My media evaluation for conventions.

1. In what ways does your
media product use, develop
or challenge forms and
conventions of real media
products.
Seona Carolan
- Porcelain

2. Porcelain
• Our creation of Porcelain has a very formulaic structure
and uses many adaptions from other films to create what I
think is a stereotypical horror film. I believe that in
Porcelain you can see inspiration from many other famous
horror films. Because we have played on common
stereotypes and used the typical conventions of the horror
genre we haven’t challenged any of these but instead have
found other ways of making our piece different.

3. Cinematography
• Porcelain has a strong theme of family life meeting
destruction which is displayed in our sequence
through out. Some clips that I think reflect the typical
horror them of child is the close up images of the doll.
The inspiration for this was fromTheWoman in Black –
2012 JamesWatkins – heavily because I found it
evokes the feeling of fear from an object that should
be seen as innocent.

4. Inspiration
Porcelain Woman in Black

5. Woman in Black
• This film uses dolls in a very simplistic way yet creates a huge
change in atmosphere for the audience watching because of the
use camera angles.The close up images on the doll make the
viewer feel that this toy is different.The editing of the colour pallet
then aids the shot to gain a feeling of darkness and expectation of
evil.The use of close up images is typical of a horror film and it is
used to show emotion and hide the view of the audience. We used
it to build emphasis on the doll being the key source of turmoil for
our protagonist.

6. Cinematography refers to
movement.
In my piece we used movements
of the camera to lead the
audiences eye point to what we
wanted them to see. We found
creating good quality tracking
shots particularly hard to get
right but I believe I managed to
shoot a couple of shots well. We
wanted the audience to have
different parts of the doll
revealed to them through
movement and focus.

7. Focus
Before my group started we had little
knowledge of how the DSLR worked
and how we could change settings
such as the focus to completely alter
the shots we were taking. I had
watched Insidious were they used the
change in focus to reveal that the
image they thought they were looking
at was in fact something else
completely.This can create a small
roller-coaster effect for the audience
as we build suspense and then drop it
again.

8. Location
• We used two locations.A house and the woodland area.The woods in
particularly conforms to the conventions of the horror genre.There are
many films based in woods and I think this is because they create a dark
lit area, covered with trees which form creepy shadows and normally the
woodland is very cut off from technology and other people.This is why
we chose to use the woods.We wanted to make it clear that the
protagonist was so desperate that he felt this dark place was the safest
place to put the doll whom had caused so much peril.The film that helped
us decide on a location was for meThe BlairWitch Project – I think this is
an iconic horror film that uses the location to create a feeling of
uncertainty and anticipation for the viewer.

9. Location
Porcelain BlairWitch Project

10. Editing
• A typical convention of editing in horror is fast cuts and change of
the colour pallet. I think this is most visible in the montage at the
start of the sequence. My favourite title sequences are Se7en and
Durham County.This is an iconic montage that influenced my
group into draining the colour of the shots and adding a higher
contrast of the black and white. We made fast cuts between each
image because we thought it would build tension for the audience
similar to that of Se7en and Durham County.

11. Colour
Porcelain Durham County

12. Fast pace cutting
Porcelain Se7en

13. Characters: PaulWood
I think this is one of the main areas that
our piece could differ from the
conventions of horror films and gender in
general. Our character PaulWood is the
weakest character despite being a grown
man, a father and successful man. He
feels the effects of the doll the most even
though it is his daughters toy. He gets so
desperate he runs and hides the doll
which isn't something you expect of men
in horror film because it's normally them
who defeat the evil. A film in which the
male is also appearing as the weakest is
Insidious, where the husband falls under
the influence of the demon.