Evaluation Question 1 script

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

Our trailer took a great deal of work to make look as it does. For a trailer such as this, it made the most sense to try and apply the conventions of existing trailers to our own. For the examples here, I will be making reference to the three trailers which influenced our trailer the most; Sinister, Insidious 2 and Grave Encounters 2.

All four trailers begin with a slow sequence of shots establishing the general plot of the film; The first Grave Encounters film being well received, a young man returning home to find a chest in the center of his hallway, a writer moving into a new home and it being established that the son from Insidious has managed to shake free whatever possessed him in the first film. The trailers all begin this way, as the slow building nature of then opening shots contrast greatly to the latter parts of the trailers, where the editing is much faster paced, and all the tension built up through these slow shots is paid off.

The trailers then begin to build tension by having the general mood of the film shift to start creating a feeling of tension. Again; more story aspects are introduced; a group of teenagers go to film at the hospital where Grave Encounters took place, the young man opens the chest and finds an old camera with strange pictures of the past, the writer discovers some old video tapes and the mother of the possessed child begins to see ghastly visions. Added to the establishing shots, these slow building elements in each trailer lay down a tense atmosphere, which sets the mood for the rest of the trailer.

The slow shots now come to an end with the sudden realization of the situation the characters are in; The students discover that they are trapped in a place haunted by the spirits they thought were just stories, the young man watches footage of someone (himself) being stabbed by a hooded figure seen in the photographs from earlier, the writer witnesses the video tapes and discovers they all feature people dying in varying gruesome ways and the mother of the child hears a voice over her baby monitor. As soon as these events happen (with the exception of Sinister) the editing pace of these trailers increases dramatically, as too does the tension in the trailers.

The trailers begin to pick up pace now as the trailers build up tension before attempting the trailer's true jump scare; the teenagers see all the horrors that befell people in the hospital and what happened to them, the young man begins exploring his own house as things begin to work by themselves and he wishes to know why, the writer begins to research what the content of the videos actually is and the family call in for the help of a spiritualist to see what's happening in their home; again the editing still isn't at its fastest yet, as all three trailers are once again building up tension for the final jump scare which makes up the trailers.

The trailers now approach their jump scares; the editing increases in pace and the shots begin to make no logical sense in the order they are placed in; the teenagers begin to see the creatures that haunted those who could be found in Grave Encounters and are chased by them, the young man goes into the loft of his home after seeing some unusual events around his own home, the writer begins to focus on the demon located within each clip and burns the footage he found, and the son who possessed in Insidious makes his fear of his father known to his mother.

Now the trailers reach their jump scare; the teenagers hide in a cupboard, yet are found by a nurse, who turns into one of the creatures who chased them before, the young man becomes trapped in a dark space with just a torch and ends up being attacked by a demon-creature, the writer sees a group of children in his loft, before the demon in the video footage jumps out at him, and the family go to touch a veil and see a vision of a demon-like creature. The trailers then have a brief moment of respite as is common in a horror trailer to allow the audience to reflect upon what they see.

As can be seen from the clips, the footage in all three trailers is similar, and achieves the same thing; making the audience scared/afraid of what they have seen as well as feeling pity/empathy for the characters.