In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our group had several discussions and production meetings before we came to the conclusion that to allow our final product to use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of the real media we must research existing horror film openings. This will inspire and develop our ideas for our own final product. As a group we agreed that our film opening would be under the sub-genre of slasher. Therefore we researched the horror slasher films to get an insight of the conventions we must include. The films we looked into detail with were: Chucky, Scream and Unborn. The main horror film opening we analyzed was ‘Chucky’ this was because it was our main inspiration for our first story outline. The conventions that Chucky included were the location of a haunted, abandoned house, the pathetic fallacy of stormy weather, darkness, a vulnerable child as a victim, suspense, the producer had used females as characters this is because it makes the audience very uncomfortable to watch as the females come across weak and express more fear when attempting to survive. Chucky also included dark and haunting lighting, non-diegetic sound which is very slow and creepy to establish it’s a horror and the title chucky is in the colour red which has conations of blood and death. We used all of these main conventions to develop and challenge our film opening so that it was as believable and realistic to the actual film industry.

Convention Used/ChallengedThe Characters Each character that we created we

made sure that they individually had different personalities. This was to establish and show the range of adolescent stereotypes in this modern time. This isn’t a main convention for the genre horror. However this is how we challenged the genre of horror and ourselves. This is because most horror films use females as main characters to show fear and disturb the audience. But our audience is aimed mainly at teenagers with the certificate of 15+ therefore if we used a social group of teenagers our audience will find it easier to relate to the film and have shared knowledge of there language and actions. All though we used adolescents as our main characters our main protagonist in our film opening was ‘Riley’ the female survivor and ‘Scarlett’ the female doll. Both

of these challenged our genre because in horror films it is common that the ethnicity ‘Black’ normally is the first to be killed however we challenged this and chose our Black character to be the survivor. This made our horror film-opening stand out from other horror openings created. Furthermore the character ‘Scarlett’ was developed and inspired by the character ‘Chucky’ the mise-en-scene of this character was that her costume was a typical rag doll dress with puffy sleeves and high knee socks. Her hair was styled in two bunchies that were back combed to create a rough look and lastly her makeup was designed with scars and bold eyes to show threat and establish that ‘Scarlett’ is the villain of this horror opening. We also directed her to be very mysterious and her actions and laugh to be very haunting. Our idea of a possessed doll came from chucky but we changed the gender and identity to show our development.

The location A stereotypical and common location is filmed in a forest/woods therefore we didn’t want to use this location as this wouldn’t be challenging. Therefore we chose the location of a park this was chosen as the horror conventions for sound is screeching noises, the convention of vulnerable children therefore a park relates to this, as children are the main users of it. Furthermore even though we didn’t use a forest there were woods and tree’s surrounding this park, which made this location spooky. To emphasis our convention of a park we filmed the park in the daytime and the

action-taking place in the night time. This darkness made the location show the genre of horror through the dark and eary atmosphere that it bought it our film opening.

Pathetic Fallacy Pathetic fallacy is a main convention in horror this is where the weather acts as a human emotion for example raining and storms occur. This is always used in horror films to set an intimidating and frightening atmosphere. We have used this in our horror film opening with the wind and raining weather to follow the terrifying conventions for the genre of horror. The inspiration that made us decide to use this in our film opening was from ‘Chucky’ as the research that we made in our main influences presentation was evidence that ‘Chucky’ used it.

Sound Disturbing and unnerving non-diegetic music is a convention in the genre of horror. We have used royalty free music called ‘Evening of chaos’ this music contains low pitch sounds and sharpening of knife’s this shows a sense of murder which could be an enigma for further in the film. Another main convention of sound that is shown in the horror film openings is a diegetic sound of laughing, screaming and heavy breathing. The main horror film opening that used these was ‘Chucky’ and this is where we used these stereotypical sound conventions to establish our genre of horror in our film opening.

Lighting The conventions for lighting in horror films are dark, mysterious and sinister. We have used this in our second part of our horror film opening. This has been composed by the night vision on the digital video camera. The visual effect has come out as a dark lighting with a hint of yellow. This shows that there is a flash forward and gives it a evil affect through the harsh tones. The lighting before this is very duel in the day light as the weather was raining and the sky was full of grey clouds. This creates a dark and negative atmosphere. It also brings out fear in some of the characters.

Narrative The narrative’s that were main conventions of horror films are ‘Todorov’ and ‘Prop’. Todorovs theory was that there is equilibrium, disequilibrium and a new equilibrium and Prop’s theory was the set roles of each character. We have began to use Todorovs theory in our horror film opening as we began with the group of teenagers laughing, drinking and relaxing in the park this was representing the equilibrium. Shortly after this we used our editing skills to shoot a flash forward this showed the survivor in an uncomfortable situation where she was being threatened by a possessed doll this part represented the disequilibrium. This theory was in the horror films. The other theorist we used in our horror film opening was ‘props’ theory this a more common convention used in slasher horrors which is our sub genre. This theory involves always a protagonist survivor, which we have created as ‘Riley’. There is always a villain or killer and in our film opening

we have created a doll who is a killer called ‘Scarlett’. Films that have used this theory and who we have been inspired by are ‘Friday the 13th and Nightmare on elm street.

Themes The main theme that we used that was a convention of horror films was the theme of good v evil. We showed this through the characters. The teenagers were shown to be very vulnerable and the evil was shown through the doll ‘Scarlett’ who was shown to be threatening and intimidating. This theme has also been shown in the real life horror film of ‘Chucky’ as the doll is the evil and the young girl is represented as the good. Furthermore we have challenged this as our representation of evil is a female this isn’t common because females are stereotypically shown as the victim and a sexual figure in a horror film.