The document discusses the conventions used in the opening of a student horror film project. It describes including a killer murdering a victim in front of the protagonist, as seen in films like "Sinister" and "The Ring", to set up tension. The opening scene also takes place in an empty, deserted setting with only a few characters, drawing from conventions in films such as "Sinister". For the credits, the students overlapped the credits with the opening scene, as done in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", to connote death which is common in horror openings.

1. Q1. In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real
media products?

2. For our film opening, we
decided to do a horror. We
researched the different
conventions and connotations
of horror film openings so ours
would be accurate.

3. We asked our audience what they expected in the
opening of horrors to see what they would expect to see in
ours. The main things were the killer, the victim(s) and the
setting.

4. We decided to have our killer murdering someone in front of the protagonist as
someone dying is seen in multiple horror openings like ‘Sinister’ and ‘The Ring’. In
‘Sinister’ the opening resembles a film reel leading us to believe that someone
would be watching these people die. The person watching could be the
protagonist but we don’t find out who is watching in the opening. ‘The Ring’ is a
bit different as you only see the victim and brief screenshots before she dies.
Sinister
The Ring

5. Usually in horror films, you see a setting that is rather empty and deserted
with only a few people there. We decided to do this too. There are only
3 characters in the scene and the setting is rather empty. ‘Sinister’ is one
film we used for this convention as there is only 4 people in the entire
seen.
Only those about to die here.

6. For the credits we looked at 3 different types of openings of different
genres, overlapped, separate, and integrated. We wanted to do an
opening that was similar to the opening of ‘The Perks of Being a Wall
Flower’. It starts off as a black screen with the credits then changes to an
overlapped opening. Even though this isn’t a horror, we decided that
this could be a good way to show the credits. Black can connote death
which is the most common convention to see in a horror, so we thought
that it could work.
We also had our credits in the bottom corner to not cover up the
characters faces during the scene.