1) The media product uses and develops conventions of real horror films through its title, plot, locations, camerawork, editing, costumes, and props. The ambiguous title draws the audience in unlike explicit horror titles. 2) The plot builds tension through mystery and a seemingly peaceful town with a dark secret, mirroring films like The Ring and The Woman in Black. 3) Locations like the churchyard increase fear through mise-en-scene as in The Woman in Black.

1. EVALUATION QUESTION 1 - IN WHAT WAYS DOES
YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL
MEDIA PRODUCTS?
By Jonny Smith & Tom Spratley

2. INTRODUCTION
Each slide will discuss different conventions we have
used. We will be working together but each taking
charge of certain slides.

3. TITLE – JONNY
We took inspiration from our title sequence research in terms of when to show
each individual title. For example as a group we did opening title sequence
research on the film Silent Hill. We took inspiration from this and put the
directors name near the end of the movie like Silent Hill.
The movie is about mystery and small hints so having a name like Great
Haseley as the title adds to this because the name gives very little away
and as a result draws the audience in. This seems to go against
convention as most horror films tend to use words that connote horror
such as the Woman In Black, which leaves little to the imagination.

4. PLOT – TOM
 Fairly conventional plot, in that its is a build up to a murder or death at the
end. We got inspiration for this from the Ring and Woman in Black. Death
all the way through wouldn’t have fitted, such as in Ginger Snaps, as our
film is attempting to focus on tension etc.
 There is the classic convention of a seemingly peaceful town that isn’t what it seems and
has a darker underbelly.
 Foreshadowing, in the scene where the caretaker is pinning up the murder poster. –
Unconventional as it can be hard to pull of, especially within the titles. Luckily we pulled it
off well as a teacher noticed that we had done it when we showed our film to him. Even
though we didn’t see any of it in our research we still thought it would be a really cool
thing to put into our clip.
 A lot of mystery and is created around our plot as we do not know anything about any of
the characters, or why they choose to act in the way that they do – In the woman in black
we see a similar thing, we don’t know why the what the little girls are doing until we are
told about it later in the film.

5. LOCATION - JONNY
 We got a lot of ideas on the type of location we wanted
from the movie ‘Goodnight Mr. Tom’. This movie was
set in the 1940’s countryside, so was very similar to
our movie in that sense. From watching part of
Goodnight Mr. Tom, I learned that the church is the
heart a the village, so when it came to making our
movie we used the church as much as we could as we
could make out that the heart and soul of the village is
being drained by these murders.
 In the ‘Woman in Black’ there are several scenes in a
church yard, these scenes are made very scary mainly
because of the mise-en-scene. We thought that it
would be good if we followed suit and used as a
location. As we wanted to create the same feelings,
due to the film being horror.

6. CAMERA, SHOTS & EDITING - TOM
 After research on the film ‘Se7en’ we found that a wide range of camera shots
and face paced editing keeps the audience intrigued and interested in the film
and plot.
 We edited in the production team ‘Hammer’, as they make conventional
horror films and so this would let the audience know that it is a horror film.
 We tried to mix up the pacing by having different speeds of editing, i.e. it was
slower at the beginning and sped up by the end to represent the build up of
tension and panic.
 We de-saturated the Colour of the clips in the editing process, just like in
some of the scenes of the ‘Ginger Snaps’ opening. This gave the desired
effect of making the film seem more vintage and draining the life from the
setting and location.
 We did the unconventional thing of cutting right before the murder, most of the
films that I researched showed the death or murder, such as ‘the Ring’.

7. COSTUMES, PROPS AND ICONOGRAPHY -
TOM & JONNY
 In terms of keeping the film in the time periods clothing and fashion we were fairly
conventional, our 1940’s research help us with this. We took our inspiration from films like
‘War Horse’ and ‘Goodnight Mr. Tom’, by watching these it cleared up any
misconceptions that we had. This was an important thing to get right as our research told
us that costumes & props are the main give away for the time period.
 We were fairly unique in that our film was a horror film that was set in WWII. We
struggled to find any other films that did this. We took the idea of having our film set in
the past from The Woman in Black, but this was not set in the same period. The time
period helped us to create such things as enigmas and tension because these things
were present in that time anyway.
 We used the singer ‘Dame Vera Lynn’, to put across the time period and the social group
we had focused the film on. This, you could call unconventional as w didn’t really find that
the music in other horror openings did the same.