The document discusses how the media product challenges conventions of real horror films. It analyzed the horror films Chucky, Scream, and Unborn to understand conventions like locations, characters, sound, lighting, narratives, and themes. The media product challenges some conventions - the main character is black instead of being the first killed, the villain is a female doll, and characters have diverse personalities rather than following stereotypes. It develops conventions through things like using a park location rather than a forest, including pathetic fallacy weather, and employing theories of narrative structure. The goal was to create something believable yet also distinctive from typical horror openings.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Our group had several discussions and production meetings before we came to
the conclusion that to allow our final product to use, develop and challenge
forms and conventions of the real media we must research existing horror film
openings. This will inspire and develop our ideas for our own final product. As a
group we agreed that our film opening would be under the sub-genre of slasher.
Therefore we researched the horror slasher films to get an insight of the
conventions we must include. The films we looked into detail with were: Chucky,
Scream and Unborn. The main horror film opening we analyzed was ‘Chucky’
this was because it was our main inspiration for our first story outline. The
conventions that Chucky included were the location of a haunted, abandoned
house, the pathetic fallacy of stormy weather, darkness, a vulnerable child as a
victim, suspense, the producer had used females as characters this is because it
makes the audience very uncomfortable to watch as the females come across
weak and express more fear when attempting to survive. Chucky also included
dark and haunting lighting, non-diegetic sound which is very slow and creepy to
establish it’s a horror and the title chucky is in the colour red which has
conations of blood and death. We used all of these main conventions to develop
and challenge our film opening so that it was as believable and realistic to the
actual film industry.
Used Challenged
The Characters Each character that we created we
made sure that they individually had
different personalities. This was to
establish and show the range of
adolescent stereotypes in this
modern time. This isn’t a main
convention for the genre horror.
However this is how we challenged
the genre of horror and ourselves.
This is because most horror films use
females as main characters to show
fear and disturb the audience. But
our audience is aimed mainly at
teenagers with the certificate of 15+
therefore if we used a social group of
teenagers our audience will find it
easier to relate to the film and have
shared knowledge of there language
and actions. All though we used
adolescents as our main characters
our main protagonist in our film
opening was ‘Riley’ the female
survivor and ‘Scarlett’ the female
doll. Both of these challenged our
genre because in horror films it is

2. common that the ethnicity ‘Black’
normally is the first to be killed
however we challenged this and
chose our Black character to be the
survivor. This made our horror film-
opening stand out from other horror
openings created. Furthermore the
character ‘Scarlett’ was developed
and inspired by the character
‘Chucky’ the mise-en-scene of this
character was that her costume was
a typical rag doll dress with puffy
sleeves and high knee socks. Her hair
was styled in two bunchies that were
back combed to create a rough look
and lastly her makeup was designed
with scars and bold eyes to show
threat and establish that ‘Scarlett’ is
the villain of this horror opening. We
also directed her to be very
mysterious and her actions and laugh
to be very haunting. Our idea of a
possessed doll came from chucky but
we changed the gender and identity
to show our development.
The location A stereotypical and common location
is filmed in a forest/woods therefore
we didn’t want to use this location as
this wouldn’t be challenging.
Therefore we chose the location of a
park this was chosen as the horror
conventions for sound is screeching
noises, the convention of vulnerable
children therefore a park relates to
this, as children are the main users of
it. Furthermore even though we
didn’t use a forest there were woods
and tree’s surrounding this park,
which made this location spooky. To
emphasis our convention of a park
we filmed the park in the daytime
and the action-taking place in the
night time. This darkness made the
location show the genre of horror
through the dark and eary
atmosphere that it bought it our film
opening.
Pathetic Fallacy Pathetic fallacy is a main convention
in horror this is where the weather

3. acts as a human emotion for example
raining and storms occur. This is
always used in horror films to set an
intimidating and frightening
atmosphere. We have used this in
our horror film opening with the
wind and raining weather to follow
the terrifying conventions for the
genre of horror. The inspiration that
made us decide to use this in our film
opening was from ‘Chucky’ as the
research that we made in our main
influences presentation was evidence
that ‘Chucky’ used it.
Sound Disturbing and unnerving non-
diegetic music is a convention in the
genre of horror. We have used
royalty free music called ‘Evening of
chaos’ this music contains low pitch
sounds and sharpening of knife’s this
shows a sense of murder which could
be an enigma for further in the film.
Another main convention of sound
that is shown in the horror film
openings is a diegetic sound of
laughing, screaming and heavy
breathing. The main horror film
opening that used these was ‘Chucky’
and this is where we used these
stereotypical sound conventions to
establish our genre of horror in our
film opening.
Lighting The conventions for lighting in
horror films are dark, mysterious
and sinister. We have used this in our
second part of our horror film
opening. This has been composed by
the night vision on the digital video
camera. The visual effect has come
out as a dark lighting with a hint of
yellow. This shows that there is a
flash forward and gives it a evil affect
through the harsh tones. The lighting
before this is very duel in the day
light as the weather was raining and
the sky was full of grey clouds. This
creates a dark and negative
atmosphere. It also brings out fear in
some of the characters.

4. Narrative The narrative’s that were main
conventions of horror films are
‘Todorov’ and ‘Prop’. Todorovs
theory was that there is equilibrium,
disequilibrium and a new
equilibrium and Prop’s theory was
the set roles of each character. We
have began to use Todorovs theory in
our horror film opening as we began
with the group of teenagers laughing,
drinking and relaxing in the park this
was representing the equilibrium.
Shortly after this we used our editing
skills to shoot a flash forward this
showed the survivor in an
uncomfortable situation where she
was being threatened by a possessed
doll this part represented the
disequilibrium. This theory was in
the horror films. The other theorist
we used in our horror film opening
was ‘props’ theory this a more
common convention used in slasher
horrors which is our sub genre. This
theory involves always a protagonist
survivor, which we have created as
‘Riley’. There is always a villain or
killer and in our film opening we
have created a doll who is a killer
called ‘Scarlett’. Films that have used
this theory and who we have been
inspired by are ‘Friday the 13th and
Nightmare on elm street.
Themes The main theme that we used that
was a convention of horror films was
the theme of good v evil. We showed
this through the characters. The
teenagers were shown to be very
vulnerable and the evil was shown
through the doll ‘Scarlett’ who was
shown to be threatening and
intimidating. This theme has also
been shown in the real life horror
film of ‘Chucky’ as the doll is the evil
and the young girl is represented as
the good. Furthermore we have
challenged this as our representation
of evil is a female this isn’t common
because females are stereotypically

5. shown as the victim and a sexual
figure in a horror film.