Media Language

Repetition of these signs become Horror genre conventions, however overuse results in taking away the signified meaning

In trailers there is always the repetition of conventions because they are conventional, however a discounting factor is that they become boring and this leaves a negative impact on Horror financially and also leaves it with a smaller target audience.

Barthes theory is denotation and connotation which are used constantly in the Horror genre; the meaning of denotation is the literal obvious meaning an example of this is a child is possessed however with the connotation which is the suggested meaning/ deeper meaning of the denotation in this example would be that the possessed child subverts the stereotype of children representing innocence, vulnerability and purity. Because now we see the child juxtaposing all the stereotypes: this is the connotation. Although this may be the case if films repeatedly use this convention it loses the meaning of the connotation because it then because a set piece another convention which is just place there because it’s conventional.

Some audience members don’t see the connotation only the denotation which is what they get tired of repeatedly seeing which is why some genres have merged together to create merging genres i.e romantic-comedy, Comedy horror etc. in addition to this nowadays especially with the changing society we live in now there has been a change of leading male roles. More female leading roles in films and also less male gaze. This results in new conventions which some audiences are not used to; the media changes itself to what the audience want. Nevertheless because of this new convention of female leads and less male gaze and merging of genres it has now over a short amount of time become now repeated and to some audience members loose interest examples of these are Hunger games, Divergent ( which didn’t finish the series because of poor box office rating), twilight, wonder women etc.

So in my trailer to keep the audience interested we have decided to have the survival group “die” in different order and bring it back to having the hero the boy the main lead of the film in addition to this we won’t be using the overused creepy house with a supernatural event occurring. We have decided to use a not so popular and repeated sub-genre which is Monster. Monster is one of the least popular sub-genres so it’s something that for some audience members would be new.