Evaluation: Question one.

My media product both follows and challenges various conventions adhered to by people in the horror industry. By doing this we have achieved some conceptual ideas which in reality provide the audience with enough information and entertainment to provide them with an enjoyable yet terrifying experience. Above are 8 screenshots of "professional" horror trailers, and below are 8 screen shots of our horror trailer.

A teaser trailer should do exactly what it says on the tin, an tease. The whole point of this form of marketing is to make you want to find out what happens to the "victims", the villain and everything in between. Naturally, teaser trailers have a lot of blank holes and chunks missing from the plot, this is for 2 reasons, time being one, and your imagination, filling in the blanks as you follow the story. The human mind is programmed to be curious, so out of natural instinct you seem to want to watch the film. As you can see in both images, the use of dark undertones and motivated lighting is apparent. Darkness, damp and grime are three things usually associated with horror, Hostel being a prime example. In our trailer, we tried to replicate the darkness and uncertainty of moving into a new house and it reflected quite well in the finished product. Turning everyday situations into horrifying circumstances can be difficult, but because we can all relate to certain things, directors try and capitalize on general conventions and plot structure.

"The strangers" was our main inspiration when it came to Diederich, a couple going into unfamiliar but what is recognized as safe territory, only to be surprised when they realise they are being attacked by what appears to be a family of hooded axe murderers. We thought this was a good base to work up from, people can relate to young people in relationships, and the fear they both feel for themselves and each other can be a good way of scaring the audience. As the story of Diederich was inspired by World War II, we used a lot of old film effects, such as sepia, it gives you the impression this film is aged. In a lot of our shots, we tried to emulate techniques used in horror such as extreme close ups of the antagonist, jump cuts and changes in music. I think our trailer and the shots used match up to professional ones, considering we don't have the equipment, money or time they have we have produced a well shot, clear and well placed teaser trailer.

The sound in our trailer was produced on Apple's Garage Band. The sound, music and dialogue in the teaser trailer were a major part of our planning. Samplings clips from speeches of Winston Churchill, sounds of Supermarine Spitfires and military drumming were just some of the things we felt were needed to make the trailer more plausible. The soundtrack was produced on the basis that it escalates to a climax at the end of the trailer. I feel we did this fairly well, and the clips sampled from various different events in World War Two compliments the music and the Visial aspects of the trailer. Drums and synth was the main instruments used as its simple, and to help keep it simple, we didn't use much dialogue. This was because we didn't want to cram in too much talking as it would make it hard to edit into a flowing production. Though this could have been overcome by good planning, we also thought that dialogue often removes the audiences attention from the actual happenings of the trailer.