How does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of existing media products?

falling under the sub-genre of a Horror-Thriller hybrid, our film opening had a very specific theme to fit. in most Horror films the victims are usually young teenagers, a group of friends that are forced to fight for their lives. However, Thrillers are more psychological and this is what interested us the most. We combined the two genres' conventions to make our film opening what it is.



USING THE CONVENTIONS
- Sound is a very important aspect of each genre (Thriller and Horror) and imperative to the building of suspense. In our film opening we used a balance of diegetic and non-diegetic sound to create our thrilling, suspenseful atmosphere. The mixture of the up-beat yet sinister choice of music, the panting and pacing within chase scenes and camera shutter sounds - the sound of the whole opening creates a sense of pacem suspense and excitement.

- The use of isolated areas to create a sense of vulnerability and nervousness on the part of the victim is a convention reguarly used in Horror films and we incorporated this in our opening. We did this especially by shooting scenes in an area of woodland, showing there was no-one about and emphasising this through 'someone's watching you' style point-of-view shots.

- A major convention of Thriller films is leaving the identity of the antagonist secret to build suspense and this is something we did, teasing the audience with views of him from the back and point-of-view shots (giving an insight to his character), but never completely seeing him.

 DEVELOPING THE CONVENTIONS
- Instead of the usual group of young friends or several victims, we used a young female protagonist who is being stalked or 'Tagged' by a male; allowing the audience gradually feel sympathy for her.


- We followed a theme of photography (a specific theme which more typical of a Thriller than Horror); concentrating on the antagonist and giving him a story line and specific personality, which is why most shots are from his point of view.

- The camera shots within our product challenge conventions by incorporating typically used styles such as point-of-view shots but mixing these in with a variation of camera angles, close-ups, long-shots, mid-shots and pans. I believe this expresses the 'stalkers' perserverence in the stalking of the victim and gives a lot of diversity to the piece.


CHALLENGING THE CONVENTIONS
- The titles of our product are bot typical of the genre. Rather than the archetypal red or white on black, we have chosen to incorporate them as part of the 'stalking' storyline in the section of the film where the camera pans the mise-en-scene, this allows the intoduction to move quickly and I believe is very effective and suits the style of our product well.