailer, it was shown by having
unknown actors and representations of social class of working class. We are then introduced to the disruption of Ruby,
after the caption ‘until she returned’, the disruption starts getting closer
and closer to each character, as we see the editing puts the killer after or in
the same scenes as the characters. While going onto the disruption the voice
over of dietetic sound explains the past. In the disruption stage we see the
deaths and the chasing, the scares on the friend’s faces and introduced to what
Ruby is after. The character trey has a piece of dialogue when they are stuck
in the forest, he blames Frankie’s ‘It’s all your fault’ while pointing at
her,
this is the first hint that it was her fault her adopted sister is after them.
Within the trailer the edits of each scene gets quicker and quicker building
the tension of the disruption, Frankie the final girl, who is the resolution
but the stages of repair and new equilibrium are not shown in the trailer as it
cannot tell the story of what happens at the end, being a conventional factor
that the audience should want to watch the movie to find out what will happen.
In
trailers a formal convention is that they start slow, increase pace building
and building and then drop pace, I choose to formally convey this convention
within our trailer because
we needed to start off as a equilibrium, build the disturbance,
and they have the resolution, this is related to Todorov's theory, In the disturbance
stage this is where the pace of the trailer increases as there is tension
within the scene, when the tension builds it build with the pace of edits. When
there is no tension or it decreases the edits become slow showing the start of
the end of the trailer. The way we got the pace to build was through montage editing, this is shown for example in the images of jay, it shows the
different shot we put together that increased in pace. This relates to the convention of sound building,
within the trailer when the edits build pace so does the dramatic sound
effects, when people are being the killed the sound is snappy and louder as
well as being
quicker. The sound effects was one of the most important
convention we had to follow when making our trailer, this was because sound majorly
changes the trailer after it was edited. The sound give the scares and jumps
within the trailer, it attracts attention. One example of how it was used well
in our trailer was in the car crash scene, the noise of the car driving fast
and to the crash, the sound effects improved the scene.
When
planning on where to film, to find a conventional formulaic location to fit our
genre of slasher films. The location is an important convention in real media
text as it creates atmosphere and Mise en scene, in horror films a location
such as the forest creates a haunted and scary look. Within the trailer I used
all conventional locations such the house,
we used this location as the twins
home, it started off being the nice location where the party was, then it
became scary when Ruby was around the house. The suburban house is a formulaic convention,
when used in horror films as it is unsettling as it is place where the audience
should feel safe however this is subverted in horror films because it is
twisted cognitively to challenge the minds of the audience. The forest is a
typical convention as this is where many deaths occur, being chased in the
forest is scarier as the characters are lost and it is harder to find the way
out. The forest might connote life on a summery day, however on a day in the
cold winters the forest connotes death and darkness. The last location is the
park where Ruby is shown, the squeaky swinging in slow place with a deserted
look. Ruby is all alone looking at a house, the house she lived in, she is
haunting the people there, and she is position in the rule of thirds to show
she is alone. With the park we developed this location we started it off with
ruby, looking like a sweet girl on a swing, but making the swing, swing slower
and adding the nursery rhyme changed the meaning, we put the old video edit on
top and showed the empty swing this shows that it has horror within the footage
shown ahead.
The
last convention of the trailer is the end card, this is at the end of the
trailer, and it has the title of the film and release date. It features the
name of the main cast and crew
and the directory company and camera work, and
the logos. This is for the extra last bit of information for the audience and
so they know the release date. Our group felt to add a cliffhanger at the
where there is a few seconds more after the end card, this is a new convention
which is added to trailers, and it is a little bit more that will make the
audience want more.
The
form, shape of my trailer is main conventional however as shown above there are
factors which are developed of subverted. However the main factors followed
where the pace and sound, they would both start smooth and slow within the trailer
then they would increase in pace and start having tragic shots. The pace of
footage and sound both got faster and faster then hit the top of the level and
dropped.
Onto
the poster, real media text of posters have certain codes and conventions.
