Callum Greenslade Candidate Number: 3201

In what way does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms of real media

products?

Section A

For my overall trailer, I have chosen to base it around a more Gory horror with slight

aspects of comedy involved. This has been done as it is a basic genre that is popular

amongst many people. Our trailer fits into the horror genre in many ways, from the

main antagonists being the Zombies which are one of the main horror sub-genres to

the ways in which they are dealt with. We have worked with many different methods

of killing off the Zombie characters as it is shown that most people enjoy watching

something unoriginal as to something just being shot with a handgun or hit with a bat.

The overall gore in our trailer is basic but gives the audience an idea into what basic

standard to expect in a full film. I found a gory horror to be more difficult as having a

low budget can’t get you the best gore effects, but can have things that look

believable and gruesome.

One of the main movies the overall structure has been influenced by is

aspects of “Dawn of the Dead” (2004) by George A Romero. We’ve done

this through the use of our central character being an average person with

few life skills who develops through the story into our main protagonist. I

liked the overall idea that there is comedy throughout his film, which can

draw in a larger target audience, so there are elements of comedy

throughout the trailer which vary from zombie killings to the overall structure

of the characters and how they are portrayed to the audience. Another film

that we could relate to would be elements of Shaun of the Dead. This can

be seen through its use of comedy and gore. A personal favourite scene

which I wanted to re-create was in the Winchester where David is ripped

open at the window. This is a good scene as it starts out comedic and then

has a Collision Cut to him being ripped apart (Found Here).

Image of Michael and Ana (Dawn of the Dead (2004).

Butchered can link in with Thomas Schatz’s theory of

genre. We see this through the fact that there is a male

protagonist, in a confined area of the world being a

small town with a local butchery where he is working.

He is met with a conflict from a problem that occurred

with him involved in slightly by not disposing of the

tainted product properly and brings it on himself to aid in

the survival of humanity by killing off the zombies now

confined in the town with him. We have challenged his

theory on endings by not giving out information on

whether or not the protagonist lives or dies, making

possible sequels possible and boosting marketing in the

sense of people who are interested in the product will

be looking to watch the second edition to find out the

possible cliff-hanger.

I prefer it this way as it means that the audience is

engaged to the product as it fills the common

characteristics of my genre whilst leaving plot holes so

they will be interested in future productions.

An image of Thomas Schatz

“Hollywood Genres” book.

Section B

When looking at the horror conventions in trailers, I believe we have stuck to them quite well. We can see this for starters by the way that we have chosen to do our trailer. For it, we have done a hybrid of a highlights trailer and a scene trailer, giving a variety and applying Collision Cutting to it by having a sudden jump of action when the Equilibrium is disrupted. The trailer doesn’t give out too many hints on what events will occur but sets a basic style of the original setting allowing the audience to know exactly where we are, what the characters back stories are and whether or not they’ll like them characters or not. I prefer to do things this way as people will already pick favourites and start discussion on it and monitor their development with what has been given to them.

Like all horror trailers, we’ve incorporated a jump scare at the end as it is a way of freaking out the audience. This is through the way that the audience assumes when the credits appear that the trailer is over and relaxes slightly; only to be scared straight after when they’ve let their guard down. The use of inter-titles through the trailer have a comedic aspect to them and also give breaks between each image, allowing a montage of killings to be split up with a tagline for them instead of placing text or dialogue over the image. There have been multiple trailers that have given us ideas on how to create our overall project and from using their ideas; we have developed a mixture of them to create something of many popular trailers that an audience will enjoy.

When looking at the suspense created throughout my trailer, there are multiple

techniques used to develop shock and suspense throughout my trailer. One of the

methods that I’ve used to create this is through the slow scenes that have a cut into

action. There are certain points were the audience is left hanging waiting to see the

next event unfold which has a suspenseful outlook on it. At one point in the trailer, we

add in shock where our first zombie turns and we see where our hobo first attacks.

The main part of our trailer where the audience is supposed to feel fear is at the jump

scare as this is something that is intentionally put into the trailer to make sure that the

audience is scared.

Overall, I’m not too fond of including too much fear into a trailer as it is only supposed

to be a speak peek at what the full product will be like. I’d personally prefer it to show

characters and the scenery more so the audience can have a better connection with

them. The idea of building suspense and fear in a trailer doesn’t seem to fit into our

chosen sub-genre as well as the audience is guaranteed to be expecting aspects of

gore. If anything, I’d leave fear and suspense to the psychological horror sub-genre

as it is something that needs to be built up over time compared to an expected blood

bath.

When analysing my trailer, you can see clear links into other films. One of the main

films that we had used was “Dawn of the Dead” (2004) by George A Romero. We

wanted to re-create the overall gore element while also having slight comedy

involved. For this, Dawn of the Dead was one of the best examples that portrayed this

in a real film. There could also be slight links in with “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) by

Edgar Wright. This is another film where we can see a hybrid of elements in horror

and comedy. It is a well-known film that its overall audience enjoyed, whilst also

appealing to audiences out of their genre. This is a good element to add in as it will

allow anyone creating a trailer to expand its audience to a wider range than beyond

what it had intended for. The overall style around Zombie films is quite basic, but

works every time. We see this in the way that many Zombie films have the same

aspects but all move to different locations with a slight change of plot.

An example of gore in Dawn of the Dead (2004).

Section C

For my trailer, I have used multiple auteur influences to create it. One of the main ones would be Alfred Hitchcock for his ways of developing fear and suspense through a drawn out period. One of his main features in his films was his female victims, usually blonde with blue eyes as it created the overall female victim connotations. For my trailer, we didn’t use a female victim which can always be changed in later times if necessary. I have had ideas on whether or not to add in a female victim or make her a survivor; I will more than likely use the female survivor because it is more appealing to a wider audience and has no aspects of sexism involved.

I have challenged George A Romero’s auteur style by not using a black protagonist and not having a main female survivor for now. This way, I have similarities and differences from Dawn of the Dead for an analysis. This is good as it means that I haven’t stolen from mainstream Hollywood but I have borrowed elements for my own product. I personally like George A Romero’s auteur style best as it has a variety of changes from going by something considered “normal” and gives you different outlooks on characters that you believe will hold the most power in the film. As Andrew Sarris said, the whole theory of auteurs is that they have a unique style to the vast majority of their films making them what they are. This is why for my trailer I have decided to mix multiple well known auteur styles to create a hybridised film.

When looking at the skills that I have brought to this production, I have

personally done Camerawork for this trailer, from which I learned a few

years back through doing productions such as BBC News Day. This

was a useful skill when creating our trailer as I was already familiar

with the type of model we were using and had a clear knowledge of

specific shot types that I wanted to shoot. The downside to this is that

our Tripod wasn’t of the best quality and jammed up on regular

occasions, making it harder to shoot a clean shot. As I’m a fan of gore,

I put my personal input into what kind of trailer I wanted to make.

Luckily with our group was that we were all fans of the Zombie sub-

genre and all big fans of gore, making the choice of sub-genre a lot

easier than other groups.

I wasn’t too confident with Adobe Premiere, so I didn’t do as much of

that as I could have. I’m quite familiar with Adobe Photoshop so while

Editing was underway I created a custom production logo for our

group which will be displayed to the side. I also had a go at learning to

work Adobe After Effects but was limited to what I could make because

of the font and plugins that I could use so in the end we had to get

some assistance for this part. Overall, the use of second source

media’s such as the Adobe products went quite well and everything

looked good to a decent standard.

My created Production Logo.