Q1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

LOCATION: our chosen location was iconic of horror, this is due to the abandonment and isolation of our main featured location- the caravan. Generally, the dull coloured and dereliction of this caravan reminded audiences of other horror films, such as the abandoned house/shack in The Blair witch Project, which as a result of this built enigma due to the horror convention that the location may have a dark past. As you can see from the picture, the house is overgrown and very dull looking- much like the caravan in our sequence, which is similarly dirty and broken. This also includes the woods shown throughout the first minute of our sequence, The Blair Witch Project also shares this conventional location as the bulk of the film is based in an empty woods. The woodland location is iconic of horror due to its isolation, creating a ‘fear of the unknown’, used in many horror films both recent and old, such as Mama (2013) and Friday The 13th (1980).

CAMERAWORK: The camerawork of our opening also displays conventions of other horror films, an example is the use of frequent tracking shots- often short, in order to reveal things, including our iconic horror props such as the pliers. This is often used in horror film, an example of this, from the picture below is Signs (2002).

The use of POV shot is also another widely used shot used in horror, often to build suspense and enigma by putting the audience in the eyes of either the antagonist or the protagonist- creating verisimilitude. We adopted the use of this shot as we believed it is vital to building tension towards the end of the sequence, just before the protagonist is killed. An example of this is Halloween (Carpenter, 1978) in which the entire opening sequence is shot with a POV shot, putting the audience in the eyes of the antagonist.

SOUND: The non-diegetic soundtrack however, may be seen as a challenging form of our opening, this is due to its fairly happy, cheerful tone, which does not remind the viewer of anything scary and is not associated with any horror conventions, compared to perhaps discordant drones or a crescendo, used in various films such as Halloween and Sinister.

TYPOGRAPHY :Our use of titles may not been seen as conventional as there is nothing specifically unique about them. Our titles integrate into the background of the film, and although they stand out, they don’t distract from the actions on screen. As you can see from the image, the titles are very basic, with clear yet simplistic colour (white). This can be seen as challenging conventional forms of horror, this is because with no animation or anything specific to shock the audience, these titles do not build enigma, therefore creating more of a shock when the flashbacks start to occur.

As you can see, the titles are blank and clear, with no added animations or other additions to make them seen as conventional of a horror film.

This challenging soundtrack may be effective as it will contribute to an overall more shocking, tense opening because the audience does not expect events so extreme to occur. The discordant, loud and harsh sounds used for the flashbacks can be seen as conventional, this is due to its contribution to the shocking nature of these sounds matched with the visuals, cutting away from the soundtrack so quickly and unexpectedly may make a jump scare or just simply make the audience uncomfortable, which horror is iconic of doing.

CHARACTERS: The characters in our opening can be seen as conventional of psychological horror. The protagonist is shown in fairly casual clothing, with nothing that will specifically stand out or give the audience a certain bad opinion of the character.

Represented through non-verbal language and character blocking, for example when we see ‘Darren’ walking through the woods quite casually- hinting the he is either walking or hiking, we can understand the characters situation and therefore relate to him, something that psychological horror does very often, building up a relation with this character before very suddenly turning and killing this character; an example of this is Scream (1996), a psychological horror which positions the audience with a relatable, normal woman, who is murdered very suddenly within the opening sequence.

The antagonist can also be seen as conventional, through props we see the antagonist with a blank, plain white mask on. This mask does not show any emotion or hint at who could be under the mask, this is conventional as this mask represents the antagonist as a character who therefore has no emotion, and kills without revealing his identity, again sharing the same qualities as Scream, in which a masked killer named ghost face relentlessly murders people as shown in the image, in which he is also fully covered by clothing so no reveal is made. The antagonists complete black clothing also connotes that he may not have emotion, another convention of antagonists in modern day horror.

EDITING: The style of editing we chose to use for our opening was continuity, despite the flashbacks. This made the editing fairly basic to position the clips together, making the opening flow smoothly and look correct. However, with the addition of the flashbacks and some reaction shots after, the opening is automatically made tenser, this is due to the very fast and sudden cutting rate when the flashbacks occurred, adding very brief white fading screening and effects on the colours of the flashbacks to highlight the difference in the continuity and these other events shown, this could be seen as conventional of horror as the cutting rate is often made faster to build enigma in horror and juxtaposition can be used to shock audiences.

An example of this sudden cutting to disturb audiences is the opening to The Hills Have Eyes (2006) which also uses a fairly cheerful song in its opening, showing large explosions which do not scare audiences but intrigue them, but very suddenly and randomly cutting to pictures of deformed people again with sounds similar to our production.

The Hills Have Eyes Our production

In this shot we see ‘Darren’ opening the door fully and entering the caravan.

In the next shot, to keep continuity, Darren is shown entering and going to shut the door.

Again to make editing continuous, in the next shot Darren is then shown finally shutting the door.

PROPS: The props involved in our opening are considered to be very conventional of horror. This is because the props involved, for example the pliers, crowbar and smashed bottle can connote danger. Each of these props could seriously hurt someone if used incorrectly- like in our opening. Furthermore, these props have connotation of torture by the way we had used them in each shot; then emphasised by another prop- blood to further connote danger and conform to horror conventions which often involve gore to make audiences feel distressed.

The convention of gore in horror films has also increased in recent years due to advances with pro-filmic effects and prosthetics, making it increasingly iconic in horror, an example of this being the grizzly ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ film franchises.

It is clear that with misuse, these props could easily be used for harm. (As shown from the picture below)

PLOT: Our horror opening was made to conform to the psychological sub-genre of horror, with some elements of slasher horror incorporated within. The final sequence we produced is conventional of this sub-genre; this being because psychological horror relies on the characters' fears and emotional instability to build tension. This conforms to our opening as through elements of slasher horror, showing flashbacks of torture and murder, the audience understands that the antagonist in the sequence cannot be emotionally or mentally stable as a sane person would not do these terrible things.

However, psychological horror also often takes focus on mental conflict, this is something that we had not included as the antagonist did not have on screen prevalence in the opening, appearing only 4 times for only a short period of time. This can therefore be seen as challenging some conventions of our chosen sub-genre, conforming more towards the slasher sub-genre we also wanted to incorporate as there is less focus on emotion to build tension with more focus on the psychopathic need to kill.

Here are two films that influenced us to make our genre psychological, left- ‘The Shining’ (Kubrick, 1980) and right- ‘Shutter Island’ (Scorsese, 2010).

Two slasher films that also gave us influence, left- ‘Psycho’ (Hitchcock, 1960) and right- ‘Halloween’ (Carpenter, 1978).