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

2. Before creating the final product of the film
introduction, I conducted some research to help
choose the type of horror film we wanted to create a
film introduction for. I watched a wide range of
horror films and analysed them in order to inspire
the group with ideas for our own films and how we
could turn these into a real media product. Three of
the films I watched which most inspired my views on
the film were ‘Psycho,’ ‘The Shining’ and ‘Donnie
Darko.’

3. The Idea:
To get to our idea for our horror film, we used all the resources we could. We created mind
maps of types of horrors we could do, including mental illness. We then looked at these
theme in more detail, discussing ideas for each theme to see which ones would be
easy, effective and achievable for us. We first thought of doing a slasher film. But we then
came across the idea of using mental health as a theme. We knew this wouldn’t be easy to
convey in a short film introduction but it was different and an interesting theme to use for
our horror film introduction.
.

4. Psycho
‘Psycho’ (1960) directed by Alfred Hitchcock really inspired us to create a psychological
horror. Although Psycho is a slasher film, we were intrigued at how much Alfred Hitchcock
was able to create tension and fear using the mind in this film. One of the ideas in this
film, how the film made anyone feel scared to walk into our own (or any) bathroom. I was
intrigued at the idea of the social psyche and how we could make an audience feel scared
and anxious in their own home. This is why we chose to create a psychological film, as it is
a more interesting and intriguing way of scaring an audience. Psycho also gave us the idea
to set the film mainly inside the couples house, as this was a setting that is supposed to
make people feel safe, secure and comfortable and we wanted our film and our film intro
to make people feel uncomfortable and unsettled which our felt the house was a perfect
setting to do this in order to disturb and scare.

5. Donnie Darko
We were also inspired by the film ‘Donnie Darko’
released in 2001, directed by Richard Kelly. This is
personally one of my favorite films and it really
interested us in creating a psychological horror. Donnie
Darko is a strange and uncanny film that focuses on
one man who keeps seeing an imaginary figure. This
helped us to create the idea of the protagonist having
certain ideas on how his past was created, however it
isn’t a true representation, just like Frank the Rabbit.
Jake Gyllenhaal, the main actor in the film, said that
the director “used the mainstream style of film making
against itself, to be subversive.” This reflects the style
of the film, as it was very disjointed, weird and
mysterious and nothing like any other films I have seen.

6. The Shining
The final film that inspired us was, ‘The Shining’ (1980) directed by Stanley
Kubrick. This classic horror movie gave us the inspiration to create a film intro
for a film linked with mental illness. The Shining shows how one person can
decay through being mentally ill and this we believed was powerful and
scary, again linking with our thoughts on having a psychological horror. We also
felt like doing a a film introduction with a man with a mental illness of
schizophrenia as we thought this was an interesting theme and it was one that
our group really enjoyed doing and creating ideas to portray this theme within
the trailer.
Although we enjoyed creating a film introduction out of the theme of mental
illness, we questioned why mental illness induces horror in some films, even
though it is a serious medical illness which people cannot help. I looked at a
couple articles online and found different answers. The most common was the
fact that there is a stereotype on people with mental illness for being violent
thus being scary. Also, the thought that many of us could develop a mental
illness may be scary in itself causing us to subconsciously separate ourselves
from “them.”

7. Developing Media Conventions
• In the film introduction, I think our group
haven’t challenged media conventions, and
more followed them. This is shown through
the stereotypical view of our protagonist going
to a therapy group, and a stereotypical
therapist, who is represented as calm and
resourceful. The flashback scenes are also
typical in a psychological thriller, which help
show our protagonist and how disjointed he is
from society.

8. Challenging Media Conventions
• As previously said, Jake Gyllenhaal, the main
actor in Donnie Darko, said that the director
“used the mainstream style of film making
against itself, to be subversive.”. Our fim
introduction doesn’t challenge many
conventions, such as using titles that are
similar to those seen in Se7en and using what
was already there to expand upon it.

9. We also used real media products with our use of music. When researching existing short
film introductions, we watched them on mute and found that when watching these with
no sound, they were not as scary to watch as when the sound was on. This showed us how
important music and sound effects are.
For us, this took the most time as we wanted our music and sound effects to fit our intro
perfectly and make the trailer feel eerie, mysterious and above all- scary as this was very
important in making our short film introduction effective.
Overall, our short film intro was able to use, develop and challenge the forms and
conventions of real media products. We used ideas and influences from existing
media, music and information but we developed these ideas into our own and changed
them so that we could challenge the stereotypes and ideas of existing media products.
By Connor Flello
Music