The document discusses how the media product challenges and follows conventions of real horror and psychological thriller films. It conducted research on similar films to understand audience expectations. While it includes conventions like settings in a house and school, it challenges expectations by not including a jump scare. The film both challenges and follows conventions to keep the audience engaged without being too predictable. It also explores theories around teenage subculture and building tension through mystery.

1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?
BY ABBY HAYES

2. CONDUCTING RESEARCH
• From conducting research of films with a similar genre to the one that
we wanted to create, allowed us to get a rough idea of the genre
expectations that our film should follow. Also from creating a
questionnaire and asking people the complete it gave us a more
detailed insight to the sorts of things that people expect from a
horror/psychological thriller film. We took inspiration from both TV
dramas and films when creating the storyline for our own film. For
example films like The Conjuring and TV dramas like Pretty Little Liars
both had elements that we wanted to include in our film without
copying the same storyline as them.

3. CODES AND CONVENTIONS
• From conducting research we found that these are the most common
codes and conventions to follow when creating our film:
• For it to be set in a house, in the woods or in a school.
• People would most likely expect a jump scare at some point in the
film.
• Something that makes it not directly relatable to another film.
• 4-5 characters in the film, mixture of both male and female.
• A storyline that they might be able to relate to.

4. CHALLENGING THE CODES AND
CONVENTIONS
• I think that our film both challenges the codes and conventions and
yet follows some of them as well. For example our film, although being
part horror, does not contain a jump scare which I found out from
doing the questionnaire is one of the things that the audience would
expect for a film of this genre. So this is an example of when we are
challenging the codes and conventions by not including something
that the audience would expect. On the other hand I think that our film
follows the codes and conventions through the way that set one for
the scenes in a school and another scene in a house. Although we
were careful to make sure that we did not make it to predictable to the
audience otherwise they would lose interest.

5. THEORIES THAT WERE EXPLORED
• One of the theories that our film shows is the Giroux theory (1997). As the
way that in the scene in the kitchen Lottie is being questioned by her mum,
she doesn’t answer her and just leaves the room. This explores the idea
highlighted in this theory that adults don’t understand the teenage sub-
culture. Also our film follows this theory by the way that we show the main
character as being emotional and unstable which show that people put
their own opinions in place that she is to vulnerable and scared to do
something about it. I think that our film also follows the Enigma codes
through the way that we build up tension in our film and leave the audience
guessing. We do this through the way that the texts are sent as “unknown”
and we use a red herring in the form of the character Jeremy to encourage
the audience to make conclusions that the stalker must be a boy as it is a
girl that is getting stalked.