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

2. • Production logos
• Titles
• Credits
• Mise-en-scene
• Narrator
• Introduce main/ important characters
• Set the story
• Establishing shot
• Set the scene/ date/ location
• Music can reflect genre and mood
• Lighting can set the tone
• Enigma
• Props and costume that suggest genre

3. • Location – Usually somewhere haunted for example an abandoned house, a
forest.
• Low key lighting.
• Production logos are generally edited to fit the mood of the film.
• Fast editing generally, although sometimes they can be slow for suspense.
• Characters – male – scary / female – vulnerable.
• Costume/ make-up – bloody/ torn, etc
• Sound – music that sets the mood, dark music, deep sounds to make it scarier.
• Props – there is generally some kind of weapon, either as a murder weapon or
for the victims to defend themselves.

4. • In our film opening we used a production logo that we made, called
‘Hammered Cinema Productions’.
• We put the title of our film on a black background and it fills up most of
the screen. We have found this is common for horror films.
• We opened our film with an establishing shot.
• We introduced the main character straight away, also the antagonist is
introduced within the two minutes.
• We have used music that is brooding and fits the mood.
• We Stated the dates and locations to set the scene.
• We have used very fast editing in places to make it more jumpy.

5. • We have used a flashback to show what happened, however flashbacks in films
are usually peoples memories but our character main character, Eve doesn’t
actually know what happened.
• We have found that it is quite common to have horror films set in basements and
cellars, so we decided to develop that and set our film in the cellar of a pub so
that it wouldn’t look so generic.
• We have used a ghost for the villain in our movie, we have developed this by
dressing her in casual clothing, when it is customary for them to be dressed in
some sort of costume. However we do feel that costume helps to show the time
and place that that character is from and with our ghost those details are not
really given. Also in films ghosts tend to wear the clothes that they died in, in
which case our ghost would have to be fairly modern, we left this open for the
audience to decide.
• Generally in films they stick to putting their opening credits either over the
footage or on a plain background, we have developed this by using both.

6. • Generally in films colours are used which match the mood of the film, for
example if it was a romance you might see a lot of red and pink on the screen.
We challenged this by using white for the flashback, this would usually suggest
something happy was going to happen but in our film it is not a happy flashback.
Also we thought by doing this it would be more surprising to the audience.
• We have challenged stereotypes in horror movies with our film. We have made
the male characters the vulnerable ones, when stereotypically they would be
strong and heroic or they would be the villain. The antagonist in our film is a
young girl, who looks innocent and non-threatening but really she is a lethal,
murdering ghost.

7. When coming up with ideas for our film characters we watched several horror films
to give us inspiration. We got the idea for the ghost from ‘Let Me In’, a horror film
about a young girl who is a vampire. We wanted our film to be unique and stand out
from others, so we decided to have a young girl for the villain as it challenges
stereotypes. Also this film is set in the past which gave us the idea to set ours in a
different time.
Also sticking with the theme of having a female antagonist we got some inspiration
from ‘The Roommate’, in which she tries to kill everyone in the other girls life. This
relates our film because we see that the main character does not get killed by the
ghost but her and family friends do.

8. We watched a number of films from our genre to help us get ideas
for our film, we found that a lot of them were set in lots of
different places. We wanted to stick with one place for our ghost
to attack, so when we came across ‘The Burbs’ A film about a
creepy family who move to the suburbs and kill people in their
basement, we really liked the idea. We then decided to develop
this by changing the basement to the cellar of a pub. We thought
this would be more effective for our film because it is a more
public place and the ghost in a house would only really be able to
kill its residents, whereas in our film the ghost kills all of the girls
friends and family. Also we found there was better use of props in
the pub because it enabled us to roll the barrel, etc.

9. The editing in our film is quite fast, we found this is common for most of the horror films
we watched. We decided this method would be best because it makes the film scarier. We
have used flashes of the ghost in places to make it jumpy. We have purposely put these
flashes in places they don’t fit to confuse the audience, for example in one of our scenes
we have a shot of the main character walking down the stairs, it then jumps to a really
quick shot of the ghost on the stairs then jumps back to the other girl. This happens a few
times in our opening, we believe it creates a sense of enigma.
For the flashback we have made it fade to white at the beginning to separate that scene
from the previous scene, also we made it white instead of black to make it more of a shock
for the audience when they see what happens.
We used an effect called Ghosting to make the ghost look more ethereal. This effect
overlaps the frames when there is movement onscreen. We think this looks effective for
the ghost because it makes her look more transparent.

10. When watching ‘Let Me In’ we saw that the vampire girl had blood on her face
in some of the scenes. This gave us the idea to put scratches on the ghosts
neck in our film so she would look scarier and less casual. We didn’t give her
white face makeup because she is supposed to be discreet and we didn’t want
it to look too exaggerated or tacky.
The main character eve wears a lot of black eye make-up, this was not planned
intentionally, however we think it adds to the character as she has lost people
she cares about in her life including the death of her friends less than a year
ago.

11. When we was watching horror films to get ideas we noticed that a lot of the props in
the movies were murder weapons, things like hammers and chainsaws. We decided
our ghost wasn’t going to have a murder weapon as it is too generic.
Having decided to locate the most part of our film in the cellar of a pub, it gave us a lot
of opportunities with the props, we decided to use a barrel which we rolled towards
the characters, making it look like the ghost had done it. We also used a basket which
the ghost knocked on the floor, this basket is used again later when Eve is working in
the pub putting drinks into it.
We used some flowers for the graveyard scene as it is common for people to put
flowers on gravestones, also it shows that she is visiting that particular grave and not
just standing in the graveyard.

12. For the non-diegetic sound we have used a total of three different pieces of
music. These vary from fast and high pitched to slow, deep and brooding. We
think these pieces of music work well together, especially the second and third
as they are similar sounding and but they set completely different moods. We
have used this convention as they are the kind of pieces of music you would
usually hear in horror films.
For the diegetic sound we decided not to have any speech in the opening
because we wanted to have a sense of enigma so we didn’t want the
characters to explain anything by talking. We have used a scream at the end of
the flashback, we have used this to show that they are being killed by the ghost
because we have made the screen black out for when the actual murder takes
place.
Adios Blood Deep No Reflection

13. We decided to use some handheld and shaky shots for our film as these
are common in horror films because they help to create tension and they
help to draw the audience in. We liked the way they used handheld and
point of view shots in ‘Paranormal Activity’ as the whole film is from the
point of view of a camera. We have used the point of view of a lot of
characters to create a particular atmosphere for the audience and to
make it as though they are really there. Also we thought the handheld
shots help to portray emotions such as fear.
We opened our film with an establishing shot of the sky, we found that a
lot of films open with establishing shots or extreme long shots, so we
decided to use conventions again.

14. Horror films usually use very low key lighting, however we decided not to
use this convention as we wanted to create a false sense of safety to
surprise the audience when the ghost appears and kills the characters, so
we used normal lighting. The outside scenes are just natural lighting
making it more casual. We decided to keep the lighting steady so that it is
more of a surprise when the blackouts happen, we did this to make the
film more jumpy.

15. Overall our film has used more forms and conventions of real media
products than it has challenged or developed them.