Question 1

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

9 Frame analysis

For our film introduction we used a number of conventions commonly used in the horror genre, as well as conventions associated with thriller. We have separated our introduction in nine frames in order to explain where we have, or haven’t, used these conventions.

Frame 1

The Cabin in the woods

Cabin in the Woods had the largest impact on our film, mainly because it managed to mix horror, thriller and comedy without breaking down the conventions of each genre. We tried to follow this type of film making, and this frame shows how we have paid homage to the film by using a similar style of super imposed titles. The titles dominate the screen, but still allow the audience to observe what else is happening within the shot. This goes against the conventions of thriller and horror, because it counter-typically presents the audience with information about the who created the film, without the use of more aesthetically pleasing logos. We chose to do this because the film we are making is indie, so it wouldn’t feel right to use stereotypical conventions which would take away some of individuality of our film.

Frame 2

Black and white superimposedtitles

This frame shows how we tried to incorporate a more some generic conventions of all genres into our film. Our use of much smaller, less dominating, superimposed titles to show information such as Director, editor and actor follows a technique which has been used in almost every film since the technique was discovered. We therefor thought that there would be no point missing out something which has completely dominated cinema. We did however follow the theme of red, and used the same font for continuity purposes.

Frame 3

Scream

Frame 3 shows Jamal buttering and jamming toast, with the entire kitchen scene having the sole purpose to create a tense atmosphere for the audience. ‘Scream’ has established a number of conventions within the horror genre, including a scene when Drew Barrymore’s character is making popcorn in the kitchen. The reason the scene builds tension is because nothing interesting is happening. The audience must therefor wait for the graphic conflict which they know must come soon. Our target audience research found the majority of our target audience would have ‘Scream’, so we knew it would be safe to use this newly established convention.

Frame 4

Scream

‘Scream’, ‘Jason’, ‘Friday the 13th’ and a number of other horror films have all used a masked antagonist, so they are de-humanised from all other characters. This builds fear and scares the audience because they are unable to read the antagonist’s emotions. With both of us being huge film fans, we wanted to use this convention because, similar to superimposed titles, it has dominated the horror genre. However, the baseball bat was a way for us to move away form stereotypical conventions because the most common murder weapon in a horror film is a knife. We chose a baseball bat because it symbolises murder being ‘sport’. People are also de-sensitised to violence if the murder involves no blood or gore, which means the audience can enjoy the film; knowing that it is just a film.

Frame 5

Hannibal mask

Frame 5 is from the perspective of the antagonist as he puts on the mask. The main purpose of this is to build tension, and because we saw it in another horror film and thought it was aesthetically pleasing. This also breaks down the barrier between the audience and the antagonist, which in most horrors and thrillers is enforced so the audience don’t choose the antagonist instead of the protagonist. We instead chose to give the audience the choice between which side they choose, all this scene warms them up for the barrier being broken down.

Frame 6

Charlieissocoollike ‘Duet withMyself’

Frame 6 shows the two characters (both played by Jamal) confronting one another. I (Mike) was influenced by a the youtube video ‘Duet with myself’ for this scene, because it consists of two characters being portrayed by the exact same person. As far as we know this editing technique hasn’t been used in any other films and it is for this reason that we really wanted to use it. It makes our film individual.

Frame 7

The Good, the bad and The ugly

We wanted to incorporate some aspects of comedy in our film, so we decided to create a parody of show down scenes in old westerns. We focused on different part of each characters face to build tension before the big moment. This allowed us to show the audience that the film should not be taken too seriously, and similar to Scream and Cabin in the woods should be funny. This against the conventions of horror films created before scream, but we decided to move more in the direction of Cabin in the woods rather than Psycho.

Frame 8

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho

Frame 8 shows the moment before Jamal is ‘killed’ by his double. Similarly to Hitchcock’s Psycho we wanted to conceal the identity of the antagonist so the audience is now distanced from him. We also avoided using violence and gore by instead using sound effects and fast cuts, so the audience is not disgusted. This goes against the conventions of recent horrors, which focus on lots of blood and extremely murder scenes, because we wanted to try and show that something should be scary for the situation, as opposed to good special effects.

The Cabin in the woods

Frame 9

Cabin in the Woods had the largest impact on our film, mainly because it managed to mix horror, thriller and comedy without breaking down the conventions of each genre. This frame shows how we have once again paid homage to Cabin in the Woods by copying, once more, the films superimposed titles. We did this again at the end because is creates continuity and gives the film a certain style. Jamal has just woken up from the dream, and then the shot is frozen and superimposed. This creates a graphic conflict through the tempo of editing, in a way that drags the audiences attention towards the superimposed title.