We created a directors commentary to answer this question. Here is our trailer with a director's commentary.
SCRIPT FOR THE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY
HARRY
Hi I'm Harry Naylor and I directed and filmed "The Door".
BEN
Hi I'm Ben Hurst and I acted in and produced "The Door". This is our director's commentary of "The Door"- in which we will answer the question; "In what ways does our media product use, develop or challenge conventions of real media products."
HARRY
We started with this green film rating plaque- we knew from analysing other trailers that we must include this in order to make it more authentic and real. We decided to rate our film a 15, as we felt it would be too scary to be a 12, and if we made it an 18 we would be cutting off a large proportion of our target audience, therefore a 15 was the best option.
BEN
Our trailer starts with a shot of the door, it instantly puts that image in the viewers head and makes them know it is of significant importance.
HARRY
We also have a voice over in the background of an interview between Mr. Black, the father of our protagonist, Adam Black and a police investigator. We purposefully don’t state who the voices are as we want our audience to work it out themselves. The voices talk about an event that has apparently happed, and which started 'when they moved in'.
BEN
We then cut to a shot of Adam Black getting out of the car and entering his new house for the first time. We knew a major convention of modern horror films is the presence of a new house or an unknown location, which the protagonist can explore and find dark, hidden secrets. So this is a convention we have specifically chosen to use.
HARRY
Throughout the trailer we have titles such as this one, they have a dark murky background and bold contrasting red text. This follows with conventions of horror films, we looked at the Sinister 2 trailer to get inspiration for our titles, as they set an appropriate feeling and theme for a horror trailer, again this is a convention we have followed rather than challenged.
BEN
This is a very important part of the trailer, as it’s the first time Adam sees the door. We used very over the top intense music in order to highlight the significance of the door. It is the main focal point of the entire film and we need our audience to understand that.
HARRY
This next scene is set at night, so Adam is in his pajamas and dressing gown, this makes him seem very vulnerable. Furthermore, he no longer has his glasses on as we saw him with glasses on earlier. This is a subtle difference but helps the audience see he is especially at risk now, and cant even see properly.
BEN
We decided to apply a black and white filter to make it seem distinct and scary. We believed it would be more memorable and eye catching if this scene were in black and white, and also connotes binary opposition of good vs evil, and our protagonist vs our antagonist. We haven't seen any other horror films that use some colour and some black and white. Although it may exist, it isn't very common so this is a way we have challenged conventions.
HARRY
This next scene is the first time we see the ghost. As Adam walks away to school, a slow pan across reveals that the ghost is watching him from the upstairs window. We chose her costume to be a plain white oversized shirt and we wanted her to have her hair completely covering her face. We thought this made her seem more inhuman and scary. If you can see someone's face it often makes you feel more comfortable, the absence of her face completely makes her more mysterious and creepy.
BEN
However, this backfired somewhat, as after doing surveys we realised a lot of people just thought she was stood with her back to the window and we were seeing the back of her head. If we could re-film this we would just have her hair partially covering her face and eyes in order to reduce this confusion.
HARRY
This next part shows Adam finding the ghost in the photo. As Adam wakes up the next morning he finds her gone, and then falls ill. This part where he is being sick in the toilet also caused some confusion with viewers as some didn't realise her was being sick, so we perhaps should have made this more clear. We were trying to show that he is possessed by the ghost but we should have made this more clear.
BEN
This last scene shows Adam, in a fugue state, walking towards the locked room and towards the ghost. Again it's in black and white as it was last time, he reaches his hand out and gtes pulled into the room. The way the climax of the trailer happens at the same time as the climax of the music is another convention of horror trailers and we observed this is both the Sinister 2 and Insidious trailers
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