The document discusses how the media product conforms to conventions of psychological horror films. It notes that the opening titles use red text, the plot involves murder and foreshadowing, costumes are all black, and lighting creates a scary atmosphere. Character exposition and roles like the final girl also follow horror conventions. The document analyzes how elements like sound, camera work, editing, typography, and color/visual techniques conform to typical techniques used in horror films to build suspense, tension, and engage audiences. However, it notes the representation of gender roles could be seen as conveying outdated ideologies.

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

2. Is the form of our opening
conventional?
• The form of our opening is conventional of a horror
film
• This is shown in the titles, red connotes danger and
death and is typical of a horror film
• The plot follows a psychological horror theme
• Character exposition is shown as very conventional of
horror for example the final girl.
• We create an enigma which can be interpreted in
different ways to leave the audience to apply their own
meaning to it. This is a frequent case in a lot of horror
films as a lot, especially psychological are based around
messing with the mind.

3. How does your opening conform or
challenge the conventions of our chosen
sub-genre of horror?
• Our opening conforms to the conventions of
our chosen subgenre of horror, psychological
horror.

4. Character
• Character exposition is shown a fair amount in our opening
sequence with Charlie being the protagonist while introducing
other characters throughout the sequence.
• Charlie takes the final girl role, while Max is the psychopathic
killer, with three materialistic teenage girls.

5. Plot
• The plot shows conventions of horror as it
involves aspects like murder and
foreshadowing.

6. Mise-en-scene
• We applied typical horror to most features of mise-en-scene.
• The costumes were all the same, all the characters wore black
which connotes darkness and fear.
• Low key lighting was used to create a scary atmosphere.
• Character blocking showed fear of the murderer which does
not challenge the conventions of horror.

7. Sound
• We used ambience to create suspense and
sharp high pitched sounds to put the audience
on edge.
• This is typical in horror films to make the
audience feel uncomfortable.
• All the rest was non-diagetic sound to keep up
the sense of reality.

8. Camera Work
• We used a range of different camera shots, a lot of them
being stills or pans.
• We used point of view shots and candid angles to bring in a
perspective but stills were mainly useful to catch the facial
expressions and body movements of the characters.
• In one scene we used tracking to zoom in on the action while
building up suspense to the climactic moment.

9. Editing Style
• We used continuity editing to make our
opening more realistic, to pull the audience in.
It looks more professional and therefore more
effective if the shots flow as one.

10. Typography/ Title Position, Animation
etc
• The typography conforms to the conventions of horror, by
using red writing the audience are reminded of the genre and
the standard font makes it more serious and professional
looking.
• We wanted to keep the animations very simple so as not to
take the audience’s eyes of the on-screen action so we faded
the titles in and out.
• We also positioned the credits in the corners of the screen for
the same reason.

11. Colour/ Visual Techniques
• We didn’t alter the colour and lighting too much because we wanted to
keep it looking natural and realistic.
• However as we filmed on different days, the scenes and slightly different
lights which we fixed.
• We wanted to distinguish a contrast between the fresh, natural light of the
reality scenes and the darkness of the dream scenes.
• We also applied a blurred edges to the dream scenes to highlight this.

12. Representation and Ideology
• The victims are all females while the attacker
is male, conveying a residual ideology of
gender roles.