Question 1 – In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The conventions of our chosen genre,

which is horror, are that there is a theme

of good vs. evil, the iconography is very

dark and uses props such as blood,

knives and other forms of weaponry, the

settings used are abandoned buildings,

dark environments, settings are key as

they create the mood. Common

narrative devices are that there is some

sort of evil being trying to kill or scare

the hero or protagonist or hero. Common characters in horrors are

the stupid teenager that gets killed, the villain and the hero.

The research we concluded prior to our construction was that we

found out about the conventions of horror, we did this by analysing

films, such as Halloween, Insidious and The Conjuring etc. we found

out about the conventions and learned how they are used in a title

sequence. This also gave us some ideas on what to include in our film

and how to do them correctly and properly. Although I am not a big

fan of horror films, I decided to watch some as extra research; this

gave me a better idea on what elements to include in my film.

Our work fits with these conventions well; there is a protagonist in

our film and also a villain who is trying to kill him. This also

challenges the conventions as in most horror films it is the female

character who dies earlier on in the film, but in our film it is a male

character therefore this stretches and challenges that specific

convention of horror.

A good example of this is the film ‘Psycho’ by Alfred Hitchcock. A

short while into the film the films antagonist kills off the leading lady,

Janet Leigh. This was effective because it was shocking in world of

film as it has never been done before so we tried to do this in our

film, to break away from convention.

In this scene in Psycho the main character is killed off in the opening

scene and also in our film, one of the characters is killed of/captured

by the villain in the opening. As you can see in the video above, the

death also fits with the conventions of horror, as the character is

killed using knife, a key style in horror films. I f you turned on this

film, at this point in the film you would know it is a horror film, which

I think is key when constructing a film. This would give a

In our film we tried to stick to conventions of the setting by shooting

our film in a dark footpath that was out of the way from civilisation

we decided to stick to conventions because we thought it would be

hard to make a bright area full of people look ‘scary’ and ‘suspicious’.

This was also crucial when setting the story for our film, as if we

filmed in a light environment in would not makes sense, and again

wouldn’t fit with convention.

In our film, we stuck to conventions,

because the best horror films always

stick to their conventions, this

therefore makes the film better and in

doing so I think made our film better. If

we broke away from conventions too

much, the film would drift away from

the genre and that’s not what was

intended when completing this

coursework piece. Although some

horror films break away from

convention, for example of this is ‘Cabin in the Woods’. In the film the

opening scene, it shows two people in a room, showing that the

‘horror’ that is about to happen is staged. This breaks away from the

conventions of horror as horror, in films, is usually deemed as

‘realistic’ and it actually happens. But in this film it does not, hence

why it breaks away from convention.

Also in the film it uses humour, another example of how the film

breaks away from the conventions of horror, as in horror films are

generally not meant to be humorous and their objective is to scare

the audience. So in our film, to be more professional, and stick to

conventions. We didn’t use any humour at all and tried to be serious

at all times, in all scenes of the film.

In our film, we created an ‘Enigma Code’; we left the audience

questioning what is happening next. We left our film open ended by

not really explaining what is going on, not giving our ‘killer’ a motif;

this will make the audience question what is going on and therefore

it will be more enjoyable and engaging. Also we left the main

characters fate unexplained. In doing so it will make the audience

question and want to know what happens to the character, this will

create sympathy and therefore again make the film more engaging.