In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products Danielle Merrikin

Title fonts and style

Our font colour and style have stayed the same throughout the whole of our film opening as we did not want it to look rushed, un proffesional but also not to confuse the audience. We made the titles run through the film opening and not just in sections as we wanted to show continuity within our product. We chose quite a simple font as it looks mature but the fade out effect gave it that edginess and made the clip look eerie. In most film openings for horror films the titles can vary from sizes depending on the importance of the person involved in the film, however for ours we decided to keep them the same size. This is how we challenged other horror products as the font size they use is rather big to portray that scary feel of their film.

Genre and how and how the opening shot shows this

The genre we chose is horror. As our film opening goes on, you can see that it fits within this genre, however the opening shot is an exception. Our opening shot is of Chelsea (Rachel) sitting at a small table typing on her laptop; from this you would not expect that the product is horror. Chelsea does not show any facial expression that she could be scared or worried that anything is happening around her, but throughout the film opening this changes. Many horror films start of with a normal scene just to introduce the main character, we thought this was successful and used it for our own.

Props

We used quite a few props in our film opening, some we were planned to use and some not. The main prop is seen quite early on in the film opening, the masked figures knife. This prop is one that we planned on using and plays an important role of portraying the antagonist. The character in the clip is hidden behind a mask which links in with the genre as it represents the unknown. This will engage the audience as they would want o know what the knife if going to be used for in the film. The character is only seen with this prop at the start of the film opening and that is it. A knife/weapon is a generic convention of a horror film and is used a lot in them.

Camera and editing

We used camera movements like track to show the masked figure running fast around Rachel. We decided to use track instead of pan as track is used a lot to show a moving object, although pan is to we thought track would be better for that type of shot. We had to use a tripod for this shot and many of the others so the camera movement would not be jerky or shaky.

Costumes and how the characters are introduced

The characters that are shown in the film opening are dressed very differently, this si because what they wear portrays them as a character. For example Rachel is wearing casual light clothes to show how innocent she is. In this shot she is looking around for the masked figure and looks quite scared. Most horror films use dark clothing for any character, we have challenged this as we wanted to show how sweet and “normal” our character is. We introduced the masked figure by showing the mask first in the person hand. I think this is a good shot to use to introduce a mysterious character as it didn’t give the identity of the figure away from the start.

Setting and location

We have 3 locations for our film opening, however one is used very little; the road. Our main setting on the other hand is a wood like area. This setting is another generic convention of a horror film and is used a lot within the horror industry. The woods is used to show the characteristics of the masked figure. The woods/forests is normally described as scary, dark, the unknown and so on… we wanted to add people feelings of the setting to the character itself. Rachel is lead to the woods, this is out of her comfort zone as she

is used to calm rooms which shows her personality in them.

Story and how the opening sets it up

The film opening is quite significant to the storyline, but is not noticed until further along. Rachel is typing on a computer about what she has been experiencing the past years. She is keeping an electronic copy of her diary so that she could share it with the world as she believes she may not be the other one experiencing it. Just from this, i would believe that the audience would be engaged as they would want to know why she is writing what she is writing and if it is going to play some what role within the film opening.

Special effects

Our film opening contains of quite a few effects. One significant effect we used was a film grain filter. We used this to show a sense of history or past of the happenings Rachel is having. However if it was a film, it would be someone else watching the film as they found it in the house that Rachel lived in. Another effect we used was slow motion and fast motion. We used slow motion at the beginning in the scene of the mask in the figures hand so that the audience could see a significant part of the film opening long enough. The part which we used fast motion in is to speed up the masked figure to show that they are distorted. This is used quite a lot in horror films, especially filters when they are wanting to create an effect of a dream, film and so on.

The title of the film

Our film is called DEAD DREAMING. It took a while to come up with the name but we chose it as the film is about Rachel’s dream about the masked figure but she doesn’t know if she is alive or dead. The tile of the film is shown right at the end of our film opening as it concludes it but also ends quite dramatically as the font is larger than the rest of the titles. Although that the font size if bigger, we decided to keep the font style and colour the same so they fit in well with each other and the theme. Our title would be considered as a convention as it has the noun “dead” in it.