Question 1

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

We started by looking at the typical conventions of a film opening and we found that an opening will contain the production and distribution companies, the title of the film along with the stars that are in the film. Other aspects of an opening that we found was conventional is that it starts by introducing the stock characters, stock settings and an insight in to the plot of the film - however we wouldn't expect too much to be given away. 

Once we had established what to expect from an opening, we decided to do a closer look at the conventions of the genre 'supernatural horror'. The typical conventions of a supernatural horror is that it contains either a family (where the child is usually seen as an evil character) or a group of friends. An example from our research for both of these are Blair Witch Project and Insidious.

The Blair Witch Project contains a group of friends who are around the same age who are investigating a rumour about a 'witch' whilst documenting their findings. We got a lot of our inspiration from this films as we found it to be a scary film and also the opening was very interesting and instantly told us what genre of horror it was which made it easy for us to understand it and to get ideas from what techniques they have used to make it clear.

We looked at insidious and found that the colours, sounds and editing that was used was conventional of the supernatural horror genre, this gave us an example to look at.

We found that a lot of the stock settings that were conventional to the genre, were things such as woods or forests, old houses, grave yards or abandoned/isolated areas. 
By looking at examples such as The Blair Witch Project, Insidious and Paranormal Activity we were able to choose from conventional settings of the supernatural genre in order to make sure our film fit the conventions of the genre.

 

Another conventional aspect which we found was in quite a few of the films we looked at was that it would be filmed using a handheld camera, this helps in order to create the enigma and also to give you the story from the point of the characters, therefore creating verisimilitude. Examples of films using hand held are Paranormal Activity 1-3 and The Blair Witch Project.

The lighting would be dark, dull and often highly contrasted in order to make it appear scarier. The editing along with straight cuts are usually at a normal pace to create realism, however when approaching and throughout a tense moment the editing speeds up (along with the sound) in order to create a suspenseful mood and tone. Conventionally, there would be eerie non diegetic or diegetic music, and often odd diegetic sounds in order to create a suspenseful mood. 

Insidious and The Unborn use dark and contrasted lighting in order to create a scarier atmosphere.

In our opening, we decided to conform to the conventions of the supernatural genre, we started by having the stock characters as a group of friends. We decided this in order to make it familiar to the viewer, and so they could relate to the characters as each of the characters have a different personality so it can appeal to a wider target audience.

The stock setting we chose was that of a wood, as this is conventional to the genre, and also we thought it would add a sense of tension and 'eeriness'. Also it shows the characters as being isolated and put in to a dangerous position which tells us that something bad will happen to them.

The sounds and colours we decided to use in our opening are dark and eerie things. The sounds are loud and create a tense mood and tone. The colours we changed to show different perspectives, however all of them are darker. 

The different perspectives we decided to use is the perspective of someone who isn't in the film. The colours we decided to use for this are darker than what we originally filmed, in order to create a scarier mood.

After we edited the colours

The original colours

Another perspective we used is the character of 'Jess' as she has a camera and she is filming  their 'investigation' this conforms to the conventions of the supernatural genre by creating verisimilitude.We changed the colours by making it have a green tint, we did this in order to make it clear that it was from a different perspective and from a handheld camera.

After we edited the colours

The original colours

The last perspective is from an onlooker in the film (a character that we aren't yet aware of) this creates an enigma as we don't know who this character is or what he is doing, and we wonder why he is watching them. We made it more contrasted to show that it is from a 'bad' characters perspective.

After we edited the colours

The original colours

We decided to conform to the main conventions of the supernatural genre in order to create a scary opening and to make it easy for the viewers to relate and understand the story from the beginning, rather than making it complicated.