q1

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. Here we used a low angle shot instead of a high angle shot, however,
the idea tat the ‘possession’ is final revealed doesn’t give away the story
line, it makes the audience want to know the background story. We
gained the idea of revealing it from The Woman and Black and the idea
of the railway did also as we liked the sinister feeling on it coming
closer.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. Here we incorporated the idea of the family
stereotypes of feeling helpless and we used the
pictures of them so make it unclear the audience
what this film is about yet still give them the hint
that the film is based upon children and family.
From looking at past title sequences on artofthetitle
.com I gathered this imagery of the family photos
and I really like the idea of including this. We used
this in Third Time Lucky to represent out storyline
however, we still added the filter of’combat’ to
ensure that the audience knew it was in the past
and not the present.
Another shot we used was the crane shot of Olivia in
bed whilst she was dreaming which gave the idea
that she was dreaming- as well as this we used a
different effect to also make it noticeable she was
dreaming and the zoom created the realism. The
was also seen as a POV shot of the demon and we
wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable during
this point.