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

When creating "Deranged" there were many elements which received inspiration from typical conventions and scenes, but I like to think we had our own unique spin on things and challenged some of the norms.

General Theme

For the theme itself, we based the villains general behaviour and actions throughout the trailer on the classic "Slasher" movies (with special attention payed to "Micheal Miyers" from the "Halloween" series) with the idea of a relentless killer who stops at nothing to get the innocent victim. As is usual for a Slasher villain, our villain carries a trademark weapon (in this case a sledgehammer) is usually covered in blood and is slow moving rather than running at a fast pace.

Whilst our villain may indeed conform to Horror Stereotypes, our protagonist is shown not to confirm as she is certainly not Androgynous (unlike Character Laurie Strode from Halloween) and is indeed shown partying with all the other victims earlier (a direct counter to the typical reactionary interpretation of horror).

We also tried to challenge the norm with the style of the horror.

Whilst it does indeed conform to the Slasher Genre in many ways, our intention was to create the trailer with a loosely hybridised motif (with combinations of both supernatural and mystery themes) through the use of showing the identity of the villain (and revealing that he is/was a freind of the partygoers) throughout but not explaining how he became "Deranged" individual he becomes. In that sense therefore, it does not conform too strongly as we decided to play off this sense of mystery rather than have the violence theme of our trailer (unlike a typical slasher).

Stills and Conventions

In this section, I intend to compare stills from our trailer to still taken from films within the horror genre explaining the conventions used in each scene.

The Establishing Shot

The establishing shot of our trailer (the picture from the left) was inspired by many such trailers as The Haunting in Conneticut (the picture on the right) in several different ways.

Firstly there is the standard trailer convention that is familiar across all genres in that it establishes the area in which the film would take place. From the Haunting in conneticut trailer, we can clearly see that the events take place in a house/houses within an ideal American suburb. Likewise from our trailer, it is clear that the events take place in the area in and around a house near some woodland.

Secondly a lot of horrors often like to show the home (a place usually connoted with safety and security) because they can capitulate of this sense of security to highten the sense of fear when the audience sees the home turned into a place of the chilling, the supernatural and the murderous. A staple which is now oft recognised, ergo we did not feel we could ignore.

Finally we found it interesting because it adhered to the use of unnatural angles which are trademarks of the horror genre due to their unsettling and unusual effects they have on the individual. Whilst the Haunting in Conneticut picture uses an almost birds eye view, we decided to show our house not only from upside down view (to create our own odd and unusual angle), but also from behind the trees looking into the house (a technique often used by horror films such as Halloween) to insinuate that the killer, or negative entity is looking into the house in a voyeuristic manner.

In some ways however our trailer conforms to the horror conventions far more than the Haunting in Conneticut shot does. For one there is the issue of time. It is generally a staple of the horror genre that it will usually take place at night due to the human brains connotations with various dangers and supernatural folklore. Whilst our trailer conforms to this convention, the Haunting in Conneticuts establishing shot did not.

The Party Scene

This party scene from our trailer (the picture to the left) was inspired directly by the party scene from Sorority Row (the picture to the right)

Like many contemporary horrors, our horror trailer was aimed at, and starred a group of teenagers who are of course stereotypically party goers. Whilst most slashers will be set around a group of teenagers regardless, Sorority row was a great example for the stereotypes and characters we wished to introduce and therefore was mimiced in this manner.

What perhaps is more interesting however is the ways in which our trailer did not conform to the usual teen horror character conventions. First of all there is the rather unusual circumstance for a teen horror that the men outnumber the women. In your usual horror (with the picture of Sorority Row from above clearly demonstrating this) there is generally a much higher proportion of women to men for numerous reasons.

Secondly we have the issue of character sexualisation. It is oft the norm for any form of horror to sexualise the main characters and make the "Final Girl" androdgynous, however due to limitations we had actorwise and due to the nature of the project (an educational matter) the former issue could not be achieved and the latter issue was flat out refused by our lead girl, forcing us to deviate from this standard convention.

The final oddity of this scene is that of the villain being present. Whilst it is not irregular for the villain in a slasher film to be a freind of the main characters (for instance this is a recurrant theme both in Sorority Row and the classic "Scream" movies respectivly), however it is our trailers revealing of the "freind" being the killer within the trailer itself which defies the normal convention. This was purposefull because we wished to base our trailer around the sense of mystey as well as horror, hopefully creating questions amongst viewers such as "What made him go crazy?", a question that could only be answered by watching the film.

The Intertitles

Like many trailers, our trailer contained intertitles to tell little bits of the story that the images cannot tell without giving too much away, the prupose being to create intruige and carry the trailer on without being too wordy,

Our intertitles did not particularly adhere to any specific example within the horror genre, and was created from audience feedback that requested flashier and "more interesting" text. This was however an interesting insight because as this example below from Sorority Row shows, it is far more common for there to be a complete lack of effects with simple, easy to read text.

Intertitles are more commonly left to be a sense of normality and are left easy to read in contrast to the flashing, violent and rapid images usually left to the rest of the trailer creating an oxymoron like effect. Whilst I personally do not agree with democratically chosen view we went with, it was interesting in that it is perhaps more of what the target audience wants rather than the standardised intertitles of other films.

Whilst they largely did challenge standard conventions, our intertitles did focus content wise on the oft used convention of directly adressing the audience. This is usually used to directly involve the audience with the situation and "put them in the shoes" of the characters involved to add to the horror, an element of trailers that for some reason Sorority Row did not abide by.

The Eye shot



A shot showing a close up of an eye is something that is extremely iconic of the horror genre. The eye is something that we as a species instinctivly try to keep things away from causing a sense of uncomfortableness when an eye is shown so zoomed in, as well as the many different romantacised views of the eye (e.g. the whole "window into the soul" anecdote) that make such a simple shot so very effective.

