This document discusses the film opening that the student created for their media production unit. It begins by explaining that they chose to do a horror/thriller genre film. It then discusses researching conventions of those genres by analyzing 4 example films. Key codes and conventions identified include camera angles, editing techniques, lighting, sound, and more. The student explains how their opening incorporated many of these conventions but also developed some further, such as adding blurred edges. They challenged conventions as well, such as using unique camera focus. Overall, the summary discusses how the student both followed and expanded upon genre conventions for their fictional film opening.

1. Unit G321
‘The titles and opening sequence
of a new fictional film.’
Emma Gower - 6028

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

3. WHAT GENRE DID WE CHOOSE AND WHY?
Before we started, we both decided that we wanted to create a horror/thriller type of film because it was our
favourite genre and we enjoy watching those types of movies. As we have chosen 2 types to base our film on,
this meant we had to do some research into both of these genre's, which we did as soon as we had decided.
HORROR THRILLER
'A genre which is meant to scare its readers and 'High stakes, non-stop action, plot twists, exciting settings
make the audience feel terror.' 'Unsettling films and an adrenalin packed climax.' 'An exciting, suspenseful
designed to frighten, panic, cause play or story, especially a mystery story that thrills the
dread, alarm, terrify, shock whilst also providing audience.'
captivating entertainment in a fearsome
experience.’

4. WHERE DID WE LOOK FOR CODES AND CONVENTIONS?
I chose to look at 3 film openings to decide which are the most important codes and conventions so that we can follow and use
them ourselves. I looked at 1 contemporary film, 1 British horror/thriller film, 1 inspirational film and 1 genre defining fi lm so
I had a range of different ones to see if the conventions were all the same or different.
-1 CONTEMPORARY FILM: ‘LAW ABIDING CITIZEN’
The mise-en-scene is similar to what we wanted
The action and horror that is portrayed in first 2 minutes is the same effect that we want to create
-1 BRITISH HORROR/THRILLER FILM: ‘DORIAN GRAY’
Good audience appealing techniques
Mass amount of horror
Inspiring overall concept
-1 INSPIRATIONAL FILM: ‘THE MESSENGERS’
Main inspiration/similarity
Used black and white editing, dark lighting, house scenes
-1 GENRE DEFINING FILM: ‘PSYCHO’
Famous and worldwide horror and thriller film
Fits well with genre of own film
Good to analyse for ideas for our own

5. CODES AND CONVENTIONS
Codes and conventions shape what is expected and what is produced when you are creating a new media product.
I had to look at the typical codes and conventions of the genre’s we had chosen so we could use them as
guidelines and create a successful film like real media products already. These are the camera, editing, mise-en-
scene and sound conventions that I found in the 4 film openings I looked at:
Above: From the film ‘Dorian
Camera: Gray’ showing a Close-up shot of
•Quick changes in camera angles – LS to CU quickly – pace is faster and picks up audience’s attention more an important object
•Close-ups of key subjects/events – shows importance/relevance to the storyline
•Wide shots – establish surroundings, but normally surroundings are in darkness and even though audience are
being shown a wide shot, they can’t always see the background clearly
Editing:
•Quick cuts – make the pace fast
•High angles – show that characters are in danger, suspense for audience
•Low angles – empower the characters, heroic, excites audience Above: From the film ‘Law Abiding
•Dark colours – different techniques including black and white, blurred edges, tail feathers, etc. Citizen’ showing a High angle shot of
one of the characters
Mise-en-place:
•Dark lighting - mystery, hard to make out scenery
•Dark coloured props and background – eeriness, sets the mood and tone to very suspicious, creepy
•Not many objects in scene/only relevant ones – doesn’t draw audience’s attention away from main action
Sound:
•Music that creates tension – sets the mood of the scene, audience can guess what might happen from the
music, puts the audience on edge, sets the scene
•Short, sharp sounds to exaggerate movements/actions – draws audience’s attention to the action more, makes itAbove: From the film ‘Psycho’ showing a
important scene in almost darkness so it’s hard for
audience to make out what’s happening