Through my three products I needed to have a consistent brand identity through
all three products, this was done by consistent look. The first convention of
having a three colour scheme, this was red to convey blood, black to convey
death/darkness and white to convey innocence’s. This relates to binary
opposites that work with colours, each colour works as a binary opposite
contrasting off each other conveying the narrative with the poster. Next is the image it conveys a sense of genre as
Ruby is represented as scary with her hair showing the slasher genre, also it
conveys narrative throughout all the three products because it’s the same
characters represented in all the products carrying on the storyline.
The
picture relates to the woman are monstrous theory as explained above, the
character conveys the genre of horror but also convey the fact men should be
scared of female. With posters it is conventional to have the image in the
centre of the page and larger than all items on the page, I followed this
convention and kept the image of Ruby centre of my poster. The typography of
our film is shown above the image, it is a convention for the title to be shown
bigger than all other text and above the image at the top. It conventional to
have the same typography following through all text keeping consistent brand
identity. Additional text on the poster of the cast and crew, this is
conventional as it’s a still image showing audience who took part in the making
of trailer, its conventional to have the main actors/director in bigger text or
bold to have them stand out so people who like them will be dragged to see it. The principal cast and crew is a formal aspect of posters, as shown on others in my
research stage, it is on them so we know formally it is a poster. Through the
poster I followed the conventions throughout. With posters it is conventional
to show the production and distribution companies as well as the age
certificate and social media websites, I choose to follow these conventions
within my poster as they worked as synergy or provided information which informs
the audience and the audience can use the websites to get involved
interactivity with the film. I also conventional followed to show the festivals at the top that the movie have featured at, this was because it would attract to bigger audiences, who see the film at the feativals.
The
last media text is the magazine, I used Fangoria as my magazine to feature my
trailer as the audience is young adults who are interested in horror films, and
the main colours of Fangoria are black yellow and red, this is conventional so
I choose to use the same brand identity when re-creating the magazine. I choose
to keep the idea of the reel of the side to keep within the conventions, and
represent my own pictures within the gaps. I did this because it’s a Feature
that helps people recognise that they have picked up a Fangoria magazine. The
name of Fangoria was conventionally kept at the top of the magazine with the
title of my film bellow it, used the same consistent title through the three
text to keep the same look, with the magazine name it had to be conventionally
the biggest item
of text as it is the most important convention on the page as
all people need to know what magazine they are reading. Under the title there
is the caption line ‘The night SHE came home’ this was intertextuality from
Halloween, but we changed the he too she to relate to our narrative, this is
developing conventions of intertextuality to fit our own narrative. With the
magazine I had the barcode, website and price/issue code at the bottom of the
magazine so that people knew how much it was, and it had a recognition code and
a website for synergy. The image from my movie was placed below the title, with
it being a main feature it had to be the largest image on the page, so it would
be predictably the first sight the audience would have this is conventional in
magazines as the readers need to first be attracted to the main ‘bang, wow’
image then they will read the story line. There is also the ear pierce and
banner at the top of the magazine I choose to keep this convention of Fangoria
magazines because I could add extra information within these formats. I used
banners at the top and bottom of my magazine because I wanted to feature extra
information and stories which could not fit anywhere else, it was a mode of
address because it is a way of talking to the audience through the set out of
the layout. The banners grab more attention from the audience which the main
story may not. With magazines I found they have to relate to the theory of
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and the Uses and gratification theory, With Maslow’s
theory I found I used it when appealing the dreams and aspirations of my
audience, as it was a horror featured magazine theses feature had to apply to
them and what they would like. With uses and gratification I needed to show entertainment
– having the interaction and interest of the front page. Social interaction -
of social media websites. Lastly personal identification – this is done by
formally following codes and conventions of Fangoria as all reader have person identification
with horror films. The one factor I challenged with my magazine was placing the
social websites at the top of the page, this convention is challenged because
they should be at the bottom as it should be the last feature people should
see.
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