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

Horror Conventions used: Characters: Innocent unaware girl Victims change into heroes Camerawork: Point of view shots Voyeurism Match on action Two shot Suspense Editing: Fast Cuts Jump cuts Slow fades Colours darkened Main Themes explored: Good vs. Evil Evil triumphing over good (reversed) Revenge

Mise En Scene: Creepy old house Old interior Dark Atmosphere Old garden Icons: Blood Black/Dark colours Fright factor Mysterious occurrences House Location Music and Sound: High pitched Nursery rhyme Consistent throughout Door slamming/ Stairs creaking Screaming Glass smashing

In our opening, the characters we have included are definitely representing the stereotypical theme of good vs. Evil which prevails in most films, horror or not. In terms of Propp, Pearl is portrayed to be the evil force over the household, and stereotypically, the victim is a seemingly innocent teenage girl. Despite this, in the ending of our opening, we have Emma being take over by the evil force which breaks away from tradition and implies that evil triumphs over good for once. In the last frame we show the villain behind the innocent girl showing ownership of her. This certainly creates a certain enigma about the character and poses the questions as to whether she dies or will break the curse and be free in the end.

After studying Psycho and looking into specific techniques used by Alfred Hitchcock, we too tried to incorporate a strong sense of voyeurism when filming our opening. This is present from an early shot as the character of Emma is introduced via a camera pan which then tilts up toward her window. We then witness Emma leaning out of her window as the light flicks on seeming as if there is someone watching her. We tried to include a little bit of blood as most horror films have some aspects of gore and we wanted to keep with certain codes and conventions of the horror genre. However we ended up using a red and white makeup combination to create an eerie looking effect on the person in black The helper as well as a line of fake blood down Emma s left cheek. These were minimal and created the impression that there would maybe be more blood to come later on. As a group, we studied Silent Hill which also included scenes of extreme gore and so realised that this was quite frequent in horror films.

Our final chosen location was also well suited with the Horror genre, finalising our decision on Emma s house seeing as she had recently moved in and had yet to redecorate. This gave the house a certain old feel (interior) and definitely added to our Mise-en-scene. It was also realistic as Emma would naturally be in her house anyway and not for example; randomly walking through a wooded area at night without good reason. When filming, a short cutaway is used to interrupt continuous filmed action. We used this technique in our film when Emma reaches the bottom of the stairs and looks in the mirror, their is a brief flash of the villain and then she is gone again. This is often used in popular horror films and is classed as a typical code and convention of the horror genre. This cutaway also makes the shot seem uncontrolled, raw and violent, reflecting on later events in the film/opening.

We looked at and researched other films, (besides Psycho) and decided to analyse Silent Hill . The opening was definitely key when deciding on what should happen in ours. With two adults screaming for a child of whom has gone wandering off this wasn t similar to our opening as Emma s parents cannot be seen, however as the opening continues, we learn that the seemingly innocent child has been possessed. This relates to our horror film and the horror genre as regards to being a key convention in some horror films. A couple other examples where being possessed is a key factor is films such as The Omen , The Grudge and The Exorcist . We also looked at the convention of lighting in horror films. Applying this to our opening, we made sure that most of our chosen location was in darkness. To contrast to typical codes and conventions, we had Emma turn on the light of the room she had entered showing her innocence and that she is perhaps prepared to fight back. As a group we decided to find the hidden meanings that are usually included in certain films of which only certain people will find when looking into our opening properly. For example, the Barbie Doll is sitting on a metal tin which has the writing The age of innocence , including this as irony within our piece. Similarly, keeping with codes and conventions of Horror, we noticed some films have a certain type of writing i.e. Dark (black), broken and rough as opposed to something clean cut and brightly coloured. Such evidence is in films such as Zombieland (which although is supposed to be comedy, also falls under the horror genre) and Dawn of the Dead. Also included was the use of pathetic fallacy where we had an distorted version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star playing in a high pitched key, as well as a thunderstorm brewing outside, both implying that the villain is nothing but a child and that she had a bad past experience in her life.

SIMILAR LOCATIONS

Silent Hill House and Weather

Exterior Emma s house

Above on the left is a still from Silent Hill The film we chose to study and present to the class which clearly shows one of the characters looking out of the door in the rain for something. On the right, similarly we used a garden to film this shot, however we also had Emma peering out of her window with thunder overhead. This reminded us a great deal of Silent Hill and so represented some basic conventions of the Horror Genre.

Similarly, we tried to create a sense of voyeurism as present in Alfred Hitchcock s Psycho. In this shot seen on the left, we had the camera rushing into the room.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Emma s character in our opening/film is seen as an easily relatable source, meaning that she isn t an abstract character, and that she is easy to believe/ you could see her in real life. However our film is definitely aimed at middle to lower classes seeing as those are the ideal class which we assume would buy or watch our film. Someone of a lower class may be able to respond to Emma via her small house, however someone of a higher class may struggle. Emma is represented as a real, trustworthy and honest character of whom you are able to feel sympathetic towards as she is normal . Similarly, her clothes aren t weird and you can t tell that we thought long and hard over what she should wear to represent what was happening and how she was feeling, giving her a likeable, easygoing quality. Her appearance is simple and not ridiculous and her voice is common . This makes it easier to be represented to the working/middle class as from personal experience, in American films when you see an English person who has a brutally English accent, the whole film is wrong (We either speak like the Queen or Oliver Twist.) PAUSE Despite the fact that Emma is living in an old house, some of her belongings/surroundings are fairly modern and easily relatable such as the Plasma screen TV. However she also has some older features in her house such as the carpets, the oven and the stone floor shelving. This is featured in most peoples houses, especially people of whom I have visited as you can never escape your past . The idea comes into play that you can never upgrade completely and that some things are never changed.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

