G321 - Evaluation - Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop of challenge the convention of real media products?

Conventions of a real media product

The chosen film genre for my two minute opening is a Psycological Horror. Both planning and filming combined showed that I stuck with MOST of the general methods, techniques and conventions used to make psycological horror movies.


An example of one of the typical conventions I used in my two minute opening would be the use of characters, such as the very typical lead role from a young female and perhaps the role of authority, in this case the Inspector. Going beyond the basics, we've also developed and moulded our characters to fit a typical psycological horror movie. The main character for example, Quinn, she fits into a typical psycological horror movie due to her image and her characteristics. She is a young and attractive woman who has a great life and a fiance, no one would expect such innocence and beauty to turn out so horrid and gruesome, which is a common convention, An unexpected killer. Other characters often used could be close relatives of the main character that could get killed or kidnapped which have a negative effect upon the main character. Directors often use these for a plot twist or to lead you to come to judgements to soon, getting you to think along with the movie. In our short movie, we created a fiance for the main character who, in our synopsis, gets killed. We did this to get a bigger picture on the outcome of events after the two minutes, and gives a good effect of everything being covered and nothing being missed.

More great examples of using typical conventions lay within the storyline, the main structure to everything. This is what makes every movie unique, however, many horror movies in this generation continue to use the same conventions as they did in previous generations. This is because of new trends and technology, directors have been able to add their own twist to a convention and then create their own.

Conventions that you would expect to see built up with the story line are features of the main plot. For example, it would be full of suspense, with horrid twists and mental torment. You'll also find the main character is in the centre of all this horror, it's a more common convention for the main character to be the one being under the threat of all the bad things the movie has to offer, often losing close ones and perhaps showing a glimpse of unexpected bravery at unexpected moments. Perhaps the most renown convention of all would be that there is almost NEVER a happy ending. The main character could die, leading the audience to believe that the horror cannot be stopped. We used nearly all of these conventions as every good horror movie ever made also tends to use these common conventions. As long as you add your own twist and change to it, it can be a new horror experience each time.

Moving on from characters and storyline, you start to approach the image to your movie, the setting. A typical convention for a psycological horror will have dim lighting, or none at all. Sometimes the light source is replaced  to a candle, which gives an instant atmospheric touch, the character has automatically been driven out of civilisation and thrown into the dark ages with the candles! As for buildings there isn't too much variety, although if you get the lighting and setting right, you can make horror out of almost any building. Typical buildings used in these types of horrors would be abandoned shacks, warehouses and even police stations. Typical conventions would be an abandoned town, no help for 30 miles for example, a feeling of vulnerability. Another common one would be a mental asylum, very plain and blank which may give off a contrast. If people are in an asylum, they have something wrong with them, their head is all over the place yet the walls are so plain and everything is so quiet, almost like there is a maniac loose within this quiet building.We created a great effect from choosing an asylum as our main setting because we used very good props such as the painting of a calm and happy picture which was a good contrast and perhaps led the audience to believe this would be a calm scene. We also made this scene effective by giving it a real authentic asylum feeling to it, bringing it a nurse with a clipboard for a section. All these factors made sure our scene for the asylum felt real and effective.

One of the more important conventions to a psycological horror is the sound played during certain scenes. The music could be very calm yet misleading, preparing the audience for a fright, or perhaps just distracting them from something more horrific.

 For a classic psycological horror you may have slow music, perhaps a violin weeping away in unisen with the speed of the scene and the characters movement. There will always be a build up of sound. A heart beat for example, starting off slow and very calm which then slowly builds up bringing a faster paced beat as time goes on. The scene gets fasted and more intense and the music stays in time with this which creates a phenominal effect of fear and shock. This is a convention that simply cannot be missed out in any psycological horror let alone any horror for that matter, it's a very good movie technique and one we have made sure of using in our two minutes opening, like our movie, it's the key to building up suspense without the audience realising.

Carrying on from sound we have props, these can be extremely important in some scenes, especially if the character comes in contact with the prop and interacts with it. Typical props for a psycological horror would be comforting things, shown as scary or mutilated. For example a Teddy bear or a porclean doll, in the right environment can be comforting and soothing, but when thrown into the world of horror it can take away even the strongest comfort.

A teddy bear is meant to be there for you to hug, but who'd want to hug a half burnt teddy bear with missing eyes? Other typical props are a little more common and consist mostly of weapons, knifes, barbed wire, hammers, scythes and cleavers. Moslty built up of instruments that aren't meant for killing, which gives you a fright and the feeling that anything can kill you.

For our opening, only two props are interacted with, the clipboard and the photograph. The clipboard is used to make it clearer to the audience that the character with the clipboard is a nurse. The second prop is a very important prop, it's used to trigger off a series of thoughts in our main character head that spirals out of control and come to a grand finale before the two minutes it over. The effect that that single prop makes over our movie is very effective as the entire short clip goes out of control and creates confusion among the audience.

The final convention is cinematography and editing. Each type of film, if it be, Horror, romance, comedy or action will have significant cuts and edits which make them fit into what category they're in. Psycological genres tend not to use fast movement of the camera, everything on screen is usually quite clear and there is hardely any, if not no zooms. When a zoom is used, it will be a very slow zoom, usually panning onto the characters face. Editing can add in flashbacks, and a mix of emotions and memories to create an effect of confusion and getting mislead. Typical conventions will be things such as, like I've already stated: Flashbacks.

For our film we used a prop to trigger a series of memories and thoughts, which is all packed up into 20 - 30 seconds. There is much activity confusing and getting the audience to ask questions about the scene, and what's happening in her head, again one of our main goals - to get the audience asking questions and thinking along with the movie.

Conventions that I've twisted

When deciding what convenstion to twist we needed to be really careful, changing the type of character wasn't really a great idea as a female lead is a strong choice. We knew we had to keep the female as the lead role due to how sucessful previous movies have been with female lead roles, you don't often find a good psycological horror with an elderly man or a teenager, therefore we decided on keeping the young woman. We were happy with the setting also, and either way the sound and lighting would be the same, this meant we needed to choose something that would be extremely effective towards the audience and leave them shocked by the end of the movie. Our choice was to make our movie storyline similar the the storyline of 'The Others'. The audience are led to believe something horrid is happening to the main character, and that the movie is based on them trying to escape the evil trying to get to them. In 'The Others' The audience are led to believe that the main characters are being haunted, when actually it's them doing the haunting which is gives a strong impact for an ending, leaving the audience with questions to ask, and bringing in confusion, making them think about the movie and what's just happened as the credits roll.



Me and my partner loved the idea of this so we decided, instead of filming from the victims points of view, film from the killers point of view. This is VERY unexpected, especially from the character we created, we're sure to leave the audience in suspense and confusion towards the end of the two minutes, questions will need answering and this is exactly what we want - The audience to ask questions