Case Study: Shaun Of The Dead

The case study I have chosen is Shaun Of The Dead, it uses synergy because it released promotional materials at the same time to promote the film; combining a film trailer, poster and magazine cover which all promote the film's popularity. Shaun Of The Dead falls into a horror and Rom com genre which add credibility to the film because it falls under a number of genres making it unique. To find out more about the film use this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/

For my case study I will be analysing a film poster, magazine and trailer.

The Magazine Cover

Shaun of the Dead is being promoted by Total Film magazine above. The conventions within the magazine cover highlights the genre of the film. The title of the magazine is in red and is bold which reflects the convention of blood within the film- which is iconography often used by the horror genre. The main image denotes the main character 'Shaun' who is a man determined to to get his ex-girlfriend back, redeem his relationship with his mother, while fighting his way to safety through an entire community that have returned from the dead to eat the living.

The magazine cover promotes this story as he is wearing a ripped shirt covered in blood, holding a baseball bat and a bandanna. The denotation of the character is that he has a hungry look in his eyes and is determined to win his losing battle. The magazine image successfully portrays his strive and makes audiences want to discover what his determination is dedicated to.

The background is quite bland which makes 'Shaun' stand out more and become the centred focus of the page, which would in turn make readers want to read about Shaun of the Dead boosting its popularity. The clothes in which he is wearing is his work clothes which shows the difficult time he has had with added element of the amount of blood he has on his uniform. You can easy identify the genre of the film because of the imagery used, it could also be identified that the genre also falls under a comedy because of the description beneath the image.

The description on the magazine is less focused on the film, which doesn't make the film stand out in its excellence as much as the strong imagery does. This can have a negative effect on the influence it has on audiences because it does not praise the film but infuses other features within in the magazine to the audience.

The Film Poster

This is film poster for the Shaun of the Dead. It is clear that the convention of the colour red is used in all platforms of advertising the film, which gives the film a trademark. The tag line 'Ever felt like you were surrounded by zombies?' -This adds a comical value to the poster because it is almost pokes fun at what happens in the storyline.

The denotations of the image shows 'Shaun' holding a bouquet of flowers stuck between a crowd of zombies. This adds further comedy aspects because he conveys a puzzled face, this makes this amusing due to the fact he is surrounded by man-eating zombies; the connotation of this is that the zombies around him symbolise the problems he is dealing with in reality, breaking up with his girlfriend, his relationship with his mother and the hatrid towards his step father.

The connotation of the position of the character shows how he is trapped and isolated in the film because he is feeling lonely after being dumped, and he is isolated because of the zombies. The title of the film 'Shaun of the Dead' has a hand that creates the image of an 'A'; this feature is highlighted and used throughout the promotion of the film and is almost a logo for the film title. When filming our trailer, creating our magazine cover and film poster we could convey this type of promotion by using a key feature throughout to make it representable.

The Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfDUv3ZjH2k

The production company is shown at the start of the trailer which is useful to know as they invested the money to create the film and distribute it making them have presence in the promotion. The screen becomes static when a voice over starts, this connotes a sense of confusion within the storyline as the voice over stresses, 'this message is for your own safety'; this makes audiences anxious as to what he is referring to. The fast editing shows a montage of imagery consisting of zombies and the general public. The constant flickering, static and pixalating confuses views and makes them feel on edge as to what is happen in the footage.

A medium shot is shown of the two main characters listening to the voice over with dumb stricken looks upon their faces as they look at one another, the voice over warns 'Do not panic' they act contrapuntal to this as they realise there is a zombie in their home. This connotes a comical element to the trailer as you are already introduced to their character traits as they have stupidly left the front door open. They act panicked in a comical way as they scream 'Oh he's got an arm off!' This amuses viewers as puts light on the harsh reality that they could be eaten any minute. The voice over continues throughout the trailer to give advice to citizens which the characters fail to follow, this behaviour is amusing to audiences as they are not acting correctly to protect their own safety.

The diegetic background music is contrapuntal to what is happening in the scene, it is upbeat and almost child like while the scenes show far from child like behaviour as the characters savage man eating zombies in order to stay alive; this adds further to the comedy genre because it is almost poking fun at the situation and how much danger they could potentially be in. The behaviour throughout is comical to watch because they are using inappropriate behaviour like having a phone call in front of the zombies while they are inches away or trying to kill the zombies with music records; however although they are acting this way through pure determination they do succeed only using a few people along the way.

The editing slows down as a scene is shown whereby Shaun reverses to see if the person he has just ran down in a car is alive, the realisation that it is a zombie shows relief on his face this denotes his affectionate side even though thousands of people are dying around him he still stops putting himself in danger to help another person. The title of the film 'Shaun of the Dead' is used again with the logo of a hand in the letter 'A'; this use of a trademark can help with the promotion of the film because it can used within merchandise for the film, displaying it on t-shirts, mugs, DVDs etc.

A parallel diegetic sound is used at the end, which is quite eerie, this portrays the seriousness of the ending in a way, because the trailer reflects a quite successful mission; however lives are lost during the course of getting to safety but this not highlighted within the trailer, this can be seen as positive thing as the trailer does not reveal the whole storyline and leaves a cliff hanger. This is something to be considered when planning our own trailer, we are interested in conveying the themes that will be shown within the film but not revealing the actual storyline as we think this would be more successful when populating an audience.