Question 1 written form

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (MUST REFER TO FILM, POSTER AND RADIO TRAILER)

I created a short horror film called ‘Senseless’ which falls into the sub-genre of psychological and crime horror. With this, I also created a radio trailer and poster as ancillary products. To summarise the film, it is about a girl who was bullied when she was in school, which leads to depression and a pseudo identity, in which her other identity kills her bullies in revenge. Our certification of this film is 15+ and our target audience fall into the demographic category of D and E, and psychographic categories of explorers, rebels and mainstreamers. We have used, developed and challenged various forms and conventions of real media products in both our film and ancillary products.

Firstly, in horror films, it is conventional to have the binary opposition between the antagonist and protagonist. Usually, the antagonist kills the protagonist, for example, in the horror movie ‘Case 39’ we see the protagonist ‘Emily’ killing the child antagonist. Similarly in my narrative, there is a killing, but we challenged this convention as our protagonist turns out to be the antagonist which kills the other antagonists.

A convention of psychological horror movies is that the weather and lighting is usually dim and gloomy. For example, in the movie ‘The Woman in Black’. The lighting is also usually very low and sometimes uses natural lighting in the winter seasons to make it look dark and help it connote the horror genre. This was done in the film ‘The Abominable Snowman’. The way in which we used this was by filming in the winter where there were short, dark and gloomy days. To reinforce this effect we used Final Cut Pro X and added the FX of ‘cool tones’ to make it look more like it was set in the dark which conforms to the horror genre convention.

Another way we followed conventions is through binary oppositions. Levi Strauss’s theory applies throughout my products. My narrative follows Allan Cameron’s idea of an Anachronic narrative, whereby it consists of continuous non-linear flashbacks throughout the film in order to construct the narrative. An example of a real media text containing an anachronic narrative would be the recent horror movie ‘IT’. Throughout my film, the pseudo identity of Mila and a variety of binary opposites are represented, such as the costumes and mise-en-scene. Examples of binary opposites would be black vs white, ugly vs pretty and of course the common good vs evil. In my horror film, when Mila is killing her bullies she is wearing a black hoodie, but when she is doing her normal routine such as going to work, she is wearing a white hoodie. The normal routine connotes verisimilitude and also to show the differences between the two personalities. These two hoodies are symbolic throughout the film in representing the two different identities that she has. In my poster, the binary opposites are represented through facial expressions. There are two Mila’s on either side of the poster, with the left Mila looking tough and fearless and the right Mila looking scared. These connote different identities and personalities. Stuart Hall’s reception theory can apply here as our audience may or may not correctly decode the meaning we are trying to portray. This links with the horror genre and it’s conventions as it shows us that the modern monster is ‘unspeakable and unknowable’ (Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho, Norman Bates), which is shown through the facial expressions. This also supports John Corner who says that familiarity with the genre can lead the audience to predict events in the genre. In my film, they can predict that the protagonist is the killer.

Also in my poster, the Mila on the right side is under shadows with hardly any light on her. This connotes that she is an evil character as the Mila on the left has artificial lighting put in the corner to make her face seem brighter. Artificial lighting is another convention of horror movie posters, which can been seen in various posters such as ‘Case 39’and ‘Orphan’. For example, in ‘Case 39’ there is lighting coming from the left and in ‘Orphan’ it is used on the middle part of her face which creates shadows on the rest of her face. I used this on purpose to show that the Mila on the right used to be a good character but now she has turned into an antagonist; a convention of posters is that the right side should connote good things coming, but in horror movies it seems to be the opposite. The lighting in my poster was influenced by the Silence of the Lambs poster, where there were more shadows on the right side of the poster as opposed to the left. This creates binary opposition like in my poster. It also supports Paul Auster who says that ‘we construct narratives for ourselves”. For my target audience, they would use the uses and gratifications theory to construct the way in which they think the narrative goes. For example, through facial expressions they might figure out that one character is in a confused state, or has multiple identities.

Steve Neal says that sounds represent how the genre and film are portrayed. This supports our radio trailer as we used different sounds to make it fit into the horror genre. From my studies on real media texts I can see that the conventions of horror movie trailers and radio trailers is that there should be screaming involved, heavy breathing and eerie music. This can be seen in the trailers of ‘The Butterfly Room’ and ‘Mother’ as the trailers conventionally end with screams. My trailer started off with ‘Breaking news, two young girls were found brutally murdered…” and this is how it gave the effect of realism.* What influenced me to do this was the campaigning that I researched on ‘The Blair Witch Project’. They handed out fake ‘missing people’ posters to real people created fake rumours to make it seem like students were missing in the forest. This influenced me to make one of my ancillary products like it is a little real. This would make my target audience active and engaging instead of being passive, which would be a preferred reading for the poster (Stuart Hall). The other convention that I used in my poster was that horror movie posters usually have red and white fonts on it to counter-balance and portray the narrative. The red will usually connote blood and gore and white is purity. I got this from the poster of ‘Emile’ I analysed. I used this on my poster as the title was red and the tagline was white. In addition to the research on conventions of horror, I analysed different short horror films and psychological horror posters; this enabled me to decide what my poster should look like. This links with the Reception theory and uses and gratifications theory as my audience can decode the messages we’re trying to send and use the trailer and poster to determine if they want to watch the movie or not.

