Q1

1. Ways in which my media
product uses, develops or
challenges forms and
conventions of real media
products.

2. form & backstory.
Throughout the form of my text, there are many indications of the
horror genre displayed. The equilibrium shows the main location
to be used throughout the rest of the film, showing where the main
character goes missing and whereabouts she has disappeared to.
This has involved using shots of a forests and graveyards, which
are both conventions which relate to horror and are to be shown in
a stereotypical horror film.
.
A back story is also presented for the girl who goes missing, as
there are images of her as a baby with her family as a child, to
display that it is a film involving family, centered around finding
Elizabeth. This gives the audience clues and also helps them with
an understanding of what is happening throughout the rest of the
opening sequence. Elizabeth is shown as a baby in every single one
of the images to represent her as the main character.

3. titles
Titles showing the actors, director, producers, editors and other behind
the scenes work are used as they are usually a main convention of any
real film. We used an italic font in the colour black so that it would not
ruin the black and white, old fashioned theme, and stuck with the
exact same throughout. I chose this type of text as it helps represent
the era of the film and its genre involving dark, gloomy colours, which
tend to be a main convention of horror. We made them fade in and
away slowly so that it fit perfectly with the mood of the sequence and
go with the music and clips. We chose to integrate titles on each of the
clips involving the photo album at the beginning, however once we
moved onto the actual shots we only added them to a few. This is
because some shots were too dark for the text to be visible, which
never happens in any real films. Also because we did not want the
sequence to look repetitive with text constantly in the sequence at all
times.

4. sound
Throughout our opening sequence, we tried to find non-diegetic audio
that displayed as much of an eerie, scary and suspenseful sound effect
as we could. This took a while as we wanted to make sure it was fit for
the sequence the whole way through and would make our film the best
it could be, and to also successfully display the mood and atmosphere.
We chose the same music as we did for our jelly baby sequence and it
successfully worked for both. However instead of just adding music, we
added a few sound effects from iMovie that we found would add
suspense, such as deep droning sounds once the title appears at the
end and throughout other clips to add more dimension. Me and my
partner also made our own sound effect by filming a gasping noise and
inserting it into the clip as the main character Elizabeth appears at
the end. This helped to represent her fear, and we found it improved
our sequence to the best of our ability.

5. Conclusion
• Overall, I think my media text has successfully used conventions of
real films due to my research and planning of horror films such as
Insidious and The Cabin in the Woods, which allowed me to gain a
proper understanding of opening sequences to horror films and have
more ideas to put into my film. I used titles that fade in which I saw
in the Insidious opening sequence, however I used a different font
and colour, showing how I developed something from a real media
product. I also used the idea from Insidious of using an opening
sequence to display the location of the film and help use colours and
iconography to set the scene which in conclusion helped my film to
overall be more successful at showing that it is horror. Using these
ideas to focus my film around made it more successful and realistic
overall.