Question 1 - In what ways does

your media product use, develop

or challenge forms and

conventions of real media

products?

Isaac Randall

Importance of Conventions

Conventions are highly importnant as they are what acts as the lnk between the

individual film and genre. They allow the audience to immediatley identify the

genre of the film and therefore allow the audience to know whether they wish to

see the film or not, depending on whether they are a fan of the genre.

It also engages the audience as they know immediatley what the rough context of

the film is going to be about. For example, if the audience were to see a young

girl walking or moving slowly then it would suggest that she is possesed and also

identify who the antagonist is in the film opening.

Again, if the audience were to see young couple walking with soft music

accompanying the scene then it could suggest that the film is a romance and will

focus on their relashonship. However, if the film suddenly switches and the boy is

killed tragically with a chainsaw, then it would obviously be a horror. Conventions

of other genres can be used in order to trick the audience into a false sense of

security.

Real Products When coming up with the ideas for our product I looked at many existing films that

also use conventions succesfully to achive the desired engament effect. These

included:

• Women in black - The use of dolls and gradual build up of tension during the

film opening. Also the costumes used influenced our Antagonist's costume.

• Seven - We used Seven as inspiration for our titles and also some of the shot

types featured in our ontro such as close up's

• Evil Dead - We chose to start off in the action of the film and also use various

flashbacks in our product

Do the characters conform?I belive that both charcaters in the product do conform to charcters of the

horror genre. Our antagonist conforms as she is failry young, the costume is

similar to that of a stereotypical 'possesed' charcater, her gender and nature of

the character (meaning the way in which she walks aimlessly) also conforms

to the genres conventions. Also the possession of the character is highlighted

by the security camera not working as she enters.

Our protagonist too conforms becuase of his gender, age and props used

show him to be strong and curious. He is also portrayed as frightened but

willing to shout and attempt to free himslef. This conforms to the hero of many

horror films, such as the Women In Black as previously mentioned.

We also chose to conform to Propp's narratvie theory allowing the audience to

clearly relate and identify the different characters in the product. We used a

hero and villan, however chose not to conform to Toderov's narratvie theory.

This was becuase we chose to start the film in a place of high tension and

action. We didnt build up the scene and allow the audience torelate to the

characters as Toderovs theroy states.

Why not conform?As stated we didn't conform to genre, as we chose to not portray the protagonists

day-to-day life but rather just go straight into the action (rising action), such as in the

film Evil Dead. We collectively agreed that this would be the best way to engage the

audience and ensure that we provided them with enough unanswered questions as

possible in order to make them want to watch more.

We also challenged the conventions by using a male

protagonist, rather than a female actor around the ages

of 15-20 as seen in many horror films such as:

• Eden Lake

• The Ring

• The conjuring

We used, as previosuly stated, a male protagonist such

as the character of Arthur Kipps played by Daniel

Radcliff in Hammer Film's The Women in Black.

The Ring Eden Lake

The Conjuring The Women In Black

How else did we conform?We also conformed to the conventions of the genre in other aspects such as

camera work. We used a mix of shot types such as close ups, Mid Shots and a lack

of establishing shots until near the end of the introduction. Again, we used films

such as the Evil Dead as inspiration for this. In particular i think that the lack of

establishing shots works well as it too helps to create ambiguity in the product.

Additionally, we conformed in terms of sound also, using very loud sound effects (of

the CCTV breaking) in order to scare the audience or make them jump. We also

used no speech and few sound effects used mainly for diegetic sounds of dripping

water and blood anbd footsteps. Mainly, however the soundtrack we used conforms

to the conventions of the horror genre, using a tense and unnerving soundtrack,

similar to that of other films in the horror genre.

Long ShotMid ShotClose Up

Conclusion

Overall, we used the conventions of the horror genre to our adavntage, as i belive

that it allows the audience to immediatley identify the genre. The way in which we

used narrative theory also allows the audience to clearly identify the two different

characters in the product.

The use of conventions also has allowed us to specifically target existing fans of

the genre. If I had not completed the research process then we would not have

been able to have used existing products as inspiration. When creating the

product the construction and design of the film opening was highly influenced by

the research process and, had we not looked into this in detail, then the final

product may not have been as successful as it was.