Evaluation 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

There are many ways in which my media film fits with the codes and conventions of real media products. For example, many aspects of the mise-en-scene were inspired through watching and understanding the aims of real films of the horror/thriller sub genre. The staircase scene in our film opening is an example of this, as it was a sequence that I had found to be typical of films of the thriller/horror genre.

Therefore, by implementing this within our film, the aim was to trigger in our audience's mind memories of similar scenes they had seen in similar types of films. In this way, the use of conventions of our genre, in this case 'the stairs sequence' allowed us to give the audience a strong idea about what the genre of the film was, without actually having to tell them, as it fit their expectations.



There are ways in which the film also develops/challenges the conventions that would be seen as typical of films of the horror/thriller genres. For example, while the opening of our film is very similar in some aspects of a typical horror/thriller film (e.g.location and lighting), there are subtle differences in comparison to your typical modern horror/thriller film. As the aim from the beginning was for the film to be more thought-provoking than scary, it doesn't entirely fit with your typical horror. While many horror films tend to have an eventful opening (as our film does), they also, the majority of the time, show lots of blood and are graphic, especially if they are modern.. We purposely chose not to do this in our film as we wanted the audience to focus on what Greg sees right at the end of the opening. 

We knew that by not including blood in our film, which is what the audience might have expected to see in an opening to a horror or maybe even a thriller, we had to make it clear to our audience that they were still watching a film from this genre. The time of day in particular is one of main factors which meets the typical conventions of a horror/thriller film. We knew that by setting the film at night, the audience would immediately relate the film to the horror genre as we as humans relate the dark to danger. So much so in fact that the word 'night' has been included in the names of many successful horror films of several generations , and features as a prominent theme.