Realising this, it was of course very natural for us to try to emulate this within our trailer, showing Sabrina`s eye (The picture to the left) in a very odd lighting close up.

Whilst the eye shot is a classic horror tool, we seeked to develop and change this convention to a slight degree by having the eye close up on the victim/protagonist rather than the villain (such as in the picture of Samara from The Ring to the right).

It has not become typical from trends in the Japanese horror industry to have your main antagonist (presumably a ghostly individual) to have a close up of their eye instead of that of the protagonist. This is usually done because we naturally look at eyes as one method of empathising and identifying emotions within other people. The monster therefore having this close up effect (and usually having some issue with their eye)  immedialt evokes an unnatural sense within the viewer.

We chose however to forgo this in favour of the protagonists eye however because we wanted the audience to empathise more with her fear, rather than focus on the eye of the antagonist (a descision also made due to the "natural" rather than "supernatural" nature of the individual and trailer).

We did however also stick to one more horror related convention with this scene and that was the nature of it being a female eye. The eye being a male eye in extreme close ups is very rarely reserved for horror and is more an iconic image of the action or war genre of film.

The Running Scene



The Running scene was a scene inspired largely from both Eden Lake and from the Television Series LOST despite the latters not being in the horror genre.

The running scene was chosen because it is a natural convention of any film in which there is one "innocent" and one "evil" party, be it action, horror, fantasy or whatever. The reasoning behinds its mass use is its implication that the monster/antagonist is really fast/right behind the protagonist forcing them to run at that speed, even though the antagonist need not be shown at all, something that we decided was a very interesting and useful type of scene to implement

Like Eden lake (the picture to the right), the motion blur that accompanies these scenes is a very useful convention that we also wished to use because of the illusion it creates that everything is much faster than it actually is (something that rather nicely accompanies the idea of the fast pace and violent pace of a horror trailer) and thus like the eye shot this scene was a very natural fit.

One potential manner in which we defied the normal convention with this however is from a technique often used within Slasher films. Typically, there is a greater emphasis on hiding and running from a slow, lumbering yet unrelenting antagonist rather than a fast paced chase scene, however considering the modern era and the non-supernatual elements that our trailer included, I believe this was a nice development upon the usual conventions.

The 'Silhouette' Scene

 The Silhouette scene was a scene that was development from a scene used in some slightly supernatural horrors, where the antagonist stands infront of a bright blue background creating a silhouette style effect making the antagonist seem more in touch with the darker elements, more shadowy and giving them an unearthly feel.

The inspiration for this shot came from a scene in the Shinning (shown below) where the Antagonist (Jack) is chasing after the protagonist (Danny) in the middle of the night through the snow. Jack is hunched over with an axe, similiar in style to how I am hunched over with a hammer within this scene.

We decided however to go one step further and capitulate on the horror technique of unusual shots to interesting effect, with the framing effect of the surronding trees highlighting the blue light and our antagonist even further. This obscure view from the trees is a typical convention of horror where our image is partly blocked giving the audience the same villain-esque style view we saw earlier, implying that there is perhaps more than meets the eye to our antagonist even futher. This was done to make our Antagonist and the unusual elements surrounding him as more of a focus for the audience as well as to pay homage to the typical horror antagonist weapon rule (One big and cumbersome weapon) with the classic slouch.

The Villain Close Ups

The close ups of the trailers villains followed the minor convention used by some "madness based" villains in that it showed a lot of close ups of our villains face rather than hide them away or keep them largely engrossed in shadow unlike many other types of horror film.

The descision to go down this route was once again playing on the mystery element of our horror trailer. By having such a large and in your face scenes involving the antagonist, we hoped to create a startling and shocking scenario for the audience to watch.

These scenes have another haunting effect on the audience based on the emotions that are often displayed. Despite the obvious horror and terrible situation that the film takes place in, the villain has a mad and sadistic grin upon his face, once more highlighting his madness and the unusual elements that make horror, horror. This effect was of course boosted further by the canted angles used to make everything seem even more unusual than it was.

An example that was key in coming to this idea was once again from the Shinning.

This shot was interesting because the character was emoting all out and being the exact opposite of the usual horror villain who is eerily silent, something we found intruiging and effective when watching the Shinning, and thus despite its defiance of usual conventions we felt we had to include within our trailer.

The Finishing Shot

The standard trailer convention regarding the end of a horror trailer involves a very rapid pace, disgusting or jumpy scene to suprise the audience when they think the trailer is over, creating a lasting impression upon them and our trailer is no exception to this rule.

Whilst there is no specific industry standard for the jump scene of a trailer, there is a generalisation that whatever will happen will involve the victim being assaulted/suprised rapidly by w.e. the opposing force is. In this case we decided to go for an incredibly low shot as you can see to the right to create a sense being on the same level as the victim, creating a far greater sense of suprise when he is rapidly dragged away.

This scene had been inspired by the film "REC" in which at the very end our female protagonist is dragged away by one of the zombies to the suprise of the audience and into the darkness as all is heard is a scream and the film cuts to black. This scene was chosen for its extreme effectiveness when watched in class, and the large amount of people who "jumped out of their skin" and left them with a lasting impression.

 Unfortunatly we missed out on the convention of the usual accompanying high  pitched scream due to some form of technical difficulty when our video was uploaded onto youtube. We originally had a high pitched scream that accompanied our victims being dragged away to compliment and attempt to increase the suprise factor, but on the version that has been uploaded to youtube, this sound file has vanished for reasons that are unknown to myself.