6. 9 KEY SHOTS
The same as a I did to the 4 films that I analysed for, I have broken the opening of ‘Necrophobia’ into 9 key
shots as a sort of summary as to what happens in the first 2 minutes. Here are the 9 shots:

7. HOW HAVE WE USED FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?
It was important for us to obviously stick to the research of codes and conventions that we
made at the beginning, so these are the forms and conventions that we found from other
films, and actually put into practice for our film:
-Variety of camera angles – high and low (e.g. High angle when main character is ripping up
paper to show from his perspective, Low angle when character is being hurt to show their view)
-Variety of camera shots - CU to LS (e.g. LS of house at beginning, CU of knives being
sharpened) Close-up
-Fast cuts - to increase speed of pace (e.g. when characters were running through the forests
and fields)
-Dark lighting – make it more mysterious (e.g.. edited tail feather, black and white editing)
High angle
-Tense music – eerie, suspenseful, scary to influence audience (e.g. music starts at beginning
and sets the tone)
-Short, sharp sound effects – to add edge and power to key scenes/points (e.g. in one of the
final scenes when the bedroom cuts to blackness)
-Stereotypical villain and victims – audience can relate well to characters and understand
events (e.g. the victims typically being all females and wearing light colours, and the villain
being quite tall and dressed in dark colours)

8. HOW HAVE WE DEVELOPED FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL
MEDIA PRODUCTS?
We developed certain forms and conventions so that they were adapted to our film (for
example: we used the original ‘editing’ but used that to edit our work with a ‘tail feather’
around the edges to make the scenes darker and look like they have natural shadows). These
are the codes and conventions that we then developed and even though keeping the same
original idea, we produced more of it:
Zooming in
to out
-Included CU shots and LS in both one sequence – (e.g. the zooming in and out in the first
scene with the house)
-Close ups of important subjects and then zooming out to important settings – (e.g. close up
of door name and then zooming out to show entire house)
-Edited on Final Cut to make the lighting even darker – makes it more mysterious for audience
if they can’t make out some of the scenery as they are in the ‘unknown’ (e.g. the final scene of
the village is in almost blackness and only the houses and roads can be made out)
-Dull coloured scenery – (e.g. forests, fields, dark weather) – specifically chosen objects to
feature that are typical horror/thriller scenery/locations, and were chosen to build the
suspense and action of the film
-Variety of pieces of tense music – to change it around a bit so that the audience doesn’t get
bored of hearing the same piece of music throughout, and the variety allowed us to choose Dull coloured scenery, and
more appropriate pieces of music for different scenes (e.g. starts off with one music, then shot in evening time
changes when the pace increases and then goes back to same piece of music at end when pace
calms down again)

9. HOW HAVE WE CHALLENGED FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL
MEDIA PRODUCTS?
To make our product our own, we had to remember to challenge some of the codes
and conventions that we found out, and this meant by twisting them and turning
them into something unique, or making up one of our own conventions. These are
the forms and conventions that we challenged completely to make our own:
-Using camera focus appropriately – we had to do this by ourselves, but I think this
is an important convention in most horror/thriller films because it’s so the audience
concentrates on foreground subjects rather than background, and if they are
clueless as to the surroundings then they are more likely to feel tense and scared. This shows slight blur
around the edges and in the
area highlighted
-Blurred out some objects and the edges – similar to the above, but instead we
edited out some of the edges on the Final Cut programme so that it fit our ‘in the
past’ scenario we were trying to create.
-Edited into black and white – (inspiration from the opening of the film ‘The
Above: ‘The Messengers’
Messengers’) I chose this to make it darker and duller- therefore more scary and
Below: Our Film ‘Necrophobia’
more horror/thriller like- and show that it’s from the past- as it was set in 2001
which was 10 years ago from the rest of the film.

10. REFERENCES
Horror Definition: http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html
Thriller Definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thriller
Opening of ‘Law Abiding Citizen’ via Youtube -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3FAyARAVVI
Opening of ‘Psycho’ via Youtube -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzkIaD6QGQw
Opening of ‘The Messengers’ via Youtube -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8-XOYNHa9c
Opening of ‘Dorian Gray’ via Youtube (was removed)
Youtube – www.youtube.com
Google Images – www.google.com/images