1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Our group had several discussions and production meetings before we came to
the conclusion that to allow our final product to use, develop and challenge
forms and conventions of the real media we must research existing horror film
openings. This will inspire and develop our ideas for our own final product. As a
group we agreed that our film opening would be under the sub-genre of slasher.
Therefore we researched the horror slasher films to get an insight of the
conventions we must include. The films we looked into detail with were: Chucky,
Scream and Unborn. The main horror film opening we analyzed was ‘Chucky’
this was because it was our main inspiration for our first story outline. The
conventions that Chucky included were the location of a haunted, abandoned
house, the pathetic fallacy of stormy weather, darkness, a vulnerable child as a
victim, suspense, the producer had used females as characters this is because it
makes the audience very uncomfortable to watch as the females come across
weak and express more fear when attempting to survive. Chucky also included
dark and haunting lighting, non-diegetic sound which is very slow and creepy to
establish it’s a horror and the title chucky is in the colour red which has
conations of blood and death. We used all of these main conventions to develop
and challenge our film opening so that it was as believable and realistic to the
actual film industry.
Used Challenged
The Characters Each character that we created we
made sure that they individually had
different personalities. This was to
establish and show the range of
adolescent stereotypes in this modern
time. This isn’t a main convention for
the genre horror. However this is how
we challenged the genre of horror and
ourselves. This is because most horror
films use females as main characters to
show fear and disturb the audience.
But our audience is aimed mainly at
teenagers with the certificate of 15+
therefore if we used a social group of
teenagers our audience will find it
easier to relate to the film and have
shared knowledge of there language
and actions. All though we used
adolescents as our main characters our
main protagonist in our film opening
was ‘Riley’ the female survivor and
‘Scarlett’ the female doll. Both of these
challenged our genre because in horror
films it is common that the ethnicity
‘Black’ normally is the first to be killed

2. however we challenged this and chose
our Black character to be the survivor.
This made our horror film-opening
stand out from other horror openings
created. Furthermore the character
‘Scarlett’ was developed and inspired
by the character ‘Chucky’ the mise-en-
scene of this character was that her
costume was a typical rag doll dress
with puffy sleeves and high knee socks.
Her hair was styled in two bunchies
that were back combed to create a
rough look and lastly her makeup was
designed with scars and bold eyes to
show threat and establish that
‘Scarlett’ is the villain of this horror
opening. We also directed her to be
very mysterious and her actions and
laugh to be very haunting. Our idea of a
possessed doll came from chucky but
we changed the gender and identity to
show our development.
The location A stereotypical and common location is
filmed in a forest/woods therefore we
didn’t want to use this location as this
wouldn’t be challenging. Therefore we
chose the location of a park this was
chosen as the horror conventions for
sound is screeching noises, the
convention of vulnerable children
therefore a park relates to this, as
children are the main users of it.
Furthermore even though we didn’t
use a forest there were woods and
tree’s surrounding this park, which
made this location spooky. To
emphasis our convention of a park we
filmed the park in the daytime and the
action-taking place in the night time.
This darkness made the location show
the genre of horror through the dark
and eary atmosphere that it bought it
our film opening.
Pathetic Fallacy Pathetic fallacy is a main convention in
horror this is where the weather acts
as a human emotion for example
raining and storms occur. This is
always used in horror films to set an
intimidating and frightening

3. atmosphere. We have used this in our
horror film opening with the wind and
raining weather to follow the terrifying
conventions for the genre of horror.
The inspiration that made us decide to
use this in our film opening was from
‘Chucky’ as the research that we made
in our main influences presentation
was evidence that ‘Chucky’ used it.
Sound Disturbing and unnerving non-diegetic
music is a convention in the genre of
horror. We have used royalty free
music called ‘Evening of chaos’ this
music contains low pitch sounds and
sharpening of knife’s this shows a
sense of murder which could be an
enigma for further in the film. Another
main convention of sound that is
shown in the horror film openings is a
diegetic sound of laughing, screaming
and heavy breathing. The main horror
film opening that used these was
‘Chucky’ and this is where we used
these stereotypical sound conventions
to establish our genre of horror in our
film opening.
Lighting The conventions for lighting in horror
films are dark, mysterious and sinister.
We have used this in our second part of
our horror film opening. This has been
composed by the night vision on the
digital video camera. The visual effect
has come out as a dark lighting with a
hint of yellow. This shows that there is
a flash forward and gives it a evil affect
through the harsh tones. The lighting
before this is very duel in the day light
as the weather was raining and the sky
was full of grey clouds. This creates a
dark and negative atmosphere. It also
brings out fear in some of the
characters.
Narrative The narrative’s that were main
conventions of horror films are
‘Todorov’ and ‘Prop’. Todorovs theory
was that there is equilibrium,
disequilibrium and a new equilibrium
and Prop’s theory was the set roles of
each character. We have began to use

4. Todorovs theory in our horror film
opening as we began with the group of
teenagers laughing, drinking and
relaxing in the park this was
representing the equilibrium. Shortly
after this we used our editing skills to
shoot a flash forward this showed the
survivor in an uncomfortable situation
where she was being threatened by a
possessed doll this part represented
the disequilibrium. This theory was in
the horror films. The other theorist we
used in our horror film opening was
‘props’ theory this a more common
convention used in slasher horrors
which is our sub genre. This theory
involves always a protagonist survivor,
which we have created as ‘Riley’. There
is always a villain or killer and in our
film opening we have created a doll
who is a killer called ‘Scarlett’. Films
that have used this theory and who we
have been inspired by are ‘Friday the
13th and Nightmare on elm street.
Themes The main theme that we used that was
a convention of horror films was the
theme of good v evil. We showed this
through the characters. The teenagers
were shown to be very vulnerable and
the evil was shown through the doll
‘Scarlett’ who was shown to be
threatening and intimidating. This
theme has also been shown in the real
life horror film of ‘Chucky’ as the doll is
the evil and the young girl is
represented as the good. Furthermore
we have challenged this as our
representation of evil is a female this
isn’t common because females are
stereotypically shown as the victim
and a sexual figure in a horror film.