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

I chose to do a predominantly horror based film for my two-minute opening. A horror is one which deals primarily with human fears: nightmares, vunerability, the unknown and death. My film plays with the idea of death and having someone you love turn against you, so in that respect it's fairly conventional. However, I decided to create an unusual hybrid genre of horror/romance and so to mix in conventions of a romantic film I added an underlying storyline of the characters falling in love yet having something preventing their happiness, and, unlike most romance films, they do not have the fairytale ending convention.

The typical themes in a horror are: superstition and possession (the exorcist); a fight between good and evil (this could also be in a religious sense); the apocalypse (Dawn of the Dead); common fears; killing and servere injuries. Within my opening I look at common fears, as well as the idea of betrayal and murder. I chose not to look at the religious side of horror films because personally, I am more interested in human insanity, although I did include elements of the supernatural by making her physic.

The titles within a horror film normally go one of two ways: they're either really overly creepy or completely ambiguous as to which genre they belong to (like in the fourth kind). I felt by having an implacable font it added to the tension and made the stabbing shot more dramatic because it wasn't expected. As for structure, I feel my film is quite unique. I chose to use a non-linear storyline (more notably a convention of the thriller genre).

I think my film is quite similar to Psycho: 1960 because it looks at the horror behind psychopathy and insanity, I looked at the idea of the 'monster within the human' (like in Psycho), however, unlike most horror films, I haven't included any prominant binary oppositions. This is because I wanted to make the antagonist's (Jay's character) evil side more shocking and unpredictable.

Looking at iconography, a horror film normally uses: haunted houses, disfigured faces, screaming victims, a phallic murder wepon and darkened places. I used a dagger as a phallic wepon, one of our shots shows Jay in a dimly lit plac holding the knife high, connoting masculinity and power. I have included this shot below (knife circled):

However, I subvert some of the ideas, within my opening there aren't any screaming girls, in fact the whole beginning contains no diagetic sound, I feel this adds to the eerie atmosphere. I also break the sterotype because instead of a haunted house, the only houses you see are from the romantic side of the film (the date and when they're getting ready).