In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products?
My groups horror film entity was mostly inspired by two films, the Blair witch project and paranormal activity. But that the two films are mixed up. This is because its about teens going to investigate killings (relates back to Blair witch) and then finds out that it is a ghost like entity (relates to paranormal activity). We found out so much information on what we should include and not include in our film such as we I thought having a close up shot of Danny talking would be good, this in turn relates back to Blair witch where the girl is talking to the camera. Characters For our film we had Danny who was the main character called Bruce and is a teen at school. We chose this type of character because it helps by relating to the audience of our film. Because our film is aimed for people between 15-24 then most people who watch it are already in school or who have just left. From the research i found most horror teen films sell the best because the target audience was attracted. We also decided to have a ghost like figure in our movie the entity You dont find out the age or anything about the character because we thought describing him would go on for to long but at the same time this is good as it gets the audience to think who he is wand what he is doing there like is he a old pupil of the school and whats the background. Characters in horror films like ours use the same type of cast as well which is a teen cast, For the purpose of relating back to the audience as teens wouldnt really want to see an elderly cast but a younger cast.
Costume For the film my group decided that Bruce would be wearing normal school dressed cloths such as a short, tie and trousers. This way Danny gets to be in the role more by actually feeling his character. Also the dress wear helps the audience think the film is more realistic because Of what hes wearing. Then then in turn helps the audience relate to the film better. As if he were wearing a clown costume or ordinary clothes then the audience wont get that really feel that my group and I were after. For the entitys costume we decided to have a big cloak that covers the whole body of him so that you dont see who it is, just a black figure. We did buy a mask and some eye contact lenses to wear and then get a close up of the entitys face but as we got closer to filming we decided against it to keep the identity a mystery. The film The orphan killer is based on some mad man killing school children at a school and all of the children/teens costume are school wear, this was good because it set the role for the characters and would just look silly if they were all wearing different outfits so we aimed to have school wear to have that stereotypical teen who attends school goes and finds out whats happening after hours, suggesting that he stayed at school after everyone left.
Location The location was a huge part to play in the film as it was based around a school and that a demon was killing people in the school. Also it was just perfect for all the spooky corridor shots as its so spooky and eerie looking. The only problems with the school is that if we filmed in the day there are children hanging around and classes going on but the problem with filming at night is that there are cleaners in school with the hoovers going off. But at the same time as all of this The school was the best location to film because it targeted our audience as Ive mentioned earlier because of the age range of film and audience. So the next time someone is walking around school after hours they will fell on edge and quite scared.
Lighting Lighting was very important in the filming process because we had to film in the middle of the day when children were still in their lessons and it was quite a sunny day. So we thought of editing in the spookiness later on. But we still needed to get that eerie spooky look down the corridors and when we were in the cupboard. The hallway just used the actual lighting in the hallway but with some effect it made the corridor seem scarier. Then for the Cupboard scene we used phone lights to capture glimpses of the clip.
Sounds Sounds were very important in making the film jumpy and more terrifying because without them it was just normal sounds which you might hear every day and that would make the film less scary. So we chose sounds such as door creaks and thuds to emphasize certain aspects of the clip to make bits of the film frightful. Also the use of non-diegetic and diegetic were very handy because it helps build up the tension for the viewer by you knowing somethings coming but the actor doesnt and you fear for him.
I think from all of this that yes the final product is successful in what we planned to do with conventions of teen horror because not only have we responded in many ways to other horrors from our film such as how scream relates to old horrors but we have moved forward and passed the originality of these films.
