Q1 evaluation

In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Whilst researching recent products of past horror films, I came across certain forms and conventions that were seen throughout quite alot of the horror films dating back to when they were first made. Despite horror films having different story lines and mise en scenes, the basic ideas of how they created fear and what was included has remained the same with a few tweaks here and there including the setting which has mainly been small communities, isolated places or run down places including warehouses. The characters have changed from being either families, based around children or teens being murdered. I took the consideration of looking mainly at sinister, insidious and the conjuring-which like my film base their story lines upon the possession of children. I took the aspects of the family based characters to set a more emotional feel towards the audience. However, after trying to create a new idea for a film, we took ideas and the typical conventions of the well known horror films so it would help us achieve the film our audiences would want. By analysing the conventions and comparing some horror films my media product was able to produce an up to standard film that covered the key concepts

The conventions I used were:haunted house Low angle camera shotShadowsHandheld camera workDark editingPOV shotsLoud deep musicPossessed childrenThemes; paranormal, insanity, nightmares, the past

Title/font/style We decided to call the title of the film third time around as it linked well the whole

generation theme, this made the title of our film more relatable and also gave the audience and idea of what the film would be about-which created more suspense and drama. As well as this, when we started filming, we realised that the logo on the stairs linked well to the title( three leaf clover) which created an ironic sense to the film. The clover helped link the title and storyline together as well as create the narrative for the film. This idea came from sinister where the logo was everywhere that Mr. Boogie was located, I liked the idea of the logo and thought that it gave the storyline more structure and also created more or a mystery within it. The font of the title isn’t originally what we wanted it to be as we wanted it to be more child’s font but we couldn’t transfer the font over in final cut pro- however by using the black background it helped us connotate the death presence. I got the idea of the font mainly from watching the se7en title sequence as I liked the ghostly effect that was used. Despite the face we wanted a font like this, we chose a font closely relating a child’s font and used the black and white to suggest the paranormal presence as well as it foreshadowing danger and emptiness, which we want to portray onto the audience.

Camera shots/movement I looked into the camera shots of the conjuring to see what angles and shots are included to

make a successful films .It helped me enable the information that made me produce a media product that had the key concepts of a horror film. By using the camera shots it also helped me gain the right feel and emotion within the film.

We used a range of camera shots to ensure that we had a variety of feelings caused, by using low angles, high angles, hand held camera shots, side shots, close up, established shot, pan shot and long shots. By looking at the conjuring, an d seeing the fast paced movement of the different shots, it allowed us to realised that we needed to shorten some of our shots to portray the tension and eerie atmosphere. At the start of the sequence, we used the steady close up of the record player to add a confusing sense however, we use the establishing shot of the large house to set the setting. Next we started to use the hand held cameras to reveal the realism. Throughout the rest of the sequence, we decided on low angle and head on shots to make it more eerie and it makes everything larger and intimidates the audience. The family photos were inspired by the conjuring and we including them to create a clear storyline.

Sound

We used non diegetic sound to fill in the background of our title sequence , we used a children’s nursery rhyme to match the sequence, we didn’t get this idea from any film which we thought was a selling point however, it didn’t challenge any conventions. we wanted this to be slow so that it made the audience tense. We repeated the drone sound on the parts we wanted the audience to feel most unsettling at, this was a loud deep pitched sound which was much louder than the rest- this was mainly played when the demonic presence was in the shots.- it also made the audience jump and feel on edge.

Mise En Scene The costumes and makeup within a horror film is very important factor and after looking at

all 3 films I noticed all don’t have any human qualities, these are changed by the makeup which make it more secretive. due to the fact I don’t have special makeup skills we decided against the makeup and did it based on costume which was a cape with a hood-we got this idea from The woman in black and wanted to still achieve the sinister look. We wanted to portray the demon as a typical antagonist and use Olivia’s innocent costume of a girly dress to portray her as a typical protagonist despite the fact she’d turn into another antagonist. The connotation of black simply represent the death and evil through the character whilst the pinks of the dress represent innocence and girlyness- which is contrasted with the red on her dress which is associated with blood and danger. The setting is typically a remote house setting in the middle of nowhere which shows the lack of escapism that can happen within the film. The lighting matches this emotion as we used dark natural lighting and light natural lighting to reveal the realism of the situation.

No props were used as we thought it wouldn’t seem real.