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

North Chamber Trailer Audio Commentary from Sam Duxbury on Vimeo.


Transcript:
This is the trailer for North Chamber, a period horror film. We chose to use this genre in the initial planning stages, basing our ideas for plot around the horror genre. When we decided that parts of the film would be set in the past, the film took on the period genre as well. We individually researched the conventions of both genres, and surveyed 21 people to find out which demographic of people we should assign as our target market. We found that horror was more or less equally popular with both genders, and most popular with under 21s. 

Genre is very important in terms of marketing films as, in 1978, Ryall suggested that media institutions choose a genre and make a film, as we did, marketing it to their audience based on said genre. Based on the genre of the film, the audience decide to see the film, and the money made by selling tickets is put back into making more films in this genre, showing that genre is essential to supply and demand in the film industry.
 
In our trailer, we used horror conventions to establish that this was a horror film, luring in our prospective audience. These conventions include fast editing style which builds to a scare, female victims, and the paranormal.
 
Our trailer conforms to traditional conventions of horror trailers. For example, our titles are in the conventional order of production companies appearing at the start of the trailer, and the billing block appearing at the end. Also, we used fast paced editing to condense the story line without spoiling any important plot points, gave social media information in the form of a hashtag, and used sound to build tension and shock viewers – sound is a major component of horror films as it is sound, rather than visuals, that scares the audience. A research team led by animal distress call expert Daniel Blumstein found that the irregular sounds like screams and dissonant chords typical of horror films trigger a biological response making people think that their young are threatened, explaining why sound is so scary.
 
In addition to this, our trailer conformed to conventions as it had a unique selling point, in the form of a twist in narrative where the bullied girl becomes a bully, and it incorporated a ‘sting’, which is a convention of horror trailers where a clip from the film is put after the title to shock viewers who thought that the trailer was over. This sting was an example of Roland Barthes’ enigma codes, as it would have made viewers wonder why the villain was screaming; this would increase anticipation for the film’s release as people would want to see the film and have this enigma put to rest. By conforming to trailer conventions, we made sure that viewers would recognise that our trailer was for a horror film, meaning those that like horror films would want to see the film that the trailer is advertising. We did this intentionally, individually researching into trailer conventions in order to understand and use them, but initial scripts were in more narrative order, so we amended our script ideas whilst filming and editing to conform more to trailer editing styles.
 
Our trailer featured a conventional Proppian character, in the form of our villain, but even she was not totally conventional as she was originally a bullied, innocent schoolgirl who only became ‘evil’ as a ghost. This makes her a ‘binary opposition’, something that Claude Levi-Strauss said occur frequently in media, especially in the horror genre. Our protagonist was more of a victim than a Proppian hero, as Propp studied fairy tales in which characters have to be heroic to triumph over their foe, whereas in horror films the protagonist has to overcome their own fears in order to survive.
 
Our actors broadly fulfilled their intended roles after encouragement and direction from our production team and we were mostly happy with their performances, however some were better than others. When re-watching our footage during editing we found that one of the bully characters was  too loud and used some phrases which would not have been used when the film was set. Whilst we held auditions for actors, we did not audition them for specific roles; so to reduce the likelihood of actors not fulfilling their roles next time, we would hold auditions for roles.
 
When we screened our trailer to a focus group of 21 people, they were all able to identify it as a horror trailer, and the vast majority were scared at the intended points. Every one of the people in the screening understood the narrative and said they would pay to see the film if it released in cinemas, making it a successful film trailer, as it fits in with Ryall's genre triangle; audiences pay to see genre films, giving institutions the money to make more films in the same genre, keeping up with audience demand.