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

• We have incorporated certain conventional horror film aspects into our film opening. For example, the way that the protagonist was alone and isolated in our film opening, making it more scary, just like in When A Stranger Calls (West, 2006) where the babysitter is on her own throughout the suspicious noises and movements she was experiencing.
• Our location was also similar to this film as it is a very isolated house in a field, emphasising how powerless the protagonist is, increasing the enigma.
• The way our protagonist was an ordinary teenager is a conventional horror technique as teenagers are seen as more vulnerable and helpless than adults. However, in horror films such as, Final Destination (Wong, 2000), the teenage protagonist is usually a girl as they are seen as more defenceless than boys. However, we decided to go against this convention as the audience would be less sympathetic towards a boy and therefore not expect what happens later in the film.
• Another conventional aspect we included was the antagonist wearing a gas-mask, disguising him so he would be seen as inhumane and unidentifiable. This is an iconic technique used in horror films such as, The Strangers (Bertino, 2008) and Scream (Craven, 1996) and we wanted to achieve a similar iconic result.
• We continued with antagonist conventions by including Point Of View shots and also less character exposition, which are also shown in these two horror films. This created enigma throughout our opening.

• Another way that we created enigma in the piece was by having a montage of short shots of our protagonist doing day-to-day activities in his house whilst experiencing strange happenings simultaneously. This was to show how time had passed throughout the evening. We took inspiration from Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2009), as they have been frequently used here to look like the handicam has been paused and then resumed again in another circumstance to look realistic. We wanted to achieve the same realistic approach but without using a handicam so we decided to use montage editing. 

• We researched titles and we especially liked the way in the opening of Panic Room (Fincher, 2002) the names of people involved were on screen as it set the scene. We also liked the way that they went against usual conventions and didn’t include any titles such as ‘Starring’ or ‘Directed by’ as we felt this didn’t fit in with the simple, realism of our overall opening. This is unconventional of horror films but we felt that it fitted better with our style.