Peju's Media Blog

Over the past two years I think I have developed my research and planning, with the production of my AS College Magazine to my A-Level coursework of making my horror trailer. From my knowledge of research and planning, i know it is vital to build my work by using different influences and software's that will enhance my work. This research has helped me gain knowledge about the conventions that I need to follow and also how to make my work more aesthetically pleasing. In my AS task, i was asked to design a front cover for a college magazine, to show off and demonstrate my knowledge and understanding of conventions. For me to be able to do this i used my previous knowledge from my GCSE media course, to construct how i thought it should look like. Previously i didn't complete any research and i believe this act limited my creativity. This was me using the conventions such as the masthead,cover lines, dominant images and so on. I knew that no matter the genre conventions, these c

Media Language refers to the codes and meanings of a specific piece of text or the mis-en-scene or the editing, sound or even camera movement. They all portray a significant meaning to the audience. Symbolic Code,Technical Code, Audio Code & Written Code are all of the media language codes included in films. I will be analysing all of these codes in my essay. Symbolic Codes are what are used to convey the theme/character. They are mainly props and colours of the trailer and/or the genre. In my summer trailer 'Don't Look Back' most of the characters are wearing quite bland/dark clothing, this colour has a deep connotation of death and mystery. The fact that almost all of them are wearing it shows that death will have a strong hold on them. My trailer lacks colour and this is a weakness as it doesn't show much of the symbolic codes of colour, however, the girl who is wearing the lighter colour will be seen as pure and innocent. In the trailer of the scream, there i

Representation means the way something is portrayed and put across. In terms of horror films representation is conveyed through characters and themes Representation is important in horror films because it is how we link something to another. E.g. A knife is represented as phallic object as it is sharp and it is able to penetrate things, this is where male power comes into play. Also we have been classically conditioned to associate something with something else and that association gets maintained through reinforcement that we see in the horror films The representation theories I will be discussing today are the Male Gaze Theory, Final Girl,Religion & Sexuality and Zombies. The male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey is about the way women are perceived from a misogynistic point of view. The woman's body tends to be sexualised and we see this by the camera angles and shots. the camera tends to focus on the woman's assets e.g. breasts,bum,legs etc, this way this is how the man wo

In terms of horror films narrative is a 'chain of events' in a cause-effect relationship occurring through time- according to Bordwell & Thompson. It is also a way of organising spatial and temporal events.  I will be using my summer trailer  'Don't look back' to compare and contrast the theories of horror with what i produced. The first theory i will be applying Todorov's 3 Act Structure theory. In terms of this theory, my summer trailer doesn't conform to these rules. as i didn't include a resolution as i thought that would be giving too much away and the audience wouldn't want to come and watch the film , this is my way of luring them to see the film. Therefore my summer trailer broke this narrative theory. Todorov argued that narrative always has always had a structure. He created a 3 Act Structure, Equilibrium,Disequilibrium & Resolution. The equilibrium is when there is a point of stanility and everything is normal and calm. In my tra

Genre is a tool that guides us to be able to distinguish a difference between texts and audience responses to certain things, by dividing them into categories based on common elements. All genre's have sub-genres, sub-genres are the common elements which are then divided into more specific categories that allow audiences to identify them. Steve Neale a genre theorist stated that 'genre are not systems they are processes' - they are dynamic and they evolve over time. In my opinion i think the reason for genre development may be due to the evolving of technology, as technology develops there will be new props and networks to make genre's better. There will be more focus as they will have more tools to help them. Also the reason for development f genre may be to please the audience, they may have changing tastes and they may require to see different things there for publishers need to meet their audiences needs. Also the circumstances in the 1950's will be so much m

The film makes use of the many sub genres of horror throughout. The first subgenre it makes reference to is the slashes genre as one of the teens, discover a paintng of a mass murder of animals n her wall, this painting included  knives and  other phallic objects the killers were dressed in raggedy clothing. The sub genre slasher includes man stock characters, it s seen that the blonde girl is always a slut and she is always the most terrified and in this case the Jules(Anna Hutchinson) plays the blonde girl, she is seen to die first because of her promiscuous ways. The good girl, the virgin is always seen to survive as she doesn’t succumb to the blonde girls slut ways, she is called the final girl, in this case the final girl is Dana as she adopts masculine characteristics to defeat the monsters/antagonist and survives. This film use the sub genre splatter as, it includes alot of blood and in reference to cabin in the woods when the monsters attack the teens it is seen to be very gory