Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Starting with how we have used typical media conventions, we’ve used many things that would be commonly be associated with a psychological horror. An example of this would be the way in which we have sound, both diegetic and non-diegetic that would be commonly associated with the horror productions, for instance when our actor Ryan is walking up to the house and time seems to be speeding up and slowing down we used a typical horror sound track to coincide with the visuals of the scene. An example of the sound effects we used that were typical of a horror is be when our actor Jack finds the medallion in the plate of blood and there is a sudden jump scare based sound for when it appears on screen.
In our production we also challenge typical horror conventions. For instance, at the beginning of our film straight after the screen glue logo we use warm visuals and a calming song to lull the audience into a false sense of the security. However, from my experience watching horror films and what I know of the codes and conventions of one, they usually open in a way that establishes that it’s a horror production. This could come in the form of dark or moody lighting, blood and gore and/ or props to name a few. While our film does somewhat follow those it doesn’t do it to the extent of most other films.
Another way in which we challenged the typical codes and conventions of the horror genre was to have a very simplistic set of props and events. While it was much to do with the budget and small time frame the film could be on screen for to qualify, it was also a conscious decision we made to not over complicate things for the viewer so they could get a quicker grasp that this is a real world scenario and not something that could be purely contained within the realm of fiction. This could be contrasted drastically with productions of the same style as many of them go out of their way to complicate the plot and scenes and also like to create a clearer line between fiction and non-fiction.