The document discusses the design choices made for a movie poster, trailer, and magazine promoting a horror film project. For the poster, the designer chose fonts and colors inspired by other horror films to convey fear, death, and anger. The trailer tone cards used glitches and a black-and-white color scheme. Some conventions were challenged, like using only child actors on the magazine cover. Consistency was maintained across materials through shared design elements and color themes. Researching real media products helped the designer understand conventions to both follow and challenge for their faux marketing campaign.

1. In What ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media product?
Poster-Title font
For my title I decided on using the font ‘Kings Butcher’ as I was inspired by the font used in
‘Sinister’ the reason for this font choice was that I wanted to represent the brutal nature of Aisha
Rahim through the dripping of blood on the text, by using this font it shows the audience that that
slowly with in the movie one of the main protagonist would end up slowly losing themselves, and
being controlled and manipulated in a way that they would never be able to live with what they
have done, which is shown in many supernatural/ paranormal horror movies. Therefore I decided
that it would be reasonable to use that font because of the conforming of the conventions of other
similar themed horror movies. I also decided to have the title ‘Fostered’ to have the largest text
size as I wanted the audience to know what the film is as the point of creating a poster is to
promote so that the audience know what the film is called, I had to make it contrast and standout
against everything else within the poster. This follows the conventions of similar themed horror
films as they have the title have the largest font size but not hat large to take up space from the
poster image, I decided to make the title to use the colour red as it symbolizes fear, death and
anger which are the emotions that I decided on portraying within my trailer.
Poster- Text fonts
In terms of text I was drawn towards the font “Times New Roman’ for my tag line which I was
inspired by the sinister poster. The reason why I decided on using this font was because it looks
simple against the background of the poster and doesn’t draw the audience attention completely
away from the image, but because of how bold the text is and its spacing between each of the
letters it is still visible to the audience, due to the white contrasted with the grey background. I
decided on using the role of thirds within my poster as my poster only consists of three colours red,
black and white I decided on using only these colours as they represent all the emotions that I
wanted to portray within my trailer which are innocence shown through the colour white as children
are a symbol of innocence’s, the use of the colour black symbolizes death and decay finally the
reason why I decided on using the colour read was to symbolize and create an image of blood,
revenge, danger and anger. By doing this I follow conventions of horror trailers with similar sub-
genres as they also portray the essence of the content within their trailers through the uses of the
colours of the text within their poster so that they don’t give away too much of the content of the
film.
Poster-Follows and challenges conventions
My poster challenges the typical conventions of a horror poster as I have made the image and the
background completely black and white, but the posters which I had looked at contains certain
colours within them, for example I looked at sinister, which consists of a grey background with
some cracks, they also made the little girl where a jumpsuit which is similar to the colour of the
background so that it would look as if she was fading or camouflaging against the wall, and where
the most colour used was on the image created by blood, by doing this it makes that image
standout the most as the audience’s attention would be dragged towards that. I thought about
creating a poster similar to Sinister’s but I decided not, as I thought by having the whole of my
image in black and white and having a medium close-up of the little girl. But for me to represent the
little girl as a ghost within the poster I had to layer the image using Photoshop as I wanted parts of
her to fade in with the background. I decided on the girl having and angered look/ facial expression
as it has a significance to my trailer, as it implies that she has a deep hatred towards someone and
is waiting to take her revenge on that person, which shows the audience that this will be the
change in the narrative. The way in which I used the conventions of a horror poster was the way in

2. which I used effects on my image to show the sub-genre supernatural/ paranormal which would
grab the attention to the audience of that field to want to watch the film.
Feminism, post-structuralism and structuralism
By conducting research and writing essays by influential social movements it allowed be to be able
to use and apply different theories to the creation of my horror trailer. The conventions of horror
trailers became more understandable to me as I was able to understand the iconography and
paradigms which are common within in the horror genre, by understanding this it made my
understanding of the content used within each horror genre more clear to me and know which
social movement would relate to my trailer.
