Challenging Horror Conventions: A Study in Genre

1. A2 Final Evaluation Lucy Fuller 2017 Media Studies

2. 1. In what ways do your film, poster and article use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products? Codes and conventions are used together in any study of genre such as my study of horror for my advanced level media short film project. I used codes and conventions firstly within the technical code of using a camera which was suited to me and I was comfortable using for the majority of my projects within my sixth form courses. I took a variety of photographs with this camera to capture Jacob during the process of pre-production and production of my film, while choosing a particular few to use on my film poster and article, which I am quite proud of having completed it first. I started my production work by first looking at some of the basic shots that can be used in a film. This included shots such as low sweeping shots, panning shots, over shoulder shots and other more basic shots which included close up and mid shots. It was important to be able to understand these shots. This particularly helped when it came to shooting each scene. It was important that each scene had multiple shots from different angles to create a smooth flow of action and help to create the story in a dynamic way which keeps the audience entertained. The way in which I created the article conforms to traditional codes and conventions of the horror genre as the black background, dark red texts and large fonts produce the idea that there is mystery and danger at first glance of the article. A main convention of psychological thrillers is the twist at the end of the film. I chose to use this convention as it’s what the audience expects in a traditional horror film. In my film, the twist was the male protagonist finding he was attacked by the female antagonist, which contrasts against traditional horror role of characters. Another convention is the dim lighting in a thriller. I decided to develop this convention and use all types of lighting including daylight in the clips outside, natural light in the school as well as artificial light to illuminate my actors. This showed different moods within the film. A POV shot is also typical of a thriller and I used this convention to make the shot more intimate to the audience. I developed the narrative in the thriller by having the view from another person instead of from the point of view of another character. There is no typical setting to a thriller so I used a school environment setting. I developed the convention of the symbols of death at the end of the film and instead made it a little bit different so that it resembled a broken symbol of death, which is something of which Jacob's character himself cannot escape. This not only shows how much Jacob is in danger but clarifies to the audience what is going in his head. I challenged the convention of camerawork by filming it all handheld. Usually camera work is straight cut; however, in the shot where Jacob is laying on the floor after being initially stabbed I glided along on a desk chair in front of him holding the camera myself.

3. 2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? I believe the combination of my ancillary texts has helped develop my own ideas of what I wanted my main product to look like at the end of production. For this, it required me to do a number of research pieces regarding the standards of a modern target audience of teens and young adults. A poor example of murderous characters in the media would be The Bates Motel of which the young protagonist has slowly transformed into the complete opposite character of what he started out as; a bright young man who does well at school. The initial response to this representation was one of positive reviews; however, as the target audience expanded and grew in age, the older members of the audience reviewed the psycho/thriller poorly.

4. Film cover To the right is the cover for my film Psychopath which I filmed in a quiet room at school and edited over the course of the rest of the year. I produced this piece of work in Adobe Photoshop in the lead up to the A2 media coursework deadline. The fact that I decided to produce the majority of the film with black and white colours presents the idea of danger and death, as well as the dark red title colour in the very centre of the poster which conveys the idea of blood and therefore more danger. Also, the piercing green eyes of myself in the image was an effect which I had with the original photograph and I thought it would be a nice idea to add into this piece of work to make the point further that the character whom I portrayed was a ‘freak’ inside her head and outside with her green eyes which will follow whomever looks into them. This is an effect which I am quite proud of and hope to use in the future in other projects. Jacob’s body in the image is only slightly saturated and out of colour as I did not want to completely blend him into the image, but instead have him be noticed a little more than he said he wanted to be, but in my opinion, I needed him to be seen just as much as I did. I decided that I wanted to keep him more visible is because when he was completely black and white, his facial expression became lost in the colours as well as the blood on his hand which disappeared as well as the blood stain on his side. It became apparent to me that there was a large black mark across my face in the image while I was editing this piece of work, and when I tried to rid of it, I would ruin the image further. After some few moments of looking at it, I noticed that it looked a little like a crack in the skin of the character. This could convey the idea that my character is like a percaline doll which is smooth and beautiful on the outside, but is easily broken and cracked.

5. 3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Audience feedback was collected via online questionnaires as well as physical hand out sheets which included featuring questions such as which was the preferred colour scheme and opening shot for the film itself. This required me to take a screenshot of the two shots which I couldn’t decide to include as the opening shot in the movie. One of the two shots included Jacob's character walking through the corridor during school hours and the second shot featured him standing outside in the rain before he was stabbed. I continued to use the audience feedback and focused on a couple of people as a focus group who I would ask questions throughout the production process. From the feedback given to me from my audience, I was able to include extra ideas into my film of which increased how much I began to enjoy making the film during pre-production and production. I started feeling like I was insane from the amount of positive feedback I was receiving from my focus group. I learned a lot more than I initially expected to because of the positive reactions from my target audience which included lessons like keeping each detail apart of the scene and not replacing it with something which was much more obvious. This made me think consciously about the working environment surround the camera. I had to make sure that school bags were removed from view of the lens as well as keeping items where they should be and not moving them in between each shot.

6. 4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Some examples of media technologies of which I used included Adobe Photoshop and Premier Pro as well as WordPress itself and my trusty Fujifilm FinePix S9500 camera. At the outlook of my project, it was hard for me to get a grasp on one good idea as continually swapped between two films that i liked and didn't like. However because of timing and grades i decided to go with the psycho themed movie although i didn't like it at the time of editing because Jacob and I had some disagreements which impacted our friendship. To develop the film, some media platforms I used included Adobe Premier Pro which I used to edit, cut and add sound to my film, and as well as this, I was able to show the students sitting beside me to get their immediate feedback. To cut down the sizes of screenshots which I wanted to keep and develop into posters, I copy and pasted them into Microsoft PowerPoint and edited them there which made it easier for me rather than using this for Photoshop as I am more familiar with PowerPoint than I am with Photoshop. Examples of movies and television programs which had inspired me and helped to develop an understand of what I wanted to show in my film in my head, I searched YouTube for examples of close relationship murder scenes or dramatic death scenes where a character reveals their plot to destroy their enemy or the world. One example I found was within season 2 of "Gotham" on Netflix, which had the character of Jerome Velaska terrorising the people of Gotham with his "Joker" ways. With this is mind, I explored all films which included the character of the Joker all the way back to Jack Nicholson and tried to develop a character's state of mind similar to that of the Joker where the villain acts psychopathic but does not admit that is what they are.

7. For my original vampire idea, I did a number of research pieces regarding vampires themselves, as well as original performances of the first vampire characters on screen. Their original concept was simple; avoid garlic and sunlight, and humans are only good for one thing – food. One example of this was the first Dracula film which was made in 1932 and introduced the reinvented character of Count Vladimir Dracula of Transylvania. I borrowed some ideas from the early films and developed them further into my own ideas of what I believed a traditional vampire would be like in the 21st century and placed them into a character. By the standards of a modern target audience of teens and young adults, a poor example of vampire characters in the media would be the “Twilight saga” of which the author had come up with the idea that vampires glitter/sparkle in the sunlight and this is the reason of which why they must hide themselves away from the human world. The initial response to these vampires was one of positive reviews; however, as the target audience expanded and grew in age, the older members of the audience reviewed the films poorly. I made sure to stay away from any sparkles in my film so not to anger the anti Twi-hearts in my target audience.