The document summarizes the conventions and target audience considerations for a horror film opening scene created by the author. It discusses following conventions like using a female victim and a knife as the weapon, while also challenging conventions like having the scene during the day instead of at night. The target audience was chosen as males and females aged 16-25 as slasher films appeal to young adults. The author also reflects on learning new editing skills through creating the scene.

1. Evaluation By Danielle Short

2. Conventions For our media product we decided upon creating a 2 minute opening scene for a horror film. Our opening sequence is based around the slasher genre, so it follows the conventions of similar horror films such as Scream, Prom Night, Halloween etc. One of the main conventions I found which was consistent in all of these films was that the main weapon used was always a knife, therefore when creating our opening scene we used a knife as one of our props in order to immediately tell the viewer that the film is of the horror genre. One convention we challenged was the consistency of the night time setting in most horror films, this convention was also challenged in the film the Shining and we believe this was effective. We thought that setting the film during the daytime would work well because most people only associate the night time with murder and horror, whereas we thought it may work effectively because in the day time people believe they are safe, especially in their own home, and this challenges this idea. Another convention we followed was the use of low key lighting, although we set the film during the daytime we used low key lighting inside the house to create an eerie, unsafe effect. Another common convention we followed was the use of a female victim, women are seen to be more vulnerable than males therefore this may make the audience feel more scared for the character than if a male was used.

3. Often used in horror films is the disruption of normality, we followed this convention in our film effectively. For example we hear a bang in one of the other rooms which is not normal when a person is home alone, this helps to frighten the viewer. Another convention we followed was our use of a young female victim, we chose to use this convention as young females are seen as vulnerable and an easy target for the killer. We aimed to stick to the conventions of a slasher film but slightly challenged them where we felt appropriate.

4. Audience The target audience we chose for our product was both males and females between the ages of 16 and 25. We decided upon this audience as we believed people in this category would be able to relate to characters in the film as they are young characters, and slasher films commonly try attract young adults. Also we believed young adults would be easier to scare as they are more entertained by blood and tension, features which slasher films commonly use. We followed most of the conventions as we believed this would attract this target audience but we also challenged a few conventions to offer something new, that they possibly hadn’t seen before, for our audience.

5. Over the process of creating our film I learned a variety of new skills. I learned how to use the program I movie which enabled me to edit my movie and add visual and audio affects where appropriate. I also used the website blogger which enabled us to upload all our work on to the blog, also it enabled us to look at previous work done by other students to give us ideas for our own product to make it the best we possibly could.

6. I believe we made good progress between creating our preliminary task and creating our final product. I learnt how to create a wider range of camera shots and improved a lot on my editing skills. I worked in a partner ship with Jack Shimmin. We both worked together and shared ideas in order to create the best product we found possible. We both worked together to create our storyboard and both shared ideas to create something realistic but effective. We both contributed in the filming, I did a little bit of acting whilst Jack filmed but we worked together in order to create effective shots and cuts. Finally we both contributed to the editing and agreed on all decisions which created our final product. I found working in a partnership helped me expand my ideas and improved my teamwork skills.

7. Media Institutions In order to create our product we researched how the film would be produced and the process of this. The film is firstly produced by the production company, the company we created was slasherproductions. The film will then be shown at various cinemas around the country, where it will be available to watch for a certain time. The film is then distributed across the country and made available to buy on DVD and blue-ray. The film will then be made available on sky or cable television but it will be on a pay-per-view basis. Next the film will be shown on satellite for people with satellite television to view. After this long process the film will finally be available on ordinary television for the nation to watch, it can be broadcasted on ITV, or the BBC. This is an example of how the media institution works.