Evaluation 1 - Directors Commentary

dvd commentary from Alexia Docker on Vimeo.

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

Initially, during the ideas process, our production was going to be a thriller. However in the event of a student leaving our group we combined with another group, and began to create new ideas involving aspects of both previous ideas. After pooling ideas the final storyline we concocted was for a horror genre; theatrical trailer entitled ‘Somnium’.

I did initial research into similar products to get a clear idea of which conventions we should be using. Daniel Chandler says that genres tend to have set conventions shared by all from that genre. I researched the trailers for ‘Black Swan’ which is a thriller, and the trailer for ‘insidious’ which is a horror. I found various conventions that may appeal to our target audience.

For secondary research we searched for films of the same genre and a similar storyline as ours on IMDB. Here we found the main target audience for each film; this gave us an idea of the target audience we should have been expecting.

For our primary research we created and then handed out questionnaires specific to our genre preference and target audiences. The intention of this was to find out which audience our film would attract, we concluded it would attract 15-25 year old males and females. Genre is important to audience and industry, especially with horror films; this is because of the relationship between the institution, the audience, and the text. Ryall points out that the institution chooses a genre, and then the audience watch films based on their preferred genre, the money from these films is then put back into the industry to fund more genre films. This is called the genre cycle.

It is quite clear throughout our trailer that we have conformed to generic conventions of a horror, for example we used conventions such as; alley ways, secluded locations, paranormal characters, vulnerable characters, fast pace editing, and tension building music, which are all expected conventions of a horror. It is important to conform to certain generic conventions when making a film of a particular genre so that the film is recognised by the audience as belonging to that genre.

Trailers have their own set of conventions that producers use, and audiences understand. Conventions such as sound and title order were approached during the research and ideas stage. However, editing conventions such as the order of the scenes and the sting were approached during postproduction. This is because it was easier to put the scenes into a conventional order once we could visualise it. We moved them around numerous times. The sting was also a convention we discovered and applied in postproduction. This is a final video sequence placed after the title in horror trailers in order to give them a final scare.

Our trailer conformed to theatrical film trailers. This is so that the audience understand it’s a trailer for an up and coming film. It did this through its use of conventions such as fast paced editing, tension built by sound, titles that happen in a conventional order, and the sting.

We didn’t audition for actors, instead we asked who we thought was suitable for the roles available, to play them. From the start we already knew who we wanted to play the part of Rosie, and when we asked her she agreed instantly. She was perfect for the role and has had previous experience in acting which made her more appealing. Finding the actor to play the part of Evelin proved to be harder, however when we found someone, we were surprised by how well she fit the part. Next time I would definitely consider using auditions as I think we may not be so lucky, and it also gives us a taster on how those actors ac, giving us a choice.

The conventions used within the trailer ensured it was distinctly recognised as a horror film by the audience. We found this from our audience feedback after we showed the trailer to a group of people. They all recognised the film as a horror, and the majority of them said they would go to see it. Therefore I believe that overall we were successful at making a conventional trailer.