Another way in which we conformed to horror movie conventions is through the sound in both our radio trailer and film. Horror movies usually have a long high pitched violin type of sound which builds up tension as it gets louder. We included this in our horror film when the news reporter mentions the bullies name and Mila starts to panic until the CCTV footage is shown on screen. This builds up a climax, allowing the audience to fear violence.

In terms of camera shots and angles, long shots, high angles and close ups are mainly used in my film. This is to connote the vulnerability of the character, but then again show the amount of power and strength they have. For example, there is a close up face when she wakes up, which connotes that she knows more than she looks like. Since she is being bullied and cannot retaliate the bully, she decides to get her own way back – by killing them so the bullying ends. The close ups are also to capture her emotions and connote manic depression when her facial expressions change. This forms to conventions of the psychological horror genre as normally the antagonists show signs that there’s something wrong with them. In the film ‘Split’, the main character suffers from multiple identities and we recognise this when he keeps changing his costumes and attitudes. In my film, the character kind of has a pseudo identity and this is portrayed in the way that the camera captures her slight twitching of the eye or subtle smiling lips. To further re-inforce that there is something wrong with Mila, we filmed a scene where she acts as both good and bad Mila on each side of the screen. The way I edited this was by layering both the footage on top of each other on the timeline on Final Cut, and then used the effect called 'draw mask' which enabled me to draw a line through the middle of the screen of the top footage, allowing me to delete the other side of the screen, thus allowing both Milas on the screen to be visible talking to each other. As she’s talking to herself and then one of her disappears, it’s create the sense of Mila talking to her other personality like the personality is actually in front of her. The audience would feel that there is definitely something wrong with her from the start. This creates our preferred reading. This links with another convention of horror films which is having opening titles in the colours red or white (such as in ‘Orphan’). We conformed to this using the red coloured font in our opening titles.

The typical conventions of a horror movie include blood, gore and killings. I used this in my product when our antagonist stabs her bully to death. This was influenced by my analysis on the short horror film called ABE which was of a robot killing humans because it couldn’t understand their love. It was also influenced by the short horror film ‘P.S’ where the beginning of the film was of a man struggling to walk with blood all over his white shirt and face. In my film, I used this as both bullies have blood all over their clothes and face. I did this using a mixture of fake blood and raspberries to make the consistency thicker and blood-like. Furthermore the mix of both the knife and blood conform to the conventions of the horror genre, and my audience would be able to recognise the iconography associated to the horror genre.

Usually horror films follow Todorov’s equilibrium unless they are a sequel. We have challenged Todorov as our narrative both starts and ends in a disequilibrium ad there is no equilibrium throughout. Another way we have challenged the psychological horror genre is by making the killings take place in a park. Usually for psychological horrors, it is based on an abandoned or haunted house, however in my film the house is to represent normality and the character’s insaneness is represented outside of the house. We shot the house scenes with canted angles which horror films usually do to connote disorientation and confusion, thus this gave the audience a sense that the person who lives in this house is not as normal as she is portrayed at first.

Another way in which I challenged a convention of horror was through my radio trailers as they normally have a high pitched and stereotypical female scream at the end of the trailer. However, in my radio trailer there were the bully’s screams in the middle of the narrative of the trailer but not in the end, as we ended the trailer with “Senseless… in cinemas October 27^th”. Thus, I have challenged and developed this convention by putting the scream in the middle of the trailer after the narrator says “2 friends, 2 murders, 1 knife” instead of at the end. Another reason I did this was to connote that the main weapon used to kill the bullies was through the knife. Although this has allowed me to follow a convention of psychological horror films as the weapons usually include knives and sharp objects like axes.

When I edited the film, I added the 'prism' and 'earthquake' filter on top of the footage to make it look like the footage is shaking and distorted. This is to show how Mila feels before she takes her anti-depressants, as they calm her down after she takes them. In order to show how she calms down, I used the 'cross dissolve' transition and elongated it to the whole footage so it looks like the prism and earthquake effect calm down as she swallows the water with her pills. This connotes that the medicines are create a big impact in keeping her sane, which countertypes what a stereotypical representation is normally – shy, girly and independent. Mental health issues are also mainly associated with elder people, however we have countertyped this and shown that young people as young at 18 can also have severe mental health issues.

More movies are being released where social media is the root for many deaths. For example, in the film ‘Unfriended’, many people die through someone stalking/possessing them through Facebook. The way we developed this in our horror film is through having multiple messages from Mila’s friends on her phone telling her that her bullies have died. Using WhatsApp is a cultural norm among teenager and among our audience, which allows them to relate to getting messages in the film. However instead of receiving scary text messages, Mila gets ‘news’ about her bullies deaths, even though she is the one that killed them. This makes the narrative confusing as the audience wouldn’t know why in one scene she is seen next to the dying bullies and then the next she is seen waking up, until they find out that the nightmares she has was in fact flashbacks from her evil identity taking over her mind. This is our preferred reading as the audience have a restricted narrative of who the killer of the bullies actually is and if the nightmares were real.