I looked at four films and created three essays looking at feminism, post-structuralism and
structuralism to help with my knowledge of the theories by putting them in to practice.
http://ayahorrorblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/how-is-feminism-shown-through-mama.html
http://ayahorrorblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/feminist-analysis.html
http://ayahorrorblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/post-structulism-theory-essay.html
http://ayahorrorblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/how-does-halloween-trailer-adhere-to.html
Todorova’s narrative theoryand editing timelines
By looking at existing horror trailers and having an understanding of Todorova’s narrative theory
made me to be able to know what makes a horror trailer and the ways in which they make it
standout to the audience. I looked at three trailers Insidious and Horns and identified there
equilibriums, moment of disequilibrium and period of disequilibrium, so that I can see what the
effects used within a trailer can have on the trailer in whole.
Trailer- Tone cards
The tone cards we created demonstrates and exhibits the horror sub-genre supernatural/
paranormal as they were influenced by the tone cards used in ‘Before I Wake’ and ‘Unfriended’. I
initially changed my tone cards as they did not reflect the content and the storyline of my trailer as
they were created for my first trailer which I decided to stop creating as I went through a lot of
difficulties in its process as it contained a lot of cast members which lead to members having
difficulties to stick with one schedule, due to this fact we decided on creating a new plot for my film.
The glitches used in the tone cards where inspired by the ones used in ‘Unfriended’ as I wanted to
show the use of the power of technology, as I wanted to show that the videos playing at the
begging of the trailer where of Israel and Gabriella in the past so by having the glitching effect used
within the tone cars symbolizes the connection and relationship that they had. We also decided to
use a simplistic colour theme in our tone cards, so that it doesn’t take away the audience’s
attention from the storyline of the trailer. We decided on using only the colours black and white in
our tone cards to show the clashing of innocence’s and evil/ danger as they juxtapose from each
other which is shown through my trailer as the little girl Gabriella wants to take revenge on her
foster mother who killed her.
Trailer- Production
After creating a wide range of research on what type of horror sub-genre people of my age range
16-25 years old prefer. I decided on creating a trailer that is based around the sub-genre of
supernatural/ paranormal thriller. We focused on four existing trailers ‘Sinister’ , ‘Unfriended’, ‘The
boy’ and ‘Before I wake’, when determining how we would produce our trailer as they hare based
around similar sub-genres, I also found it easy to identify the ways in which they follow conventions
making it easy to recreate this within our trailer. All these trailers use and have young protagonist
aging from 6-18 years old, which is something that our trailer conforms to due to the actors we had
chosen. We challenged the conventions by having young actresses playing the roles of the foster
mother and her mother as it was difficult creating a schedule as an adult wasn’t available for the

3. times of the children so we therefore decided on having teenagers who looks as if they are young
adult to play those roles. This is similar to some of the difficulties that we faced in our first trailer
idea ‘Foster Me’ as it contained to many actors to create a schedule that everyone would be
available in, however if we was able to of created this trailer we would of challenge the conventions
of a horror trailer of a supernatural/ paranormal sub-genre as they mostly consist of 4-5 actors
including the spirit or ghost within the film, but my original trailer consisted of over 10 characters,
by realizing that this would be difficult to film around our schedule, we also realized that it would
consists of too much activity happening in the trailer for it to be a horror trailer, making us to
change the plot of the trailer which would make it go over the time frame of the trailer, so we also
decrease the amount of actors that would be featured in the trailer, therefore letting us have more
time to shoot for our trailer and we was able too shot must of our shots in one day because of the
decreased amount of actors and by having everyone’s availabilities on the same day.
Trailer- Production Company
I created our trailers production companies logo using Photoshop, to create a simple logo that
adheres to the conventions of existing supernatural/ paranormal horror trailers as they don’t use
any dramatic effects as they don’t want the audience to have complete focus on that rather than
the trailer, we decided to have the text ‘Vision Production’ to have an effect that looks as if it is
moving creating type of a blurred effect which matches the logo and the production name, by using
this effect it lets the audience know that this is a production company that produces horror films,
which adds suspense to the effect used on the text. The way in which we challenge the
conventions of a real media product is that we didn’t promote our film by putting established
companies names within the trailer, to let the audience know that hey help with the production of
the film as they are widely known helping promote a film by just placing there companies name
within the trailer.
