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

The genre we chose for our film opening is a thriller, horror. We used this genre as Horror films are a favorite of genre from everyone in our group. We have used the main base for horror films, with things such as the camera work, the use of sound. We have kept costumes simple and haven’t used any facial make up for the characters compared to some horror films such as Scream, who has the icon ‘mask’ and The decent which has the crawlers in costumes and scary make up.

The structure and narrative of our film is different to other horror films as ours goes backwards in the way it tells the story similar to the film ‘Brick’. This way we feel it would interest the audience to carry on watching it to find out what is going on.
When filming our opening we used a tripod on all occasions apart from one. This was to keep the camera steady and make our opening look more professional and better quality. Other Horror films would of used better equipment to film as they are top professional filmmakers and are able to do this.

We used a hand held camera at one point in our opening to create an uneasy effect, as the audience see the shaky camera movement following the protagonist, and gives a hint that something may happen next. This is a stereotypical Horror film move, a certain action, which tells the audience, something is due to happen.
We have used camera shots such as over the shoulder shots, close ups, low angle shot and long shots. These are typical shots you notice in horror films, to show more detail of the character such as close ups to show the characters reactions.

When it came to editing we used ‘Final cut pro software’. Which allowed us to add music to our opening, and edit certain areas of our film to improve it. On one scene of our film, we had to film the same shot twice, once with out the antagonist and once with them.

This was so we were able to merge the two shots together, and edit it so the antagonist faded in and out of the shot. This was to make it spookier, and make it clearer to the audience that the antagonist is a ghost. We made
the ghost quite transparent similar to ghosts that are seen in the film the ‘sixth sense’.



Horror films are known to have sound effects and music running through them, that creates tension, and gives the films a certain atmosphere. For our opening we have chosen an ambiguous sound that creates an uneasy atmosphere for the audience. The sound effects are important in Horror films as they build up tension and also can be linked to people remembering the film. An example would be the famous horror sound from the film 'Psycho' which has been used in other films.