1. Question 1 - In what ways does
your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and
conventions of real media
products?
Isaac Randall
2. Importance of Conventions
Conventions are highly important as they are what acts as the link between the
individual film and genre. They allow the audience to immediatley identify the
genre of the film and therefore allow the audience to know whether they wish to
see the film or not, depending on whether they are a fan of the genre.
It also engages the audience as they know immediatley what the rough context of
the film is going to be about. For example, if the audience were to see a young
girl walking or moving slowly then it would suggest that she is possesed and also
identify who the antagonist is in the film opening.
Again, if the audience were to see young couple walking with soft music
accompanying the scene then it could suggest that the film is a romance and will
focus on their relashonship. However, if the film suddenly switches and the boy is
killed tragically with a chainsaw, then it would obviously be a horror. Conventions
of other genres can be used in order to trick the audience into a false sense of
security.
3. Real Products
When coming up with the ideas for our product I looked at many existing films that
also use conventions succesfully to achive the desired engament effect. These
included:
• Women in black - The use of dolls and gradual build up of tension during the
film opening. Also the costumes used influenced our Antagonist's costume.
• Seven - We used Seven as inspiration for our titles and also some of the shot
types featured in our ontro such as close up's
• Evil Dead - We chose to start off in the action of the film and also use various
flashbacks in our product
4. Do the characters conform?
I belive that both charcaters in the product do conform to charcters of the
horror genre. Our antagonist conforms as she is failry young, the costume is
similar to that of a stereotypical 'possesed' charcater, her gender and nature of
the character (meaning the way in which she walks aimlessly) also conforms
to the genres conventions. Also the possession of the character is highlighted
by the security camera not working as she enters.
Our protagonist too conforms becuase of his gender, age and props used
show him to be strong and curious. He is also portrayed as frightened but
willing to shout and attempt to free himslef. This conforms to the hero of many
horror films, such as the Women In Black as previously mentioned.
We also chose to conform to Propp's narratvie theory allowing the audience to
clearly relate and identify the different characters in the product. We used a
hero and villan, however chose not to conform to Toderov's narratvie theory.
This was becuase we chose to start the film in a place of high tension and
action. We didnt build up the scene and allow the audience torelate to the
characters as Toderovs theroy states.
5. Why not conform?
As stated we didn't conform to genre, as we chose to not portray the protagonists
day-to-day life but rather just go straight into the action (rising action), such as in the
film Evil Dead. We collectively agreed that this would be the best way to engage the
audience and ensure that we provided them with enough unanswered questions as
possible in order to make them want to watch more.
We also challenged the conventions by using a male
protagonist, rather than a female actor around the ages
of 15-20 as seen in many horror films such as:
• Eden Lake
• The Ring
• The conjuring
We used, as previosuly stated, a male protagonist such
as the character of Arthur Kipps played by Daniel
Radcliff in Hammer Film's The Women in Black.
The Ring Eden Lake
The Conjuring The Women In Black
6. How else did we conform?
We also conformed to the conventions of the genre in other aspects such as
camera work. We used a mix of shot types such as close ups, Mid Shots and a lack
of establishing shots until near the end of the introduction. Again, we used films
such as the Evil Dead as inspiration for this. In particular i think that the lack of
establishing shots works well as it too helps to create ambiguity in the product.
Additionally, we conformed in terms of sound also, using very loud sound effects (of
the CCTV breaking) in order to scare the audience or make them jump. We also
used no speech and few sound effects used mainly for diegetic sounds of dripping
water and blood anbd footsteps. Mainly, however the soundtrack we used conforms
to the conventions of the horror genre, using a tense and unnerving soundtrack,
similar to that of other films in the horror genre.
Long ShotMid ShotClose Up
7. Conclusion
Overall, we used the conventions of the horror genre to our adavntage, as i belive
that it allows the audience to immediatley identify the genre. The way in which we
used narrative theory also allows the audience to clearly identify the two different
characters in the product.
The use of conventions also has allowed us to specifically target existing fans of
the genre. If I had not completed the research process then we would not have
been able to have used existing products as inspiration. When creating the
product the construction and design of the film opening was highly influenced by
the research process and, had we not looked into this in detail, then the final
product may not have been as successful as it was.
