How our Media product uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media productsEvaluating

Setting:When researching into Horror films I found two types of setting used within the Horror genre. The first one is a familiar or ‘normal’ surrounding, for example at the start of The Ring, the house in a quiet suburb. This is something that the Audience can relate to.

The second is an abnormal setting, which creates hermeneutic codes for the audience – they are wondering what the location is, and why the character is there. The aim of this location is to disturb the audience and build up tension.

We decided to use both a familiar setting, the dining room, and an abnormal setting. We decided to do this because it would create hermeneutic codes for the audience.

Setting:

The Ring – Use of a familiar location allows the audience to

relate using the Uses and Gratifications Theory – Needs

Model, personal needs. It affects the audiences

emotions, thinking it can happen to them.

Saw – Use of an abnormal location creates fear and

hermeneutic codes for the audience. This confuses them

and puts them on edge.

Setting:

We used a dining room to allow the audience to

relate to the scene. This also makes it easier for the

audience to emphasize with the characters.

We used an unfamiliar location which would

confuse the audience and also create hermeneutic codes. This room is not

completely shown.

Setting:We decided to use this code and convention found in real media products such as Horror films as we felt it was an effective way of creating tension and hermeneutic codes – another common feature of Horror films.

I am happy with the choice of setting we have made, and the fact it uses the codes and conventions found in similar real media products. If I was to do this again, I would add more detail into the dining room to ensure it looked as real as possible.

If we were not to use this code and convention, I would want to challenge it completely to make our film stand out from the rest.

Characters:We have shown a very common type of character in our media product. The ‘Defenseless Teenage Girl’. This is common in Horror films such as Jaws and Piranha 3D. We decided to keep this code and convention as it is another thing that the audience can relate to and therefore is more effective in creating fear within the audience. They feel more empathy for a character without control over the situation and a younger character is more effective in creating this also.

However for the second character, we decided to challenge these codes and conventions – as in the films we had analyzed there is rarely a woman playing the villain so we decided to make Cannibal the Archetype.

Tension Building Through Editing:We found that the main code and convention for the opening two minutes was to build up false tension – leaving the audience on their toes such as in Scream; or in our production where we opened with a scary and gruesome opening. In order to create pace we made use of parallel editing. In most horror films, as we used in ours, a main code and convention is to pull the audience into false sense of security. This means they believe nothing is going to happen and then it does, creating more of a shock factor and creating fear. We did this by extending some of the eating scenes, making the hunting scenes scarier.

Lighting:Another common code and convention found in Horror films, was taking advantage of Humans natural fear of the dark. A classic code and convention that ‘bad things happen in the dark’. We wanted to show this, but develop on this code and convention. We did this by choosing to add a night vision effect to our hunting scenes. This would mean that the audience can see clearly what is happening – but would show that it is dark in the scene and the surroundings, suggesting it is night time. This creates dramatic irony because the audience is aware that someone or something is watching the girl, but the girl does not know who or what is with her, or where she is due to the darkness of her surroundings. This creates frustration for the audience, and create empathy for the character as they know that something bad will happen to her. This technique is shown in Jaws, with the audience seeing the shark in the dark waters before the victim, it is also used in Piranha 3D, both using a teenage girl as the helpless victim.