Question 1: In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

Outline

Our opening follows an approach to horror which relies on subtlety to make the audience feel uncomfortable, we rely on crafting a distortion of reality for our main character and demonstrating this abnormality to the audience. The idea of subtle aspects being used to create a normal day causes discomfort in the viewer as they feel they can relate to the situation e.g. our character is taking a trip to the shop, they pick up the aspects of horror hidden within the opening but don’t focus on them making it seem like they aren’t there, this makes the viewer question why they feel weary of what they are viewing. Our character occasionally looks at the camera, this was intentionally done to make it seem like the character is paranoid and lacks security. The inspiration for our film mainly revolved around the film “Silent Hill” and we tried to simulate its atmosphere.

Camera

We used many long shots which is uncommon in most horror films as horror films rely on creating a sense of contact between the viewer and the character which makes the viewer feel as though they are in the film themselves which builds tension. We have used long shots as we want to create a sense of mystery around the character and make the viewer feel more uncomfortable as they know nothing of the person and cannot tell where his morals lie.

We also used many tracking shots to create a feeling that the viewer is not connected to the character but is watching them as they go about their life, this is reflected in our characters sense of paranoia.

We waited until the end of our opening sequence to use our first close-up shot, we used this to finally reveal to our audience some of the visual characteristics of the character, this builds more enigma because the viewer now knows more but at the same time still knows nothing.

We used point of view shots to make the viewer see the world through his eyes, it helped demonstrate our characters distortion of reality and how he is trapped in his own little world.

If we were to add any more camera work we would use close-up and extreme close-up shots so the viewer is more involved in the characters life, we only used extreme close-ups of the face of the character to keep our mysterious effect we have around him.

Editing

We used magic tracking to integrate our titles and the shadow into the surroundings, this made the titles and shadow stay in the same place when the camera changed angles. This helped keep the subtlety as there was nothing to distract the viewer from the scene. The shadow was kept as a centre-point for the point of view shots as it is the main aspect that helped the story develop.

                In the point of view shots we used a set of effects to create a greyscale and contrasting effect, we composed these effects into a saved pre-set so we could apply the same effects to multiple shots. The effect given is that the character sees the world differently and lives within a distorted reality.

Sound

We used a high pitch sound with the point of view shots to make the shots seem more disorienting and make the audience tense. We took the idea of canted angle shots which makes the shots seem strange and decided to make the same effect with sound.

                We used heavy breathing with the point of view shots to the characters anxiety and panic, it shows that he is used to the world he sees and knows that he has to expect the unexpected.

                We used whispers to show that his different world has strange distortions of reality, whispers when there is nobody about causes stress to our character and we want to reflect that stress to the audience.

                The music we chose was to create an atmosphere that doesn’t have a fast pace like most horror films, the music portrays sadness and a subtle    intensity which helps build an enigma within our opening.

                All the music and sound effects we used were royalty free, the sound effects were from the website freesound.org and the song is called “Rise and Fall” by a YouTube account owner called Myuuji.

Lighting

We did not manipulate the lighting as we wanted it to seem natural and to create a normal setting for the character to live in, this helps the audience connect with the character because his life is similar to theirs.

                In the non-POV shots we use high key lighting which is then contrasted against the low key lighting created by the effects in the POV shots. This made the characters vision seem even darker and more sinister.