evaluation question 1

In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or CHALLENGE forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product is a horror film.
The main themes in my film are:
Death
Thriller

The movie is about five students who are in detention. All five students represent one sin, the popular girl represents Vanity, the Goth boy represents Anger, the geek girl represents Jealousy, the class clown represents Selfishness and the basketball player represents Greed. Each character is killed one by one except for the geek girl, and at the end we realise that she actually helped to kill the rest of the students.

The theme thriller is seen in the opening sequence of the film when Bianca is in the toilet and then a figure appears behind her. This is also used in the film SCREAM when the man in the mask appears just when he is going to kill his victims.

In the Deadly Sins the characters suffer horrific deaths as each of them get killed one by one except for the geek girl. This is similar to the film SAW where the characters that are killed, are killed in a very horrific and brutal way. In the horror films that I have watched the narrative is about death and victims who have no control of their lives, this is shown in SAW because the victims have to do what they are told and it only leads them to their deaths, so most of the victims die in the film. We have used this idea in our narrative as in our film there are also many deaths on which the victims have no control over, as they to, get killed.

Also in the horror films that I have seen they use low key lighting to set the mood of the film. In the movie HALLOWEEN they use low key lighting when someone is about to die. We used this in the opening sequence of our film, in the toilet scene because in that scene Bianca sees the man in the mirror and she is killed therefore we used low key lighting to show to the audience that something bad was going to happen.

My media product develops the forms and conventions of real media products because in the horror films that I have seen such as I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER has Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) as the protagonist. We have also used this idea but we have developed it as in our film there are five protagonists instead of one.
We also decided that in our opening sequence we should show each character with in object or doing something that represents their personality, for example, the Goth has got make up on and is dressed in black, the geek is reading and writing, the basketball player is playing with his basketball etc.
My media project challenges the forms and conventions of real media products because in the horror films that I have seen the protagonists are the good people and they are the hero. However in my film the protagonists are evil as they all represent one of the seven sins, and we realise that their sins kill them in the end, so our protagonists die because of their sins and they can’t change that because that is the way they feel, therefore they die because of it.

We have also challenged real media films because in horror films the victims are the good people, however in my film the geek girl is a victim, however at the end we realise that she actually helped kill all the students.
However different to the horror movies that I have seen, our movie is set in a classroom. In other films such as Halloween, their setting is mainly the victims’ houses, where our film is set in a school.
In our movie we use a close up of the killers figure, but are careful not to show his face, as we don’t want the audience to know the identity of the killer. This is similar to the movie SCREAM because they too also show a close up of the killer, but not to show the face of the killer because they wanted to keep the audience in suspense about the killers identity.
In our film the music shows that the gen re is horror, because at the start of the film we use theme music, and then when we show Bianca in the toilet scene, the music goes very loud, we used this to scare the audience and in this way they would be hooked to the film as they know that something bad is going to happen, so they would carry on watching to see what will happen, this is similar to the movie Halloween because when someone is getting killed they music is always loud and scary, to show the audience that something bad is going to happen.