Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film opening titled 'Inheritance' uses elements of mise-en-scene, suitable font styles, use of sound, interesting locations, and use of camera angles to challenge and develop the codes and conventions of a typical horror film that the audience would expect to see. In terms of mise-en-scene, we have a young girl studying on her laptop, whilst listening to music with her earphones which conveys a typical teenage girl. She has a pink, girlie room with a few teddies in the background which suggests she is innocent and perhaps easily afraid and naive. This instantly tells our target audience that this girl is the main victim/character of our horror film, as she is also the second character introduced in the opening (the first character is clearly represented as the killer.)

Camera angles our used to show our victim, Jemma as vulnerable as there are a variety of shots of her, The characters vulnerability truly shines through particularly when the camera is positioned at a high angle looking down at her. Close-up shots are used to show our actor studying, which allows the audience to see she is a young student taking pride in her school work, it connotes that she is a 'good girl.' Long shots are used to highlight the location, this allows the audience to see the elements of mise-en-scene, such as the teddy bear, the pink walls with floral design and the light coloured bedding.

We chose to use a simple white font for our opening titles featuring on a plain black background, the white font and dark background was decided after our titles research focussing on the film 'se7en' as those were the colours they used to represent 'se7en' which is the same genre of film as ours. Our decision to use a white simple font on a black background gives the film a more mature feel to it, it's not overly complicated with fancy fonts of different colours and backgrounds; Which helps to convey our genre to the audience, for example it is obvious through the use of mono-tonal text that it is not a film targeted at young children or families. This decision was also inspired by 'The conjuring' which was a popular horror released in 2013. We've used similar layout of opening titles, for example showing important actors names first individually and then showing actors that have smaller roles on the same screen, all titles have been positioned in different positions on the screen.

The first two images were taken from our opening titles, the second two were taken from "the Conjuring' the two different opening titles have evident similarities between them. We have thought carefully about the non-diegetic and diegetic sounds featuring in our horror opening, after listening to openings with sound and then no sound it made us appreciate how importance every little detail of sound is and the impact it will have on our horror opening. The non-diegetic music for every scene has been selected to create a certain atmosphere, for example, when our killer is shown the music is dull and eerie, diegetic sounds have been added such as whispers and the sound of typing to emphasise the actions taking place in each scene. Diegetic sound has been created in our scene, our victim is wearing earphones so we added in a pop track over the top of the scene to connote ideologies of a typical teenage girl, we also re-tuned the music so it sounds a bit tinny to make it appear as though it is coming from the character's earphones.

The first character the audience is introduced to is the murderer, the characters role in the film is clearly constructed through use of camera angles, sound, mise-en-scene and location. The opening begins with the camera panning around the location, allowing the audience to see what appears to be a lonely wooded area; The camera continues panning until the first actress is in full sight, she is surrounded by a white ring which was created through talcum-powder. The reasoning for creating this ring effect is because it creates a spiritual feel and appears strange and abnormal to the audience which is a key aspect in horror films. The actress has back-combed hair, we also used white talcum-powder as part of mise-en-scene in our actress's hair to make her appear aged, as we associate white hair usually with more matured people. We also chose to use dramatic black eye shadow on our actress, we chose to do this to add a gothic, intimidating impression of her to our audience. She is also wearing all black because it's a dim, unexcitable colour and helps to portray ideologies of this character being very miserable, bitter and twisted.

A red filter has been added to the footage of our killer, this is because red connotes danger and death. Our filming was recorded in daylight which isn't as effective as it could've been if it was filmed in a darker setting, the red filter was used to rectify this. Our opening develops, challenges and uses forms and conventions of a typical horror film, as we have done deep research into other films and noted down and developed their ideas. For example, In 'The woman in black' the killer is obviously dressed in black. We have taken this idea and used it in our opening, although the costume is different we have stuck to the colour scheme of the costume being black. The mono-tonal film openings challenge forms and conventions because although other horror film openings feature dark backgrounds and simplistic fonts, majority use red font in their opening titles(e.g. scream) to connote danger and blood. However, we chose not to because we found a way in which our film opening could look just as effective and clear to it's horror genre without using this typical convention. Another way in which our film challenges a typical horror film, is that in many horror films the killer is usually always male; The audience expect this. Our killer is in fact female, we felt that the audience would react more surprised to this in a positive way, as research shows things that are unusual or comes as a surprise to the audience when viewing a horror film tends to create more fear and suspense in their mind. We have used typical conventions, such as using a young girl who the audience will assume is very weak, innocent and vulnerable to be our main victim. Similarly in Insidious 2, the killer targets the young, innocent and the weak.