In what way does my media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
Firstly, it is instantly visible that my product is a film opening, it begins with a production company, which we made:'Urban Studios', it is shown in a credit format in the title sequence, very plain lettering, to follow with the rest of our titles, with white as a contrast on the black, this follows a convention of horror films, to use simple, white lettering on a black background, it is used in both of the films we analysed for our research. It is shown as a film start as it doesn't make complete sense, it isn't telling an entire story, which whilst some do, others don't, it shows Enigma, which is often in film title sequences to draw the audience in. Also, within the film, you are introduced to the main character, not for long, but for just a few seconds as she walks down the corridor with a suspicious look upon her face, the editing slowly brings her closer and closer to the camera. As is customary in most film openings, we used music within it. However, unlike most openings, we did not the follow a convention of giving a proper introduction to the main character, or having some sort of storyline within the piece. Finally, at the very end of the piece it shows the title, as is often shown at the end of the credits.My piece is shown to be a Psychological thriller as in several ways, firstly, the music has a Gothic tone to it, with a mixture of uncertainty, it puts emphasis on the unknown feature to my piece, adding to the enigma.
Also, the mise-en-scene is thought of, especially when you see the close-ups of the faces, all of the backgrounds are a plain white wall behind them, it stops you from focusing on anything in the background, just on their staring eyes, to add to the fear factor from the enigma. Also, using the camera as a first person point of view to just see normal people staring at us as if we are weird, or among that sort of thing helped us show that we were within the mind of the character, meaning we were able to understand that it is a slightly more psychological film straight away.The non-diegetic sound (the music) also connotes a horror genre, as it is fairly typical music that you'd hear within the genre itself.
As for challenging these conventions? We have in ways. A mix of people staring at the camera's are both male and female, most of the time, if a female is the main character, it will be men chasing after her, a sort of damsel in distress, only in a few later versions of horrors have females been the main fear of a horror. But the quote; "Genres are not static but shifting and slippery, evolving over time" allows all film creators to change genres ever so slightly, as otherwise they'd get boring, as backed up by a second quote; "Pleasure is derived from repetition and difference." Meaning that we want both repetition and change at the same time, in the film industry, it'd mean keeping some conventions of the genre, but changing others so it's not always the same and doesn't get boring.
I also find that one of the regular conventions for Horror film openings is either everything is completely calm for the first 20 minutes of the film, or something in that region, or it starts off with something big happening, then the calm begins. In ours, there is no calm, or big thing that happens, you don't have any idea, therefore it pulls away from this convention, yet at the same time, keeping ever so slightly to it.
Another breakaway from how film openings are generally shown, is that we haven't properly introduced any character, obviously you can tell that the female walking down the corridor is more important than others, but you can't really tell anything about her, you can see she's scared and alone within a college, that she doesn't mind showing off her skin a little bit, and obviously cares for her hair, as she has styled it well, yet you don't know much else.
