Q1: In what ways our media product uses, develops or challenges forms and convention of real media products?

EVALUATION!

Paranormal Activity Handheld Shot

One of our handheld shots

One way in which we found our production uses the forms and conventions of a film with the horror/mystery genre is that we included a handheld shot of the mysterious man walking up the stairs and into the bathroom. The handheld shot in a horror film is usually used to create tension and atmosphere and that’s why we have decided to include it. It also helps create a sense of foreboding. One real media product that we can compare our handheld shots to is 'Paranormal Activity', this is because paranormal activity is film full of a families own footage of the mysterious happenings in the house and therefore filled with handheld shots which we can compare to our handheld shots.

Scream Costuming

Our Costuming of the Mysterious Man

We found by looking at the Mise En Scene that our costumes were conventional and challenging to the normal forms of a horror film. This is because we have one scene where the babysitting girl wears quite casual clothes with leggings and a baggy top and typically what you’d expect in a horror film if someone is going about their daily lives however in the second scene the girl is obviously wearing sportswear such as trainers, tight top, leggings etc... As she is jogging and you wouldn’t usually see this sort of scene and therefore costume in a typical horror film. Also, the mysterious man is dressed all in black with his face covered which uses the conventions of a film of our genre such as in the film 'Scream' the man that nobody knows the identity of is covered with a mask and the one of the victims is at home dressed in her causal/everyday clothes.

The last thing we evaluated in detail was the sound and in particular dialogue. We thought the dialogue challenge the normal conventions of a horror film as throughout the whole opening we have virtually no dialogue and this was done purposefully. The reason why this was done on purpose was because we were fully aware of the fact we aren’t very good actors within our group and therefore didn’t want to risk the quality of actors performance. The only times we have dialogue is the screaming in the bathroom which works well and at the end of the running scene when the girl casually meets her mate however we do not like this element of our opening and plan to cut that scene out. 'Sinister' is a film that we believe has challenged the convention of dialogue as there is lack of flowing dialogue.

We believe that for our film opening it would be quite risky as a horror/mystery for us to challenge too many conventions and forms of a horror film as if we did then the film would lose impact of tension and atmosphere. This is why most of the elements in our film opening have used the popular conventions such as handheld shots, creepy music, a news report in background sound and a title sequence that fits into the film genre.