Evaluation: Question 1

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

 Our media group looked and focused on a

 specific sub genre of slasher horror films.

 We had to carefully look and develop the

 codes and conventions of this sub genre as 

 slasher horror films differ from other sub genres of horror such as psychological.

In order for our product to fit the typical coded and conventions of a slasher film we had to carry out research to make ourselves familiar with the typical codes and conventions, we did this by watching the first two minutes of slasher films and noted what we saw, for example the typical camera shots, edits that were used, colour schemes within the opening, who the stock characters were.

For our product the stock characters were important as we introduce 3 in the opening, one of which we do not see or know their identity of, this is typical for a slasher as the killer hides their identity and the other two characters that are introduced are the victims. We have our main victim which is the young attractive female character Lucy and then we have her rebellious boyfriend who is also introduced. Our product relates to the opening of scream as we see the same thing because we do not know who the killer is. Other films which i researched where the killer is present but not seen and the identity is unknown is 'black christmas' - where we can only hear the killer breathing heavily. 

The opening of ‘Scream’ particularly relates to our opening as our main victim is Lucy and when we carried out our audience questionnaires the majority of people said they expected to see the victim to be a young  female, and for there also to be other victims to.

We also asked our audience if they would rather see there characters introduced to them in person like in the film 'Scream' or be introduced through  a voiceover as seen in 'The Strangers'. The majority of our audience for this said no because they would have preferred to see our characters like shown in 'Scream'. 

Our main female character from 'obsession' being introduced for the first time in the film.

Another typical code and convention that takes place in slasher films is the idea of punishment this is where the characters are murdered after they have either committed a crime or this happens when young victims are either partying, doing drugs or taking part in sexual activity before being murdered because all those things to the killer is seen as disrespectful and irresponsible. Out of the films I researched the idea of punishment is shown in ‘Black Christmas’ and ‘The strangers’. 

two characters in 'the strangers' kissing in the car park.

female character in 'black christmas' drinking at a party.

To follow this typical idea of ‘punishment’ in our product, we have included our characters performing unsuitable behavior in the middle of the street this includes both out main characters having a kiss and also Lucy and her boyfriend enjoying a cigarette, this suggests that they are ‘bad’ and ‘irresponsible’ which is typical stereotype of youth in slasher films.

Screen shot from our film 'obsession' of lucy's boyfriend lighting a cigarette.
This is the first time he is introduced in the film which conveys him as being a rebel.

Lucy and her boyfriend kissing in the middle if the street, this follows the typical conventions
of the idea of punishment.
This is similar to the kind of inappropriate behaviour shown in 'The Strangers'

Another typical code and convention of slasher horrors is the colours used within the film, this is for the lighting where it is usually dark and also for the title that is typically either black, white or red. These pacific colours connote danger, death, violence and also makes the audience clear that out film is a horror. 

These colours are used for text in most slasher films, out of the films i have researched all five of them use at least one if not all of these colours for the text and titles.

this is the title of 'black christmas' and as you can see the typical colours of black and  white are used. 

This is the colours our audience expected to see in our slasher horror when they were asked in the audience questionnaire.

screen shot from our film opening and as you can see we have used red for the text as this is a typical colour for a slasher film, the colour red in a slasher horror film represents danger. 

title of the film 'obsession' in white against a black background also typical colours, this is similar to the way the title is in 'Black Christmas'.