In what ways does your media

product use, develop or

challenge forms of conventions
of real life media products?
• Through the process of designing, constructing and editing our poster we
decided to follow most of the codes and conventions and keep it
traditional, as this was the best, easiest and most effective way in which
we could attract our target audience. Inspirations for our poster came
from a Chinese horror, and The Creep poster as we also studied the Creep
trailer to inspire us for our trailer.

• We followed codes of the horror genre by using conventional colours such

as white, black and red in our poster. These were used for the
background, billing block, tagline and actor/actress’s names.

• A way in which we challenged conventions of horror posters was the

layout of the protagonist. We chose the layout of our poster using the rule
of thirds. We pictured our protagonist in the left third of the poster as this
is unusual for an audience as usually the character is centered and this is
not typically used in the horror genre.
• Low-key lighting is used on the character’s face so half of her face is lit up
and the other half is dark and hard to see. Low-key lighting is a convention
used in all horror films as it sets the mood for the audience. We used low-
key lighting in our poster as well to make the audience question whether
there is another side to her character.

• Hair and make-up of the character was kept the same throughout the keep
the protagonist in character.

• To make the audience feel like our poster had a sense of brand we created a
Institutional logo; HASA productions featured in both the trailer and poster,
so the audience could see that the poster and trailer were connected.
• Branding is also supported with the tag line ‘sometimes being dead is a safer
option’ which is featured in both the poster and trailer so audience can
identify that they are promoting the same movie used in every horror film
to strengthen brand.

• Includes traditional features such as the film title, actors/actresses names,

billing block, release date, fonts of titles are kept the same.
• We researched a Chinese horror which was our inspiration for our poster
as it features a close up of the main character, where rule of thirds has
been used to picture her in the right third, however we pictured our
protagonist in the left third. When we looked at this picture we instantly
knew the genre of the film, due to the hand around her neck, the colour
pallet and use of colours. This poster also helped us with the make-up of
our protagonist as we see dark eyes and faint red lips.
 Magazine Front Cover
• We decided to use a traditional layout of our protagonist. We positioned her in the
center of the cover, with her eyes fixed on the camera in an attempt to make a
connection with the audience
• A way in which we challenged codes and conventions of typical magazines is that
the picture of our protagonist was edited to a black and white shot. However we
studied a monthly film magazine named ‘FILM’ where we came across one issue
that featured the main character of an upcoming blockbuster in the centre of the
cover, and the shot was also edited in black and white. We liked the idea of this
and thought it could fit well with our concept.
• Includes all the traditional features of magazines such as a pug, magazine title,
issue number and price, website, barcode and secondary features informing the
audience what is inside the magazine.
• We positioned our secondary features around the main image as seen in the film
magazine ‘FILM’
• All these additional features create interest in an audience as the magazine
features competitions, and a free poster, influences an audience to buy it.