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

In the planning stages of our trailer, it was decided that we would aim to imitate the "documentary horror" sub-genre of horror films. The idea was that rather using our limited budget to create cheap special effects, we would use the location, cinematography and the cover of darkness to let our audience's imagination do the work for us. To this end, we utilized conventions from two iconic documentary horror films: The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

These plain-looking inter-titles are easy to make, but serve a useful purpose. While inter-titles in many other horror trailers exist to spout hyperbole about the scariness of the film, these are more subdued, seeking to uphold the theme of creeping dread that pervades the film. They also exist as part of the documentary "shell" that is built around the footage of the film. By listing dates and previous events, they create a sense of authenticity and also explain back story for the trailer that would otherwise have to be filmed in. The plainness of the text also suggests the documentary has not been heavily edited, adding credibility to the idea that the footage is authentic.

In order to further convinve audiences that this film is composed of authentic ameteur footage, both our trailer and the Blair Witch Project's trailer utilise long, handheld shots running through a forest. These shots are easy to film and easy to dub over with dialogue, plus they also generate a sense of fear, as they imply the holders of the camera are running from something. The one thing that separates our version from Blair Witch's is that their camera has a light on the front. In hindsight, this was something we should have utilised because it's sometimes hard to make out what's going on. Also, the light helps accentuate the darkness and just seems a logical thing for the characters to have around; i.e. torches, lanterns.

Another important feature of documentary horror, and horror in general, is that not all the shots need to be scary. Having some scenes of normalcy establishes the characters and setting and often foreshadows the danger to come. This applies to the trailer as well, although the ratio of scary scenes and calm scenes is balanced in favour of scary scenes. This is probably something we should have kept in mind, as our trailer contains perhaps a little too much set up and not enough jump scares. However, our audience feedback also praised our narrative, so maybe having lots of scenes setting up the plot was more interesting than a large montage of jump scares. After all, many trailers are criticised for showing all the good scenes and leaving the audience with no reason to go see the movie; becuasse they've seen everything worth watching already..