The document discusses setting, characters, and editing techniques used in horror films and how they were applied in a media product. It examines the use of both familiar and unfamiliar settings to relate to and confuse audiences. A defenseless teenage girl character was used as it is common in horror and elicits more empathy, while the villain challenged conventions by being female. Tension was built through false security and extended scenes. Lighting exploited the fear of darkness but added night vision to clearly show the threat while maintaining the dark surroundings.

1. How our Media product uses,
develops and challenges
forms and conventions of real
media products
Evaluating

2. Setting:
When researching into Horror films I found two types of
setting used within the Horror genre. The first one is a
familiar or ‘normal’ surrounding, for example at the start of
The Ring, the house in a quiet suburb. This is something
that the Audience can relate to.
The second is an abnormal setting, which creates
hermeneutic codes for the audience – they are wondering
what the location is, and why the character is there. The
aim of this location is to disturb the audience and build up
tension.
We decided to use both a familiar setting, the dining room,
and an abnormal setting. We decided to do this because it
would create hermeneutic codes for the audience.

3. Setting:
The Ring – Use of a familiar
location allows the audience
to relate using the Uses and
Gratifications Theory – Needs
Model, personal needs. It
affects the audiences
emotions, thinking it can
happen to them.
Saw – Use of an abnormal
location creates fear and
hermeneutic codes for the
audience. This confuses them
and puts them on edge.

4. Setting:
We used a dining room to
allow the audience to
relate to the scene. This
also makes it easier for
the audience to
emphasize with the
characters.
We used an unfamiliar
location which would
confuse the audience and
also create hermeneutic
codes. This room is not
completely shown.

5. Setting:
We decided to use this code and convention found in real
media products such as Horror films as we felt it was an
effective way of creating tension and hermeneutic codes –
another common feature of Horror films.
I am happy with the choice of setting we have made, and
the fact it uses the codes and conventions found in similar
real media products. If I was to do this again, I would add
more detail into the dining room to ensure it looked as real
as possible.
If we were not to use this code and convention, I would
want to challenge it completely to make our film stand out
from the rest.

6. Characters:
We have shown a very common type of character in our
media product. The ‘Defenseless Teenage Girl’. This is
common in Horror films such as Jaws and Piranha 3D. We
decided to keep this code and convention as it is another
thing that the audience can relate to and therefore is more
effective in creating fear within the audience. They feel
more empathy for a character without control over the
situation and a younger character is more effective in
creating this also.
However for the second character, we decided to challenge
these codes and conventions – as in the films we had
analyzed there is rarely a woman playing the villain so we
decided to make Cannibal the Archetype.

7. Tension Building Through Editing:
We found that the main code and convention for
the opening two minutes was to build up false
tension – leaving the audience on their toes such
as in Scream; or in our production where we
opened with a scary and gruesome opening. In
order to create pace we made use of parallel
editing. In most horror films, as we used in ours, a
main code and convention is to pull the audience
into false sense of security. This means they believe
nothing is going to happen and then it does,
creating more of a shock factor and creating fear.
We did this by extending some of the eating
scenes, making the hunting scenes scarier.

8. Lighting:
Another common code and convention found in Horror
films, was taking advantage of Humans natural fear of the
dark. A classic code and convention that ‘bad things happen
in the dark’. We wanted to show this, but develop on this
code and convention. We did this by choosing to add a night
vision effect to our hunting scenes. This would mean that
the audience can see clearly what is happening – but would
show that it is dark in the scene and the surroundings,
suggesting it is night time. This creates dramatic irony
because the audience is aware that someone or something
is watching the girl, but the girl does not know who or what
is with her, or where she is due to the darkness of her
surroundings. This creates frustration for the audience, and
create empathy for the character as they know that
something bad will happen to her. This technique is shown
in Jaws, with the audience seeing the shark in the dark
waters before the victim, it is also used in Piranha 3D, both
using a teenage girl as the helpless victim.