Magazine Image
While analyzing Empire magazine I relied that on the front cover they usually use long shots of the
protagonist. I decided to follow the conventions of real media products as I used a long shot of
both my protagonist Israel and Gabriella on the front cover of my magazine. On my magazine
image I decided not to have a black background my garden of the house to be the background of
the poster to that the audience could know that the film would be family orientated with a thriller
aspect to it. I decided on the main image to be the only image in my magazine as I wanted the
audience to just focus on that and the characters as I wanted them to have deeper thoughts about
the filming making them want to watch the trailer then the film. By having the main image the only
image on my front cover I am braking away from the conventions of real media products as they
usually have smaller images of other films with similar sub-genre’s to promote the through the use
of the character and film of the main image, but I decided to do that as I just wanted the audience’s
attention to be on that picture only.
The biggest way in which I challenge the forms and conventions of my media magazine is by only
having children actors on the front cover. As empire magazine mostly features young adults that
are widely known because child actors are not that widely known as they have just started off in
the business, so because they feature a lack of child actors on their covers I wanted to challenge
the construction of my media product to show how it could be successful by just having children in
the front cover, as they would let the audience know that there will be a deep dark psychological
aspect within the film, letting the audience know that it isn’t going to be the typical cliché
supernatural/paranormal horror film therefor grabbing the attention of audiences.
Magazine- Colours used
I used the same colour schemes used in my poster and trailer and incorporated in on to my
magazine so that I could have consistency within my work. I decided on also using a dark navy
blue for some of my text instead of black because if I had decided on using black it would of looked
too harsh with contrast on the background resulting me to of decided to use a navy blue instead
which also symbolizes danger, also by using navy blue it allowed the text in white to standout

4. making the audience intrigue about the text is saying making them read it and gaining a little back
story of the film.
I decided on using a red a little brighter that the one Empire typically uses for its masthead,
because I didn’t wants it to look washed out next to the main image as that picture is vibrant in
colours leading me to change the brightness of the masthead so that it could contrast with the
main image. The reason why I wanted my magazine and the main image to be vibrant in colours
was to represent children as they are seen a happy which makes people think of rainbows,
therefore enforcing my decision on having my magazine look bright and have a varied rage of
colours, but at the same time following the colours scheme that of the poster and trailer of black,
red and white.
Magazine-Masthead
My masthead adhere the conventions of existing media products when looking at the font choice,
size and colour. The font that I decided to use is called ‘bebas’ which is found on the website
dafont, as I didn’t want to use and image of empires masthead as it would looks to unprofessional
if I did so I decided to recreate the masthead myself leaving me to have more control of the editing
process when it comes to the colour and allowing me to not have the issue of the text being
pixelated. By having the masthead use its traditional colour of red allows it to establish its brand
identity as it is mostly the colour red used for the magazines masthead if it is not a special edition. I
decided to place the masthead in the top center of the magazine with a very wide/large font size as
they do on the empire magazines so that they can enable the audience to see it. I decided to have
the red of the masthead to be brighter than usual as I didn’t want it to look washed out next to the
main image and its background. The reason why I decided to use bright colour for the masthead
was also to represent the protagonists on the front t cover as they are children I wanted to use
bright colours to represent their youth and innocence’s.
Magazine- Understanding Conventions
I looked at some of the major film magazines of empire issues to gain further understanding of the
conventions and what design would be suitable for me to use and create my magazine cover
around. Empire magazine is one of the biggest and most popular film magazines in the UK
because of its large fan base lead be to analyses it to know how create my magazine and promote
my film through it. When analyzing empire magazines it gave me an idea to the way in which I
would create my magazine and how I would like to break from the conventions of existing products
to make my magazine standout even more.