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

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

• 2.
  Our movie openingboth conformed to and subverted the various conventions associated with movie openings. We have previously looked at movie openings for movies of various genres’, mainly horror, and discovered some of the different conventions which we then conformed to and subverted. The conventions involve things like opening credits at the beginning of the movie, colours used and the title appearing.
• 3.
  The title sequenceis meant to introduce the movie, establish tone and genre as well as create expectations within the audience. Film makers can use different techniques and have done in the different openings that we looked at. The opening credits in the romantic comedy Legally Blonde are written in a pink font which is very girly and feminine while the opening credits in the horror movie The Cabin in the Woods are written in a very dark red font which simulates blood and death. Film makers can do this with other codes and conventions of movie openings as well to create their desired effect, the codes and conventions being different for different genres.
• 4.
  Because my movieopening is in the horror genre it is similar to the second movie opening previously mentioned, The Cabin in the Woods. In terms of the credits we used they conformed to the stereotypical credits used in horror movies. Like most movie credits we ordered the names in the order of importance, the director being first in the credits followed by the two actors and then by the title of the movie. The credits were written in red, as in horror films red is the colour associated with blood and danger which are two things that are present in our opening. We also featured the title of the movie itself after something dramatic had taken place, in this case the victim being killed, to introduce the story to the audience. This is the difference between our old title and our new one We changed it because we felt that it Looked more dramatic when it appeared at the end after the victim was killed and a lot of horror movies seem to show the title after something exciting happens
• 5.
  Here are somepictures of other horror movie locations that conform to these conventions The location we used also conforms to other locations that we have seen in horror movie openings. In Scream 4 the opening takes place in a normal suburban house and although we see it as a safe location at first it then becomes very dark and isolated from the rest of society when Ghostface phones the victims. Isolation is a key factor in horror films and many of the most used locations, haunted house etc…, are isolated and separated from the rest of the society to symbolize how alone and helpless the characters in the movie are and plays on our basic fears. Movies like Friday the 13th and The Shining involve their characters being isolated from society the same way that our opening does. The location in our movie is a forest which seems quite safe and normal at first, especially with the brightness effect on it, but soon becomes a place of danger when the killer appears. A bright location does not conform to the expectation and Mise-en-scene of traditional horror movies. We decided to use the bright location despite this to show that the killer could strike at any time instead of being limited to appearing at night.
• 6.
  Despite conforming tosome of the stereotypes of movie openings we actually subverted a lot of them in our movie opening, specifically ones associated with the horror genre. The main one that we subverted is that the first victim killed in the movie is a boy instead of a girl. Girls are usually killed first in the movie and usually the girl is shown to be very pretty and, stereotypically, quite weak and helpless. Our main character had quite a bulky physique and appeared to be quite strong because of that yet when he is attacked by the killer he does not fight back and instead runs, subverting the stereotype of boys and men being very tough and “macho” in horror movies and movies in general. The killer’s physique is also something that subverts stereotypes as the killer is usually quite muscly and strong yet the one in our movie opening is very skinny. We based our killer on Ghostface, who is never really shown to be very muscly but because of his long black cloak you never really get a good look at his physique until the killer is revealed towards the end of the movie. We thought it would be a good idea to show the killers physique as it makes him look quite creepy and makes him very mysterious.
• 7.
  Masks are acommon prop used in horror movies and many other well-known horror movie characters wear masks (Ghostface in Scream, Jason in Friday the 13th). Masks are scary for the audience as it means they cannot identify the killer because they cannot see his face meaning the killer could be anyone and that the killer could be anywhere and the audience would not know it. Characters like Ghostface wear masks which are visually quite scary to look at and have features that make them seem inhuman such as the large black eyes and white skin. For our masked killer some of the facial features were easy to see through the mask but the green “skin” looks very different from the usual masks worn in horror movies and looks very “Alien”.
• 8.
  We did notuse a wide variety of camera shots or angles in our movie opening. It is much harder to identify camera shots and angles in terms of the codes and conventions of horror movies. One convention that is present in some horror movies involves camera angles being used in order to show the balance of power. This would mean that the killer, the more powerful person, would be shot with a low angle to make them look very large and strong while the victim would be shot with a high angle to make them look very weak and vulnerable. We did not really use camera angles very much in our movie opening but there is one point in it where the victim is shown running through the forest from a high angle to make him look very weak compared to the killer and compared to the forest itself. The editing we used cut very quickly between shots when the action got very intense and exciting, another convention of horror movies. We also used a fade to black when the killer reaches towards the victim to simulate the victim closing his eyes in the embrace of death and make the audience feel as if they were looking through the eyes of the victim. This is something that is not a common convention of horror movies but is still used sometimes.
• 9.
  Overall we subvertedmore stereotypes than we conformed to in our movie opening, subverting quite a few of the usual stereotypes that are associated with movies of the horror genre which I feel helped make our movie opening unique from other horror movie openings.