Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

For our film opening, we decided to do a horror. We researched the different conventions and connotations of horror film openings so ours would be accurate. While looking at other films, we noticed that there is a common colour scheme of black and red. This is most likely because both black and red can connote death and danger. Red can also connote blood which is a common sight in slasher horror movies.

We asked our audience what they expected in the opening of horrors to see what they would expect to see in ours. The main things were the killer, the victim(s) and the setting. We made sure to use these in our opening.

We decided to have our killer murdering someone in front of the protagonist as someone dying is seen in multiple horror openings like ‘Sinister’ and ‘The Ring’. In ‘Sinister’ the opening resembles a film reel leading us to believe that someone would be watching these people die. The person watching could be the protagonist but we don’t find out who is watching in the opening. ‘The Ring’ is a bit different as you only see the victim and brief screenshots before she dies. For our film, the victim doesn’t last long. Our opening is rather fast paced so no one gets to know the victim at all.

Sinister

The Ring

Usually in horror films, you see a setting that is rather empty and deserted with only a few people there. We decided to do this too. There are only 3 characters in the scene and the setting is rather empty. ‘Sinister’ is one film we used for this convention as there is only 4 people in the entire seen.

Only those about to die here.

For the credits we looked at 3 different types of openings of different genres, overlapped, separate, and integrated. We wanted to do an opening that was similar to the opening of ‘Paranormal Activity’. It’s an overlapped opening. We decided that this would be a good way to show the credits. We had a black screen at the beginning before turning it into an overlapped opening. Black can connote death which is the most common convention to see in a horror, so we thought that it was an appropriate colour choice.

We also had our credits in the bottom corner to not cover up the characters faces during the scene.

Using our research we have learned that most horror film openings will use the same conventions. These normally are of the setting, someone dying, meeting the main characters and/or killer, talking about the problems (killer and storyline) and sometimes seeing the main weapon/method of killing, unless these conventions are being challenged, which rarely happens. In ‘The Shining’ we see the setting of a large building. It’s in the middle of pretty much nowhere which is a common thing to see in horrors.

Here’s the building in ‘The Shining’.We did our best to use these same conventions without copying other movies too and use our own idea of a storyline otherwise it would be plagiarism. In our opening, we see the antagonist (killer) and the protagonist who are our main characters (with an extra who is the victim); one of the settings we decided on and we see the method of killing as the victim is strangled to death.

Protagonist Victim (Extra)

Antagonist (Killer)We’ve also noticed that horrors very rarely have bright sunshine in them. This is most likely because horrors aren’t very happy (since people die) and sunshine can be linked with happiness. Luckily for us, the weather wasn’t bright and sunny, it was dark (mainly because the sun was starting to set) and cloudy, so we were able to copy this convention for our film opening.

Priest(Protagonist)- He is shown walking rather up right down the middle of the path showing that he has his life together. He is shown in mostly mid shots and long shots which helps the audience see that he is alone. This can give a sense of vulnerability as there isn’t anyone else around. While the victim is being killed, he is unable to do much making him seem weaker than he did a few seconds ago.

Killer(antagonist)- She is shown with very little emotion on her face giving the impression that something isn’t right with her. This can lead to thoughts of her being insane. Her murdering people is the most obvious way of telling something isn’t right. At the end of our clip, she becomes distracted and stops going after the priest showing that her brain thinks differently.

Victim- He isn’t there for very long as he is being killed before the camera is on him. He shows panic and terror while being strangled which makes sense since no one would be laughing whilst being strangled. (Unless something was wrong with them.)