In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conv...
Q1
1. In what ways does your
media product use,
develop or challenge
forms and conventions of
real media products?
2. Certain aspects of our plot help the audience to string events
together, much like the flash backs. The flashbacks, as used
in a lot of horror productions, help the audience to understand
the narrative with changes in shot angle/size there is a clear
difference between the two scenes. Another way the audience
is able to distinguish between what is a flashback and what
isn't is the gruesome nature of the flashbacks with
preproduction used to paint the victim in blood.
The plot depicts the lives of the murdering couple who are on the run from the police after a string
of gruesome murders, we mainly based our idea on the well known production of Bonnie and Clyde
(Penn, 1967). From this we can deduce that our plot doesn’t challenge any conventions of real
horror as it follows and is highly inspired by Penn’s 1967 production.
Plot
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967)
One of the flashback shots
3. Not only this but the use of props helped cement the
conventions of horror. On show in all three sets was a
bloody knife which helped the audience establish the
genre to be horror as it can easily be mistaken to a thriller
type film with the interrogation as seen in films such as
Batman. The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008) helped us to light
the interrogation scene and was an all round inspiration for
the scene in terms of lighting, set and dialogue.
Other props used like the female antagonist smoking the
cigarette at the beginning, portrays her as the female
fatale to which she is calm and laid back to the actions of
the male interrogator. Very similar to the film Pulp Fiction.
The nonverbal actions of the female character make the
audience question her mental state, in a situation of such
severity she seems so calm and collected allowing us to link
her mental state to that of a psychopath.
The location itself is a stock location of
horror, the abandoned warehouse, which
helps give an eerie feel to the piece due
to the fear of the unknown.
Our mise-en-scene was very conventional of the
horror genre with our lighting having a real connection
with the general characteristics of the genre. The low
key lighting used throughout the interrogation scene
was created through the use of one single desk lamp
to illuminate the room which helped us to create an
eerie feel to the set.
Mise-en-scene
Both scenes lighting is
controlled through one
source of light
The use of the cigarette prop
helps connects the genre of film
noir with those of Bonnie and
Clyde
The link between our piece
and the Dark Knight (Nolan,
2008)
Louise Carus smoking
4. The character of the detective is not as important in
the scheme of our story an is simply a stock character
as he is seen to be out witted by the female character,
this does sort of defy conventions as the female is
seen to be more powerful than the male where as
ideologies in society say otherwise. The character of
the husband defies convention as we never actually
see his face, simply POV shots of his actions. This
ultimately creates enigma around the character.
As for the characters, they didn’t challenge any of our
sub-genre. The main antagonist, who is female, fits the
description of a femme fatale, she commits hideous
crimes and is very nonchalant and upfront when
questioned on her character and situation. She seems
to always have the upper hand on the male character
and appears to have no remorse for the deceased she
is questioned about. Most of our ideas for the female
antagonist originated from films such as Pulp Fiction
and Basic Instinct.
Character
Female antagonist from Causation
Murdered male from CausationFemale actor from Basic Instinct
Pulp Fiction
Detective
5. In horror films there tends to be a slow beat through out
the production with sound emphasized on action areas
enabling the audience to experience visceral pleasure
from the piece. So in this respect, yes our productions
sound is conventional of horror.
It was vital that we got the sound mix just right so by
allowing the soundtrack to be lower in volume than
the dialogue when the actors are speaking then it
allows the audience to focus on what is going on in
the scenes. Also we used the sound of the camera
flashing to emulate the effect of pictures being taken
in a police investigation, to create an inquisitive nature
to the piece for the audience, as if they know the
police were involved.
We searched the internet through sites such as
FreeSounds.org and YouTube to find the most
appropriate sound effects as possible.
When selecting the soundtrack to play through out the
piece we wanted to establish a mood in the piece
where by the audience was kept engaged even during
the interrogation scene where the dialogue would
become slightly repetitive. So we found a track on
YouTube, it was in general a droning sound however
peaked when the action was about to take place I the
visuals such as the flash backs, we transferred it from
YouTube to a mp3 file then into our production.
Sound
6. Key:
• Used
• Not used
The main camera angles used in a
horror production are :
• Birds eye/high angle
• Close ups
• Tracking or panning shots
• Tilted angle or canted angle
• Extreme long shot/long shot
• Low angles
• POV
• Zooming in/out
• Over the shoulder
Camera Work
High angle…
Close up…
8. Overall, when comparing our piece with a blockbuster horror production the camera work doesn’t vary too much with
our inclusion of six of the nine conventional camera movements/ angles in our final piece in order to create
verisimilitude. As shown above in the examples, the examples of the different shots were done professionally and to the
highest standard in order to be up amongst other horror productions
You can see that
the 180 degree
rule is being
obeyed
Over the shoulder…
9. We challenged the typical conventions of horror when it came
to the editing style. In the majority of fast paced horror films its
popular to include a fast cutting rate in order to keep up with
what's going on in the plot and different scenes. However in our
piece we did not use a fast cutting rate when editing, however
used a slower one so that the audience are able to understand
the dialogue as this limited us to a slower rate of cutting due to
the length of the individual reams of speech. Overall this
allowed us to challenge the general conventions of horror,
however in the flashback scene to the body on the floor we
used a faster cutting rate with the sound of the flashes working
with the rate of cuts ultimately supporting general connotations
of horror in this single scene.
Editing style
To edit the piece we used premier
elements 9.0 and you're able to see
the timeline of shots to check the
length of all the separate clips,
overall, as you can see, most of the
clips are of decent length of around
5 seconds each.
10. However we took inspiration for our titles from
Monster (Edwards, 2010). In monsters, the
titles are white against black and are placed
in the center which would create unease
amongst the audience as it breaks the rule of
thirds as the title gets bigger as it moves out
toward the audience.
Our typography challenges the conventions of horror
because they don’t necessarily have connotations of
blood and murder. They are very simple titles, with white
text against a black back ground, which in no way tells
the audience that it’s a horror film.
We also had a good understanding of the hierarchy
needed to be portrayed with our film. The titles go from
showing the less relevant actors first, then producer,
director and the name of the film. We made the name of
the each individual that was in the titles larger than their
job in the production to make them stand out. However,
overall the title for the name of the the film was the most
important so was in the largest font size.
We went for a serif font called Adobe Caslon Pro. We
decided to go with this font as it gave out piece a period
association to which that is what we wanted to portray.
Our film was always going to be a pastiche of film noir, so
a period association was vital.
Typography
11. Visual techniques were vital in our piece to align it with the generic conventions of horror. Where in horror the set tends to
be dark, it wasn’t the case in some of our shots as there was too much back ground light so we had to alter the saturation
in order to both make it seem more conventional of horror and to black out any background light.
We used image controls to give our film an eerie atmosphere. We did this by almost completely de-saturating our footage,
with took the orange wash from the lamp out. This gave a more basic, dull look, to the piece which ultimately suited our
piece better.
Visual techniques
