Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productions?

Camerawork

Opening Sequence from Se7en

Throughout our prduction we followed the conventions and only use the same shots several times, the main shots that we used were lose ups and longs shots. We used the close ups to create a sense of mystery to keep the audience guessing whats going on. We did challenge the conventions slightly because the main part of our opening sequence (when the pentagon was being made) we only used close ups on the characters hands instead of having close ups of the characters face, which would normally be heavily made up to scare the audience. We did this because instead of starting off the film with scaring the audience, we wanted to create the mystery which creates a sense of horror as it makes the audience think that what they are doing is going to cause something bad to happen in the rest of the film. We used this idea of the close up of the hands from an actual film called Se7en, and in the opening sequence of that film there is only close ups of someone's hands creating something.

Editing

In terms of editing we heavily challenged the convention, instead using fast cuts which is used in most horror films, this was because the slow cuts and fades do not immediately create a sense of horror but they do slowly build up the tension. We also use a lot of high key lighting, we used the high key lighting on the little girl in the woods because we wanted to create the representation that she was a spirit. However we did use some low key lighting, this was represent that something dark and satanic was going on. 

Costume

Clip from Insidious

The  costume that is used are very significant to our opening sequence as it gives the girl her representation. The choice of the white dress and the white socks gives the representation of purity or that she is a spirit, moreover we also decided to have her hair put up like a little girl, so that the representation of a the spirit of a little girl was created. The film Insidious helped us when it came to costume as at the beginning of the film we see a woman in a dress in the closet, we used this idea and adapted it so that it would fit our film. We have no challenged any conventions in our opening sequence as we have decided to use similar costumes to what would normally be a real film.

Titles

The titles that we used follow the conventions of a film opening. We did try to use a very strange font which we hoped would try to keep the horror genre going. We challenged the conventions slightly with the titles as we did not have any specific order in which we put our titles, however we did put title of the film at the end of the opening sequence, this was because this tells the audience that the opening sequence is over and the main storyline is about to start.

Props

We have included a good amount of props which give hints to what the films is about. We decided that we were going to use a pentagram as one of the things that we were going to include, so we decided that we wanted to use red tape to make the shape of the pentagon, this was because the colour red connotates blood, and evil. We also used candles to put on each corner of the pentagon because it gives the full effect of a ritual. We also used fake blood, this was because we wanted to make the little girl in the woods look evil as if she has killed someone, and the blood makes it look like she is hunting for someone/or killed them.