After looking into Silent Hill and researching it s codes, conventions and key features, we also took note of the film company of which had been used to distribute it. This company was TriStar Pictures, and when we researched this, we discovered it had already covered multiple horror films. That being noticed, we decided most of these were well known and successful and so we decided that this perhaps would cast a good light on our opening to our film. Distributed by TriStar, Silent Hill s storyline was also very similar (with a girl being possessed by a strange force/ghost) and so deduced that possible fans of the film could also invest in seeing or buying ours. The fact that TriStar also has a fan base, of which have helped the media institution become nominated for certain awards, we thought this to be very useful for when our film is distributed. On the contrary, a company such as 20th Century Fox would most likely not distribute our film as they have been known to mostly distribute family or action films. We don t want our film to be associated with a horror genre of which it isn t although similarly, we don t want it to stand alone, so we should choose a company which is best suited for our genre.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

With the knowledge that nowadays, Horror films are becoming increasingly scary and gory, and that people as a whole are becoming somewhat numb to the whole experience, we would look to aim our media product at a teenage or young adults audience. We would do this because they are most likely to see the film and horror is generally aimed at males, however in this modern age, females are definitely becoming more acclimatized to these films. Another reason is that the audience would most likely be students aged between 15 and 18/9 who would visit the cinema perhaps as a group or with a student deal. They also generally speaking have more free time after school, at weekends or in the holidays to go and see a film at the cinema with friends as opposed to adults. We can also partially rely on the types of people who use social networking sites i.e. Teenagers, to spread the word and see advertisements of the film and to market it that way. Such sites include Twitter or Facebook where you can talk to a numerous amount of people at one time.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Attracting the audience isn t as easy as it sounds. We attempted to use younger/teenage type characters of whom our audience could easily relate to, as well as a young girl who could be seen as an innocent younger sister. The surroundings of the house that we filmed within also contained meaning toward the teenage audience in regards to gadgets such as TVs, Computers, DVDs, Phones, and Game stations. These are easily related to by the teenagers which helps to maintain their interest and keep their attention throughout the opening. The fact that Emma is (assumingly) home alone also can be related to by most teenagers who have younger siblings and never get the house to themselves. This could however put them off the idea of being home alone and infact scare them enough so that they don t want to be home alone again.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In this project, I have learnt that there are many processes of which need to take place when creating a film, and why a lot more staff are required when making a proper film. Relating to this, I found that although you do have to film all the different sections and piece them together, you also have to be aware of spacial awareness, camera angles, sound diagetic and non-diagetic, the lighting, the location/setting, the characters, the continuity and the editing to name but a few. A few problems were also dealt with when using the camera as you had to be careful how you turned it, when it also ran out of battery, leading us to use a back up camera. When using Final Cut on the Macs, we also struggled to cut some of the clips to the right size, as well as the sound, and also problems with continuity arose. During our live filming day, the television lost sound which wasn t too much of a problem as we simply edited it in afterwards. At first we didn t respect how long we would actually have to edit our final product and we thought it would take us a couple of lessons seeing as our filming was relatively quick, however we also were informed we had to make a logo for our production company name which also had some problems when we couldn t create it on flash and ended up with us working out when we had free time to go to the Mac room and continue editing.

Although we knew that the preliminary task wasn t anything like the final product, we still treated it with a great deal of importance. In the end due to the fact we managed our time poorly, we ran out of time to piece it all together and had to settle for shots of which we weren t entirely happy with. In comparison to our full product, I feel we have taken more care and time over which bits are suitable and which bits perhaps aren t. The editing was also reflective of amateurs in our prelim as we had little time and so made rushed decisions as to what we needed and a couple members of our group applied it in their own free time. Similarly for both the prelim and the main task, we created a series of test shots to try and gage an idea of how good or realistic our film would be. We listened to each other more in the main task and gave everyone a fair voice to be able to get their opinions and ideas across. Similarly, between the two, we created a couple of storyboards which was where all of our ideas went down onto paper properly. Our Mise-en-scene was also well thought out in our final product as we even purposefully placed certain items around the room we were filming in. We also all took part in the editing for our main task which wasn t the case in the preliminary task, and also we gave ourselves more time to do so. I learnt that it is vital to research and ask about different camera angles, and to (if possible) incorporate aspects of other films as well as including horror codes and conventions. My research, I felt, was extensive as we narrowed down our choice for our main task between Vampire, Psychological and Zombie thrillers. I created a survey of roughly 30 people of various ages to get a rough idea of what people liked in terms of films. On the whole, I really enjoyed working with my group on this project and look forward to receiving feedback from classmates like we did with the prelim task. The project allowed us to be free, be professional when filming/editing etc as well as being creative and helping us develop as people.