Evaluation Q1 - Use of Conventions

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





TITLES:
As in the slasher film Madhouse (William Butler, 2004) the first titles displayed a 'fireline presents'. In madhouse's case it was 'Lions Gate Productions'. This is a commonly used convention. In our production we also used a convention shown in slashers such as Urban Legend. We displayed 'A cupkate Production', similar to Urban Legend saying 'a Gina Matthews Production'. Also similar to present in Urban Legend (Jamie Blanks, 1998) we displayed our lead actors in pairs as the opening sequence took place. As shown in Scary Movie (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2000) and Urban Legend after the first killing is when the title of the film is shown. We also did this and similar to both these examples we centred the title and it fades to black as with the examples do here.

IDENTS:
A good and simple example of idents from a slasher film are An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981). The idents from this film do look quite dated but the the simple animated letters concept is still effective, and continues to be used commonly in modern slasher films. Liking this concept we did very similar and all 4 of our company idents involved this same technique and some additional animation and effects. This helped create our idents to be simple, clear and effective.

OPENING SHOTS:
The first shot we show in our production is an establishing shot. This is a good way of instantly anchoring mood, genre and location of the film. Our establishing shot is of the wooden cabins where the main part of our film is set. An establishing shot also helps ease the audience into the film and the action. This same technique is used in many slasher openings, a good example is 5ive Girls (Warren P Sonoda, 2006).

GROUP SHOT:
At the very opening of our production we thought it was essential to include a group shot to help anchor the main characters, this is very commonly done for this reason and also the dialogue likely to be used along side this will add to the exposition revealed in the early parts of the opening. It also quickly introduces possible protagonist and antagonists to the audience.

NARRATIVE ENIGMA:
In our production we show narrative enigma whenever the killer is shown. By dressing the killer in a black hoodie the audience are never able to identify him, this along with the shots of only the killers feet gradually being cut into the action helps create narrative enigma. This same concept is used in lots of slasher films. A well known example is the Friday the 13th franchise where Jason is always seen wearing a mask to hide his identity.

SOUND:
The sound we used in the killing sequence of our production is inspired from slashers such as Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). We Included high pitched string instruments that created drama and tensions and helped replicate the screams that would be heard. Psycho is a very famous example of this technique.
Throughout our opening we used a mixture of diegetic and non diegetic sound to create tension as well as keeping it realistic.

FINAL GIRL AND SCREAM QUEEN:
Carole Clover's theory of the final girl applies to the majority of films across the slasher genre, and our production is no exception. 'Charley' our final girl character follows this concept in a number of ways. Her name is unisex and she dresses very covered up and comes across a positive an very morally right person.
The binary opposite of Charley is our scream queen Ashley. Ashley dresses a lot less covered and has a lazy and negative attitude. She also comes across less immoral by having a boy friend.
Both these characters are common stereotypes of the slasher genre. A good example of a final girl is Sydney Prescott from Scream (Wes Craven, 1996). A good and extremely famous example of a scream queen is Janet Leigh from Psycho.

CONCLUSION:
All our audience feedback was positive and came across as getting our preferred reading. However, as not everyone we asked watched slasher films, intertextual references such as the blood dripping into the stream at the end being related to Psycho was fully recognised or understood.
We were most worried about our killing scene not coming across convincingly, but our audience feedback didn't bring up any concern about this. Using conventions from past examples has helped us to achieve better verisimilatude.