Queston 1 Post 12.1

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

Structure of sequence

The structure of the sequence is overall fairly conventional. We started off by establishing the scene without the introduction to any characters and just a few credits saying who produced the film, then revealing the title of the film once the scene had been set. (We had previously left the title of the film until the very end of the sequence but later on decided to bring it forward as we felt it looked too much like a trailer. Appropriate actor name credits are revealed during the beginning of the first introduction to the characters so that the audience could understand who plays who.

Style of presentation

We chose to present the opening sequence without colour during the 'scene establishing shot' due to the fact it would appear lifeless and more haunted. We would introduce full colour to the film once the characters first appear.

Style/colour of font

We chose to keep the same style font throughout the opening sequence (titles, credits, etc.) as this font suited the horror genre and being white it stood out on the dark background. The font was jagged and had a complete eerie feel to it, resembling the fonts used throughout another 'forest based' horror film 'The Blair Witch Project'.

Genre

Being a tough and slim audience, horror is a tough genre to pull off so by researching into the correct and successful conventions, we managed to create a successful opening sequence of this genre. To ensure the audience could relate to the characters, we created the characters to be around the age of the target audience. We set the sequence in a forest which is a typical yet successful horror setting.

Narrative enigma

The narrative enigma is created by the 'fear of the unknown' playing a huge role in this sequence. Nothing is known about the forest or what lurks within thus creating a mysterious atmosphere; our goal was to sppok the audience but also to keep them guessing by not revealing too much information during the opening sequence. This is a very effective convention in the horror genre.

Introduction of characters

The introduction to the two girls starts off by the viewer watching the mwalk towards the camera linking arms which immediately reveals a close bond between the two. More about their personalities are reveals when they starts discussing the forest and they begin to dare eachother to run in their, both showing a naive yet courageos nature. When the girls are sepearted, the girl searching shows to be very concerned for her friend.

Camera

We used camera cuts and jumps to create a sense of confusion and frenzy within the forest and the girl searching. This was purposely done which conforms to the horror conventions. Close ups were used of the girls face to show her terror and panic when searching for her friend. We used long shots when introducing the two girls to get a sense of their age and to show their full outfits so that the audience could see they werre students and relate to them more.

Sound

We used a copyright free horror track to set the mood and atmosphere. The sound and tempo builds up along with the action of the sequence which is a huge horror convention. Using the amount of dialogue isn't always a convention but within horror films such as 'The Wrong Turn', dialogue is used effectively within their opening sequence so we decided to go with frequent dialogue to cause the viewers to feel more emotion for the characters.

Editing & Special Effects

We used special effects during the establishing shot (this was the only time we used them due to the fact we wanted our sequence to be as believable as possible) to make the setting seem more spooky. We made the scene black and white and slightly blurred.

Mise-en-scene

To make it clear that our characters were school girls, we made them dress in full school uniform with school bags. This conforms to the horror conventions as school girls are used frequently throughout horror of any nationality.