Media

Our opening conveys the horror genre because at the beginning the audience is introduced to a stable condition where a group of friends are in the car and are clearly calm and relaxed. However, soon after, the victims encounter a zombie, covered in blood and gore, therefore the situation has changed and consequently a disruption of the equilibrium has occurred, this also reflects Todorov’s theory. When the characters have seen the zombie, they decide to run into the woods instead of going back into the car; this conveys the horror genre because in typical horrors, the victims always make foolish decisions. In our opening we particularly wanted to include this because it is a typical convention of a horror film as they use these decisions to build the story because this leads to the characters’ death.

As the characters run through the woods, this creates anxiety for the audience because they would not know if the characters will make it through alive. In our opening, during the chase scene, we wanted to create suspense just like in Wolf Creek ; the last girl is being chased by the killer, this builds tension because it is an intense chase sequence as her car clearly isn’t as fast as the killer’s and therefore signifying her death. In our chase sequence we wanted to portray this by making our zombie much faster than the victims and so this resulted in Emma’s death.

How the opening conveys/constructs the genre

How the opening introduces the characters

Our media product uses conventions of real media products because within the opening, we introduce the main characters as a group of friends who are on their way to somewhere. This is typical of a horror film as they always include a group of friends who are obviously going to be the victims within the film. We introduced the main characters as a group of friends who were girls because within horror films, they are always seen as more vulnerable and defenceless. An example of this is Sorority Row; the main characters are all girls who are all best friends, however, some of them are eventually killed, at the climatic chase sequences, the girls are seen to be panicked and in a weak position.

Moreover, when the zombie is introduced to the audience for the first time, he has his back to the camera. By doing this, we wanted the zombie to firstly be presented as a normal boy who was hurt so that when he eventually turns around the audience would suddenly be shocked and feel alarm because of the blood and gore on him, therefore the audience would realise he is a zombie and clearly will kill the girls.

Special effects used Within our opening, we used a

transition between the last girl’s scene and the scene showing a new day. We did this to show that time has passed since the terrible event, we used a transition because by doing this it leaves a spine-chilling feeling within the audience as they are suddenly presented with the new day straight after the girl’s piercing scream. This would also make the audience feel unsettled because the transition makes the previous events feel like it was over in a flash.