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

2. Through research, I discovered that there was a group of
expected conventions for horror films, a few examples being:
• Isolated locations e.g. – woods, graveyards
• Domestic locations
• Violent iconography e.g. - weapons, blood, corpses, red, black
• A subgenre of horror – psychological, slasher and paranormal
• Stereotypical themes e.g. – murder, kidnap, isolation, religion,
serial killings
• Typical sounds/noises e.g. – screams, footsteps, heavy
breathing, manic laughing
• Suspenseful/ Jumpy Soundtrack
• Common characters e.g. – male protagonist, male human
antagonist, male non-human antagonist, female victim, male
law enforcers
• Dim lighting

3. • Our group decided that we wanted to stick to as many of the
typical conventions for a horror film as possible.
• We decided to go with the subgenre of psychological horror
as filming a slasher or paranormal horror film would prove
very difficult. To keep to this subgenre we created a narrative
that showed our protagonist walking in a deserted wood
alone not realising until last minute that she is being followed
by our antagonist. This keeps to the conventions of a
psychological horror film as it makes the audience jumpy and
‘keeps them on their toes’ as they don’t know when the
antagonist will appear next.
• The setting for our opening sequence is in a deserted wood so
the protagonist appears isolated and the audience can see
that there is no one around that can help her.

4. • Our protagonist is dressed in typical teenage girl’s clothes that
would be seen as common in society today whereas our
antagonist is wearing an outfit of all black, has porcelain white
skin, dark black sunken eyes and blood smeared around her
mouth which connotes that she is a non-human antagonist.
• At the end of the opening sequence, the screen goes black
and there is a scream, this could connote to two stereotypical
themes in horror films – kidnap as the antagonist could have
kidnapped the protagonist, or murder.
• We use many stereotypical sounds in our opening sequence
including diegetic sounds such as screams and heavy
breathing made by our characters and non-diegetic sounds
such as the suspenseful soundtrack in the background of the
opening sequence. This soundtrack adds to the effect of a
psychological horror film as it makes the audience jump and
constantly keeps them in suspense.

5. • One convention of a horror film that our opening
sequence does challenge is the gender of both our
protagonist and antagonist. Commonly in horror films,
both these characters are represented by the male
gender as society has the stereotypical view that males
are more powerful and intelligent as so would know
how to either get out of a dangerous situation or
create one. By using females for our antagonist we are
showing that women too can be strong and aggressive
and this may too attract more of a female audience as
horror films typically attract a male dominated
audience.