Activity 1 – In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Activity 1 – In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

1) This is the title of the film; it uses the convention of horror films. The conventions of a horror title are that they are normally short, one or two words, to the point and give a clue to the story. In comparison to another horror film, Psycho. This is a classic horror film and the title is short, to the point similar to our title. This title lives up to all the normal horror conventions in terms of a title, its short, to the point, gives away what the story is about and gives a menacing feel to the film. The title “Revenge” gives a menacing feel to the film, gives away roughly what the film is about, short and to the point making it a convention of horror.

2) This frame shows the setting of where the film is. In an abandoned warehouse. The normal convention of horror films is that it is set somewhere remote or isolated. This can be seen in the numerous Saw films. These are normally set in some sort of building which tends to be abandoned. Our film lives up to the conventions of horror as it’s mainly set somewhere remote and isolated, an abandoned warehouse.

3) This frame shows one of the costumes we used. This is the character seen after the establishing shot of the group in the warehouse so this character is seen as the kidnapper. He is seen from behind in just a coat and a hood. This fits in with the horror genre as most villains are hidden until the end of the film, in films such as Scream and Saw, both popular horror films, the villain is seen in a hood without being revealed until the end of the film.

4) This frame highlights the camera work we did. This shot show how my character, Roman, was introduced. We used a piece of acrylic (plastic) in front of the camera lens to make it look like I was looking into a mirror.

5) Frame 5 shows the title font and style we used in our opening sequence. The style of font we used was bold and it was red on a black background. This ensures our opening sequence fits in with the conventions of real horror films, this can be seen in another horror film; Dawn of The Dead. This film in the horror genre also uses big bold red writing ensuring our film fits in with horror conventions.

6) This frame shows how the opening helps set up the story. This shows Molly getting ready for a party and the party is where the group end up being captured. This is a convention of horror films and can be seen in Scream 4, as there are two friends getting ready to go out to where they’re murdered. This is a convention as many horror films mislead the audience into a false sense of security before something bad happens, and we have done this as we used upbeat music as well as us getting ready for a party giving off a positive vibe.

7) This frame shows how our opening sequence suggests a genre; this frame shows the genre of horror as we have used a rather graphic way to portray that my character has been brutally murdered. This uses the convention of real horror films as the first character to die is never shown how they die they are normally found dead which is what we have done in our opening sequence.

8) Frame 8 shows how our characters are introduced. We decided to introduce our characters by placing their names somewhere in the shot for example on Molly’s back, Roman’s mirror & Bart’s rolling paper.

9) Frame 9 shows the special effects we used. In this shot we used slot motion of Bart’s cigarette hitting the floor. This use a convention of horror films, many horror films use slow motion to show something significant. We decided to show the cigarette dropping in slow motion because smoking can connote death and as a character was going to die we thought to use the cigarette as a clue.