EVALUATION 11 - Codes and Conventions of our Trailer

 how have we established genre across the products? 

across the course of our creation process of our film trailer and ancillary texts we have tried to maintain a clear representation of the horror genre so that we are keeping our audience interests at heart and our film is consistently displaying themes associated with horror. Some of these genre indicators can be as simple as the eerie ambiguous title choice of 'dawn' connoting the sun rising in the morning- something positive and idyllic that we juxtapose with the dark hand drawn calligraphy style font usage to suggest something sinister and archaic with the actual proper noun name of dawn being an archaism and old English name. Other more advanced genre indicators mainly revolve around mise en scene whereby our costume choices, dim lighting to reinforce the serene un-homely cold environment and our absence of dialogue suggestive of something un-natural and un-humane.

TRAILER CONVENTIONS:

Codes in a film are a significant factor that create a strong representation and meaning to the audience. there are different sub categories of these codes which encourage the audience to realize connotations and denotations which conform and subvert to stereotypes.

Audio Codes -sounds which the audience hear in the film:

dialogue

 music

special/sound effects.

Written Codes - any written words/phrases/passages which are present in the film:

 headings

subheadings

logos

labels

font

 size

 placement of the writing and signs.

Technical Codes - this regards the usage and techniques of equipment that is used to tell the story, this heavily links to the technical elements of the film:

camera angles

camera movement

lighting

camera shots

framing onscreen

perspective

layout

Symbolic Codes - anything which has a symbolic meaning and shows what is 'beneath the surface' of what is obious and pictured on the screen:

juxtaposition of characters/objects,

 lighting,

use of color,

 feelings/emotion,

equality and stereotypes.

Conventions of a film are the general typical and expected methods and ways of producing a film (differentiating with each genre of film).

 Our titles adhered to horror codes and conventions with the eerie gritty title usage maintained throughout. we used the ARIAL font as a consistent font throughout our trailer, as well as appearing on our ancillary texts on our poster to maintain relational editing and links between our products so audiences could recognize and distinguish a brand identity they could associate with and relate to. Because this font was a fairly common font choice for horror productions and within the cinematic industry we decided to add our own unique editing to the font to make it appear original and altered to our horror codes by disorientating some of the letters so that some of the letters were joint to their adjacent letter, making the text appear jolted and appear to glitch and move when we edited specific letters one at a time to flare, move slightly or allowed the strobe effect to create a glitching effect. The text we used for 'ROBYN PRODUCTIONS'was a varied font from the rest of the titles and credits using a handwritten style text with a byline underneath mimicking the style of american horror story, something that could act as a unique selling point for us to attract audiences. The codes and conventions we adhered to in the text for our trailer made the movie seem professional and the text colors on a consistently black background with white and red text appearing stark and to stand
out made it easy to read and take in information. The black background is prominent, and links with the shadow effects and dim lighting we use further on in the production almost creating a Ronda or cyclical effect where the trailer starts dark and finishes in darkness. The absence of any imagery behind our text, only the black background fits with conventions of the supernatural and phantasmagorical in horror movies and presents something absent and dark and lost rather than idyllic scenery or a scene from our movie that perhaps would contradict or juxtapose this dark text usage.


 The hand appearing from the bedroom cupboard is arguably cliched of our horror movie as the ghost story fantasy ideology of something lurking in the darkness or in a bedroom is a re known childhood scary horror nightmare. hence, this accurately fits in with the horror genre. Arguably however the popularity of monsters inc with something lurking behind the door (much like our old lady) being inevitably something innocent, loving and kind may cause audiences to not be scared by this idea and our opening scene of something behind the door as in popular culture the monsters inc plot would be known remembered and recognized by huge expansive audiences. The hand lurking from the cupboard fits the codes of horror movies with the antagonist or antagonist force/ force of evil being hidden from audiences, especially in the beginning of the trailer in order to trigger enigmas and keep audiences in tensions awaiting. The clock in the foreground of our opening scene in deep focus is a typical code of horror movies with victims being under a time limit, or trying to escape and being under pressure.

The scene where we only see the young girls back when she turns on the light is enigma triggering as the camera lingers on her for a few seconds and hence trailer audiences are guessing what she has seen or is in front of her as prior to this clip the old woman was standing in this doorway area. When we as audiences realise there is nothing in the bathroom and the antagonist has somehow with camera illusion and fast paced editing disappeared, the equilibrium in the trailer is maintained and we have not yet reached the disruption of the equilibrium. This is conventional of horror trailers where lots of minor incidents and potential equilibrium breakers lead up to a a finite large scale equilibrium disturbance. The lingering of the camera on this girl juxtaposes laura mulveys idea of the male gaze whereby a females curves and feminine traits are lingered on and instead the innocence of this girl is reinforced with her childish pajamas young low height and childish actions. The ghosting editing effect on premier elements reinforces the slow pace of the girls actions, as well as conventionally to a horror movie- adding a sense of the un-natural and supernatural to the movie.


The mirror scene in the trailer fits codes and conventions of horror movies as mirrors are often used as platforms for creating a horror scene as they show something as a reflection or a parallel and throughout history mirrors have been mythical and folklore basis for supernatural claims that you can only see ghosts in mirrors, that vampires have no mirror reflection, that if you say 'bloody Mary' 3 times the ghost of Henry VIII's late wife appears.This folklore belief carried through history gives context to our film, making this mirror prop usage (relating to mise en scene) seem scarier to our viewers. the mirror scene is also an advanced attempt of camera illusion and camera magic as you cannot see the camera filming what is going on as this would ruin the cinematography magic. To enable the camera not to be seen we ensured our over the shoulder shot from the young girl was tight to her shoulder and the camera was in shallow focus with not to much of the surroundings being seen. This mirror scene relates to spectrophobia which is a fear of mirrors, and in this way our film relates to audiences by bringing in real human fears into our narrative making it even more scary and realistic. The film also adopts conventions other horror movies such as 'mirrors' 'oculous' and 'the grudge' where mirrors are used as a main factor for triggering fear and creating jump scares. hence, our film fits conventions by using this as a jump scare.

Usage of abstract imagery in our trailer with the blood coated daffodils conventionally adopts codes and traits from similar horror movies where montages of contrasting imagery are used to show a range of differing scenes giving the movie depth and hinting at a complex story line. The daffodils as natural idyllic flowers connoting life and rebirth juxtapose with the themes of death in the horror trailer, which is almost represented through the blood splatters on the flowers. The flowers also are abstract in the trailer, making our trailer fit adheringly to some of our studies into horror concept art, and inspiration for this daffodil idea came from Nimfas 'psychedelic flowers' artistic painted piece,

The scribbling scenes in our trailer fit codes and conventions as often writing backwards (as in 'the knowing') or writing a different language ('Ouija II') is associated with horror and hence originally and uniquely our fast paced glitching edit to the protagonists writing fits it with the conventions of horror. This scene is also one of the most prevalent final scenes in our trailer conventionally making it memorable and stick in audiences heads, and in addition to this- filming it from three different angles from a point of view, extreme close up and close up it reinforces even more the supernatural obscure way the girl is writing as if she is possessed.

Our darkest scene using the lowest minimalist amount of lighting where the young girl is seen trying to escape the room makes audiences feel actively involved as the girl seemingly is using direct mode of address through eye contact to target onlooking secondary audiences to help her. this scene filmed without a tripod and on a lower quality mobile device reinforces the realism of it seemingly from a home device making the scene seem even more real.