Group 6 Media Studies AS - Question 1 (Max Boyden)

Question oneIn what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Max Boyden

Conventions of Psycological Horror

Our chosen sub-genre for “Faceless” was Psycological/Home Invasion. We found that keeping to the conventions of these genres allowed us to produce a satisfying product for the target audience

Some of the conventions are as follows:

Last Girl

Strong male

character

Lack of speech

masks

Crude weapons

High-pressure situations

Cold lighting

isolation

immorality

kidnapping

Ultra-violence

plot

The opening sequence shows two lines of action, which we chose in order to allow for an increased cutting rate; a method which is used to build tension and is also stereotypical of horror

The sub-genres of Psycological and home invasion also come with their own series of conventions, of which we have also tried to keep to, taking inspiration from some of the films we have researched

In order to make the opening seem as disturbing as possible, we incorporated masks and a very relatable murder weapon; rope. We believe this scared people the most and took our inspiration from the opening of “Sinister” (Derrickson, 2012)

Characters

As you can see, the characters in our production have been greatly influenced by our research as we felt conforming to the conventions of our sub-genre would give a far more relatable scenario in which the audience builds empathy with the characters

MOTHER ANTAGONISTS

FATHER

Characters

Mother Father AntagonistsOur mother adheres to common gender stereotypes as she is depicted as weak and defenceless. We tried to show this by positioning her low in all shots, as well as covering her face quickly

Similarly, our father figure is also conventional, as he is depicted as the strong man who will save his “damsel in distress”. However, we also intended to “keep the audience guessing” as to the relevance of his character, as many would associate the red light he is in to connote evil

The antagonists are strongly based on those in “The Strangers” (Bertino, 2008) due to the incorporation of masks. Our use of character positioning makes the villains seem big compared to their victim, showing dominance and perhaps patriarchy of the stronger males

Mise-en-scene

Mise-en-scene played a big part in showing background to our characters

As many believe the home to be a place of safety, the decision to set our film in the home came quickly, and the nuclear family soon followed. However, due to the unavailability of any young children, we had to merely connote the presence of a child with the mother packing away toys

We chose costumes that best connoted a “traditional” nuclear family. I.E: The father wearing a suit indicates that he perhaps works in the city, and the mother’s home clothes suggests she has children that are young. The costumes of the antagonists were meant to connote a military background using dark greens and boots, however, this effect may have been lost in translation

sound

The soundtrack we decided to use is most definitely not conventional of the horror-genre, but instead stemmed from the style of Quentin Tarantino, who uses light-hearted music in inappropriate circumstances (Eg: Reservoir Dogs)

Seeing as this soundtrack is shown to be coming from the radio in the father’s car, it is unclear whether it is diegetic or non-diegetic. However, it does carry over to the second-line of action and only stops when the female character screams for help, at which point a new soundtrack enters, that ends with a rope-pull, a chair falling over, and a cracking sound effect

Click to watch!

camera

When planning out our shots during the storyboarding stage, we made sure that each shot adhered to the 180° rule so as not to disorientate the audience. This proved to be a challenge with two lines of action

We also aimed to carry out the rule of thirds by making sure each of our shots had something of interest inside the frame, as well as being used to show hierarchy through character blocking

editing

Our piece is editing in such a way as to build tension for the audience which is created through the use of two lines of action where the cutting rate can be increased, while keeping to continuity

The increased cutting rate is combined with the use of a crescendo in the final part of the sequence so as to grab the attention of the audience, knowing that something big is about to happen

TYPOGRAPHY

We chose our font (Skin & Bones) because we felt it conformed to the conventions of our genre. The distorted look connotes a sense of unease with the audience. We exploited this also by making our titles flicker, again promoting a distorted feel

However, while our film is of the Psycological/home invasion genre, we chose the colour scheme of our titles based on the opening sequence of “Evil Dead” (Alvarez, 2013) as the red font on a black background gave both a clearly visible title as well as the residual ideology of red connoting blood

Continuing this ideology, we saw that using white titles inside the house for the second line of action would connote the innocence of the mother, making sure where possible to place text in areas that had no action (Eg: the corners)

Our final title “Faceless” was originally intended to appear at the end of the sequence, however, after some thoughts that it could look too much like a trailer, we moved it to it’s current position, still keeping the centralisation to show prevalence

SKIN & BONES