1. In what ways does your media
products use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media
products?
2. 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
3. The conventions I used were:
haunted house
Low angle camera shot
Shadows
Handheld camera work
Dark editing
POV shots
Loud deep music
Possessed children
Themes; paranormal, insanity, nightmares, the past
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
