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Evaluation Question 1
- 1. EVALUATION QUESTION 1 IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
- 2. Genre Conventions Conventions or codes are genre-specific characteristics or signs that create meaning. Symbolic codes uncover the hidden meaning from behind what we can only see. Whereas, Technical conventions are based around the ways in which equipment is used to tell the story in a media product. They are used in the study of a particular media product(s) in order to roughly clarify what type it is. For example, in the poster above, the picture features blood and cutting surgical equipment. This provokes a sense of horror, evil, death, murder, and harm, etc.
- 4. “Homecoming” Vs. “Insidious” Thriller 3rd March 2016 Hurtwood House Media Dept. Starring: Joe Hellman Director: Lauren Downing Horror - Thriller 1st April 2011 IM Global, Stage 6 Films, Blumhouse Productions Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey Director: James Wan
- 5. Camera SAM In Thrillers, the typical shot types consist of close-ups, long-shots and low-angles. In Horror movies, the typical shot types consist of long tracking shots, POV shots and disorientated angles. Our thriller develops on all of these SAM conventions for both genres. In particular, our sequence mainly features a single, very long tracking shot, that has a POV style with disorientation and a final close up. The Insidious opening sequence is similar in that it has long tracking shots but other than the shot shown above (top), there is not a huge amount of variation. The main similarity is that both sequences end on a close up of a face on its side on a bed (dead/sleeping). Meanwhile, the majority of the rest of the shots utilise a slow tracking motion and feature the mise- en-scene items, similar tour our thriller, that I will go on to speak about later.
- 6. Sound In terms of sound, the two sequences are very similar. They both have very little, if any, diegetic sound featured throughout. Both have very similar soundtracks, as well. Typical thriller soundtracks are composed with the main focus on building and emphasising tension, while returning back to main themes/motifs that symbolise certain characters/events/places/etc. Both soundtracks do this while utilising instruments like high strings and bells, and big building drums that are all a convention of horror sound. On the other hand, our thriller features non-diegetic answer phone messages that start out with the black screen, no music and sound perfectly regular and almost comical.
- 7. Mise-En-Scene We featured a large number of mise-en-scene items throughout our thriller. As did Insidious. We use these items to point the audience in roughly the right direction in terms of the questions they would ask when trying to understand the events that had occurred. For example, both sequences featured certain props to give-away characteristics of the house, like the family photos in the living room, while the “insidous”creator used similar, but with darker meanings to it all.
- 8. Colour, FX & Font In our thriller we used a plain colour grade that was similar to the raw footage. Typically in Horror films, the dark colours, that connote negative events, monsters, death etc., are used, except for red which is used to connote the clear link to blood and gore. For example in Insidious, the colour grade is a blurry black and white, which increases the effectiveness of shadows, and red, smoky titles that connote horror conventions like blood and ghosts (see above). However, our thriller uses white titles in order to not prematurely provoke the featured blood and horror in the climax, and then the last title “HOMECOMING” is in a dark red to provoke the feeling of horror. As well as this, the Insidious sequence has clearly added some effects in post production. It has added blur, vignette, monochrome, and contrast. This would be typical of a horror nightmare- like scene. We didn’t feel as though effects would aid the project as a whole as the one-shot idea is meant to give a realistic POV feel.
- 10. “Homecoming” Vs. “AHS” Horror-Thriller 3rd March 2016 Hurtwood House Media Dept. Starring: Joe Hellman Director: Lauren Downing Horror 5th March 2011 20th Century Fox Television Starring: Connie Britton & Dylan McDermott Director: Michael Uppendahl, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Bradley Buecker.
- 11. Camera SAM In American Horror Story’s title sequence there are multiple cuts between quick shots of still, handheld, and panning shots. Multiple POV-style shots are used, which is what we based the majority of our photography on. Similarly with Insidious, there are various close-up shots especially of mise- en-scene items, which we developed on throughout the single shot, including the final close-up. The AHS sequence consists of a lot of short- duration shots. This is typical of a thriller during an intense moment (e.g: fight scene) but not necessarily during an opening sequence. Instead, I would say that we have gone down the stereotypical route of slower shots.
- 12. Sound AHS’s soundtrack is very busy and loud but doesn’t have a great deal of gradual build to it - almost the opposite to our soundtrack. However, it does utilise various samples like thunder cracking. We also included samples like our answer machine beep and rolling drums.
- 13. Mise-En-Scene The title sequence for AHS is filled with mise-en-scene items/codes, just like our “Homecoming”. As I mentioned earlier, these items are specifically shown to the audience in order to indirectly build a story inside their mind. It seems that the title-sequence, despite being a relatively modern TV show, is definitely periodic in what it contains. For example, the items are very dated as well as the clothing of the children in the photos. Our sequence, is far more representative of the current times in terms of costume and objects in the house, which personally allows the audience to relate far better.
- 14. Colour, FX & Font As I explained our colour grade earlier, I won’t delve into it again. On the other hand, the colours within AHS are very dark, gloomy and dirty which connotes the more periodic horror idea. This contrasts our regular colour which keeps the audience guessing about when or where or what may happen in the full-length film. In some shots of the AHS sequence there are added effects like film grain and flare etc. Film grain is very typical of a thriller or horror opening sequence, however we did not have the skills or the software to add high quality effects to our sequence. Although, we did not need them in our opinion. The font (slide 9&10) used is a custom design that definitely connotes horror themes, especially with the added blood splatter. In contrast, our title font is white, clean and typical of a thriller, yet we challenge this in the final title, “Homecoming”, by changing the colour to red to link back to the horror the audience had just witnessed.