Wednesday 23 December 2009

Evaluation Part 2

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


Our media uses the forms and conventions of real media products as we have incorporated a 'Final Girl' into our film (Catie) which you will find in many horror films such as John Carpenters 'halloween' and Nelson McCormick's 'Prom Night'. We also used this convention of real media products because we used a stereotypical 'Final Girl' which include characteristics such as, intelligent, brunette, signs of trouble are always far more apparent to them, the 'Final Girl' usually finds the corpses of her friends which alerts her to the danger that surrounds her and she is usually seen as 'innocent', we gave our 'Final Girl' the name 'Catie' which means pure. We incorporated this characteristics within our 'Final Girl'. We used the idea of having a scream queen in our film, the stereotypical blonde female with a large chest and sexually available who is usually the first to be killed. An example of this from a real media product is the film 'Scream' featuring Drew Barrymore. Another example of a 'Scream queen' is from 'Donkey Punch' where one of the characters is a blonde female with a large chest and sexually available therefore we named our 'Scream queen' Lisa, the same name as the blonde character is 'Donkey Punch'. This binary opposition is a common convention of horror films and helps to anchor to the audience quickly and effectively. These two female stareotypes are confirmed through the images of the female central protagonist who play the finla girl in Halloween 'Jamie-Lee Curtis', and the loose blonde who plays a scream queen in Hell Night 'Jenny Neumann'. We also intertextually linked our male characters for example the popular male (Ben) who has a girlfriend and who is sporty therefore he has a 'jock' type figure,which is juxtaposed to his almost enemy (Lewis) who has a slimmer body and more 'geeky' looking appearance. We took a lot of consideration while choosing our cast and deciding what costume they should wear as we wanted to connote the ideology of the stereotypical characters shown in horror films following the tpical conventions of them
We have also used forms and conventions from films such as 'Prom Night' where the killer murders the main female protagonist's friends before he gets to her which is what we have done in our film, the killer kills Catie's friends before he reaches her, almost like the killer is getting closer and closer to her which also links into the name of our film 'Think Closer'.
Our media product also uses forms and conventions from 'Valentine' this is when one of Catie's friends is killed in a bath and one of the characters ( Denise Richards) from 'Valentine' is killed in a hot tub, however we did develop this convention because we used a bath instead of a hot tub due to the fact we were not able to find a hot tub in time for shooting also we felt a bath would provide more verisimilitude and be further intertextually linked to the shower killing scene from ‘Psycho’. We also used a character who would look quite similar to the character that Denise Richards plays in 'Valentine'. Below is a rough cut of our killing in the bath.



Although we used many of the codes and conventions of a film teaser trailer we made a less mainstream version of a teaser trailer due to the fact that we used lots of clips in the beginning to establish the plot and communicate the genre (horror) to our audience. We were inspired by the effectiveness of the teaser trailer for the film 'Valentine'. As the more traditional teaser trailers are simple, not giving too much of the narrative away, with lots of establishing dialogue, we decided to develop this convention by using lots of shots giving the audience lots of information however theses shots were not necasarily in the right order, we did this to keep a narrative enigma but to be able to give the audience a sense of the films narrative. whilst supplementing the begining of the trailer with a voice over so the audience isnt left completly bewildered, this clip was cut up into three seperate clips which we then used in three different shots throughout the trailer. We also had a shot where the main protagonist Catie (Sarah) is talking to the girls, in a social shot which we added into the trailer after our first audience feedback. Catie (Sarah) is saying how her boyfriend (Ben) is becoming a bit paranoid and that she doesnt know what to do, this automatically seals her fate. This is a common convention of horror film teaser trailers. That a false sense of security is briefly established, enhancing the drama in the film.
We have developed a convention from the film 'Psycho' from the famous shower scene. We have developed this by having one of our killings in a bathroom, the same as 'Psycho' but we have developed this convention by the female victim having long brunette hair instead of shot blonde hair and by being in a much more vulnerable position by being in the bath rather than the shower which would make it a lot easier for the killer and to enhance a more dramatic scene.
We also used the idea from 'Psycho's famous shower scene within our logo. We did this by adding a running shower head into our logo which was symbolising flowing blood. We then used this in our poster as well as the main image was the main protagonist taking a shower with the killer stood behind her, holding a knife in his right hand. We also intergrated this into our magazine front cover as one of the still images at the bottom of the magazine front cover was of the bath scenes. This theme has been carried on through in our film teaser trailer and our ancillary tasks which will help to interlink the film teaser trailer, poster and magazine front cover.
We have challenged the common conventions of horror as the stereotypical killer is usually male (apart from the few, for example Pamela Vooheers from 'Friday 13th' who is one of the most famous examples). Revenge is usually one of the main motivations of the killer, horror films usually focus on the family backgrond of the killer, an example of this is 'Halloween' which has a large focus on the Myers and Strode family. The killers are usually both physically and visually intimidating (Thomas Hewitt, 'The chainsaw massacre').They often hide their face behind a mask or have some form of deformtation (Michael Myers, 'Halloween'). We have challenged these conventions as our killer is seen to be a harmless male friend who has a geeky appearence and seen to be one of the good guys in the film trailer. We decided to do this as we wanted to create a false sense of secuirty for the audience which meant that when the killers identity was revealed, it would be a shock for the audience.
We have also challenged another convention of horror films by not including any authority figures in our film trailer. Obviously with the films focus on teenage concerns and the target audience being teenagers it is common that a teenage horror would feature parents or an authorative figure such as 'Prom Night' they featurs the main protagonists aunt and uncle. We decided to challenge this convention because its highly unlikely that all teenagers are actually that close to their parents and we wanted to focus more on the six main characters rather than thier parents/ authority figures.







 


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