Evaluation Task 1 - In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I have recorded a directors commentary to answer this question.


Directors Commentary - North Chamber from Hannah Boardman on Vimeo.

This is the transcript:

We chose to create a horror/period hybrid genre trailer during the ideas process due to finding out that the audience favoured ghost stories/ paranormal narratives. We then had an idea to set the trailer in the past featuring the ghost’s previous life. After lots of thought we decided to title the film, ‘North Chamber’ as it was the name of the section of the school being haunted in our story.

My pre-production research included analysing ‘The Woman in Black’ trailer. I chose to look at this trailer because it is a horror/period hybrid similar to ours. I picked out effective conventions used that we might want to use in our trailer. In the Woman in Black trailer, the character’s costume indicated what time period the film was going to be set in (early 1900’s). As our film is set around the time of WW2, We dressed our actors in school uniform similar to what was worn in that time period so that the audience would understand when our film was set. We decided to include an evil theme, as every horror film does, and we highlighted this with the use of blood and a red ribbon which both connote death.

Trailers also have their own set of conventions. We used titles and sound, including a voice over to indicate to the audience what genre the film is going to be. We included social media links so that the audience can interact with each other and the producers and talk about the trailer which we used to act as promotion. We created faux social media sites to add to the promotion of the fake film. Another trailer convention that we have used which is a prominent feature of horror trailers is the ‘sting’. It is seen at the end of the trailer to shock the audience and make them want to see the film. They can be seen in popular horror film trailers such as The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. We conformed to theatrical film trailer conventions so that the audience understands what genre the film is going to be and so they know whether they might like it.

Individuality of a film is important in gaining an audience; Steve Neale said that difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre. A unique selling point of our trailer is the fact that it is a genre hybrid which makes it different to many other trailers that are just horror. I think the period aspect of the trailer gives the story more depth, making the audience want to know more.  Another unique selling point is that we have an unexpected twist in the story; the fact that the bullied girl turns into the bully is unusual and may intrigue the audience. The audience is important in genre films as Ryall says is part of the genre triangle crucial in the economy of genre films. The triangle shows how promotion of a film targets audiences that enjoy particular genre so that they pay to watch the film and give money back to the film genre industry. More genre films are then created and the cycle begins again.

At the start of the trailer Cassandra acted as the conventional Proppian character type ‘damsel in distress’, however later on, she ends up becoming the villain, with another girl taking the role of the damsel in distress. The strangle scene is an example of a Barthes enigma as it leaves the audience wondering whether the girl gets killed or not. This is a convention of trailers as the producers do not want to give away answers.

The actors didn’t fulfil their intended roles as we held auditions and found that the actors we had originally thought of would be best in different roles. As they were only young and amateur actors, they didn’t perform as well as I’d hoped. As they had never met most of the crew before I think it took a while for them to be comfortable around us to be able to perform to their best ability. I think, if we had had more time, we could have auditioned more children from different drama schools to ensure we had the best actors we could possibly get.

I think we were successful at making our film trailer conventional as we asked the audience what genre they thought it was in a questionnaire and the results showed that they understood that it was a horror film and some recognised aspects of the period genre. Every person who watched our trailer said they would pay to see the full film. Therefore, money can be put back into the industry so that more horror films can be made and carry on the cycle.