In our media product we have used developed and challenged forms and conventions of real media products. Making it a post-modern media text as we've recycled old ideas of horror films into the way we percieve and design them in new ways, thus making our text still original and creative as no 2 people would have made the exact same film with the same research.From our research we found that often in Horror films there are four main stereotypical characters which can be found inmany horror films such as John Carpenters 'halloween' and Nelson McCormick's 'Prom Night'. This use of real media products is particuarlyshown in the stereotypical 'Final Girl' which includes characteristics of; intelligence, and brunette hair, also signs of trouble are always far more apparent to them, the 'Final Girl' usually finds the corpses of her friends which alerts her to the danger that 
encases her. She is also usually quite innocent, we called her character name Catie which means pure, juxtaposed to her best friend whos blonde, busty and a bit more of a 'slut' a 'scream queen', which is intertextually linked to the the 'scream queen' in 'Donkey Punch' whos also blonde busty and therefore sexually active, we also gave our 'scream queen' the same name, shes also killed first. This binary opposition is a common convention of horror films and helps to anchor to the audience quickly and effectively the genre of our film which is of corse horror. These two female stareotype are confirmed through the images of the female central protagonist who play the finla girl in Halloween 'Jamie-Lee Curtis', and the loose blonde who plays a scream queen in Hell Night 'Jenny Neumann'
We also intertextually the character type of our male characters ie the popular male (Ben) with a girlfriend is sporty so has a 'jock' type figure, juxtaposed to his almost enemy (Lewis) who has a slimmer body and more 'geeky' looking appearance. 
This convention is clearly shown in films such as Hell Night, Scream and Halloween, as demonstrated in the images shown we took alot of consideration into our cast and their costume; to best connote the ideology of stereotypical characters in horror films by followingthe typical conventions of them.We have also used forms and conventions of the plot/narrative; from films such as 'Prom Night' where the killer murders the main female central protagonist's friends before he gets to her which is what we did in our film, this is almost like the killer is getting closer and closer to her, which also links into the title of our film 'Think Closer'.
Despite using many of the codes and conventions of a fillm teaser trailer we made the less mainstream version of a teaser trailer in that we our trailer has; lots of clips to establish the plot and communicate the genre to the audience, as we were inspired by the effectiveness of the teaser trailer for 'Valentine' more traditional teaser trailers are simple so not too much of the film is given away, with lots of establishing dialogue, we develop this by using lots of shots giving lots of information not necasarily in the right order so to keep a narrative enigma, but to give the audience a sense of the film itself, whilst supplementing the begining a little with one shot of speech so the audience isnt left completly bewildered, this clip was cut up into three on 'Final-cut' using the razor tool and used intermittentantly which also helped to establish the key characters, film genre and breif plot through use of prophetic language, ie that Catie saying her boyfriend is a bit paranoid and that she doesnt know whats going to happen automatically seals her fate that something bad will happen, this is a coomon convention of horror film teaser trailers; that a false sense of security is briefly established then taken away which un-nerves the audience also enhancing the drama of the film.
Our media product also uses forms and conventions from 'Valentine' where one of Catie's friends is murdered in a bath and one of the characters from 'Valentine' played by Denise Richards is killed in a hot tub, however we did develop this convention because we used a bath instead of a hot tub due to the fact we were not able to find a hot tub in time for shooting and we felt a bath would provide more verisimilitude and be further intertextually linked to the shower killing scene from ‘Psycho’, however to use the convention from ‘Valentine’ further we made sure the female in the bath had the same colour brunette hair of Denise Richards in the film and who would most closely look like her out of our female cast.
We have also developed the intertextual link from 'Psycho' of the famous shower scene, by having one of our killings also in the bathroom but developed it by the female victim to be a long haired brunette instead of a short haired blonde and in a more vulnerable position by having a bath instead of a shower making it easier for the killer, and ensure making it a more dramatic scene as if she doeant die from the stabbings she'll die from drowning.
We also incorporated this idea into our logo by adding a running shower in our logo to symbolise flowing blood from the phalic object lettering and the intertextually linked shower head, it was furthermore used in our film poster as the main scene in the background is a blurred image of the central female protagonist having a shower with the murderer stood behind the glass with a knife in a stabbing motion, it was again intergrated into our magazine front cover as one of the runing clips on the film strip at the bottom was a still from our film of the bath killing, as this would be the most likely link used in a real life situation as the magazine would'nt be produce by the same company as the teaser trailer, poster and logo but is till very effective especially when all combined together, this running theme in our film and ancillary tasks helps to keep the continuity of our coursework helping them to interlink into eachther easily. (below is our part of our developed version of the shower scene in a bath before being cut and without the killing added)
We challenged the common convention of horror, in that the stereotypical killer is usually a male who is both physically and visually intimidating (Thomas Hewitt, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) . These characters often even before they are revealeved transmit an air of unease through their manner and actions. They often also hide their face with a mask or have or have some form of deformation (Michael Myers, Halloween and Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th). However we decided to challenge this by casting our actual killer to be a harmless male friend, who isnt intimidating but geeky, has a skinny frame and not many friends, but still a nice boy to the audience, we decided this idea would be effective as, this character creates a false sense of security for the audience, meaning that when his true identity as the killer is revealed its a huge surprise making the audience doubt anyones honesty.
However we did choose to use the suspected killer of Ben Crossley on the front of our magazine front cover, as he's a rugby player so is broad built and would be seen to be intimidating by wearing a big dark hoody, as he took up most of the image it made him seem visualy more intimidating, and when combined by the tinted blue sky in the bcakground helped further identify the genre or horror, as this tint is a common convention of horror media products.
We have also challenged another convention of horror which is not to include an authority figure in our film, despite being presant in most horror flms such as 'Last Houe On The Left', 'Prom Night' and 'Halloween' which feature the prime authority figure of family ie parent, aunties , uncles and police.We chose to do this because in my opinion and from observational research i have conducted, i think that parents have a much smaller role in the lives of teenagers today. Therefore our horror film will be easier for our target audience of youth to relate to it today as its more similar to thier lives.
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