Evaluation question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our opening sequence aimed to follow a few of the horror genre's typical conventions but also aimed to oppose some of them, to give our product that uniqueness that's important for standing out to an audience.

Our opening sequence has an unconventional opening for a horror film, typically horror movies go straight into a filmed sequence to build tension and suspense straight away. We decided to be unique and have our company logo at the start of the opening sequence, which then leads on to the filmed clips, we did this due to our unique logo consisting of a 5 fingered hand, which would confuse audience members ready for the clips.

Our titles are also unconventional of the horror genre, we used names/credits printed on sheets of paper coming out of a printer as opposed to using software to create and display them. This further gives our sequence that unique looks that's imaginative and different, which is what makes a horror movie good(based on our audience research results).We used viner hand for fonts on text based items throughout.

Rachael, is seen wearing an office like uniform whilst operating a photocopier, this use of mise-en-scene is further opposing the typical conventions of horror films as usually most people are dressed very poorly or in a non hygienic way for good effect. However other characters do follows this convention...

Here to the left of the image Lauren (our main character) can be seen wearing loose/old clothes which are conventional of horror films. They are loose and do not look well trimmed, this intensifies the horror look to make her more scary and more realistic of her role.

Location wise our opening sequence is very conventional of horror films, here in this shot you can see a shot that looks as though it has been filmed by a security camera, a shot often used in horror films such as the grudge here in this clip:

Lighting wise we have gone for the conventional style of having moderately dark lighting with colour correction in place, as you can see from the grudge clip above dark lighting is used with a blue colour correction in place, both of which we have used throughout our opening sequence.

Props wise we have used a range of objects/items that are fairly conventional of horror films, we used the records to the left to further illustrate that our main character is in a psychiatric asylum. The records are a conventional features of films with patients in them and they add a good varied effect of providing proof/evidence that the character is of an abnormal state of mind.

Furthermore, another prop we used was white pills(paracetamol tablets) which we held above a table and slowly released them. Pills are also another conventional feature of films of this type/story line and further illustrate the abnormality of the main character. The pills play a big role in depicting the main character as a drug addict, and as someone who needs emotional/mental help.

Another prop used was the printer and paper for displaying out Credits/Titles, which is a completely unique way of displaying them and something that is untypical of horror films.





All of the above forms our conventional and non conventional features of the horror film genre. They make our office worker look weak(which is conventional of horror films to make a weaker character) and the antagonist look stronger and more dangerous.

We made our antagonist look scary through the use of discolouration in the makeup stage, ragged and torn clothing that looks as though they haven't cleaned themselves or looked after themselves, and through the strange walking movements of the characters role plays. All of the above is the conventional way of creating a scary effect for a given character.

We used a female for our weaker character which plays the victim as stererotypically in horror films the weaker victims are women. She is well dressed and is clearly well presented, however as she is not the main character of our film she gets very little screen time, which is unconventional for a victim in this type of film as the main focus is on the antagonist.

Our soundtrack choice is conventional of horror films in the sense that it sound spooky, it is slow, quiet in places and loud in places which makes for excellent attention grabbing moments and eeriness.