In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms

and conventions of real media products?

The sub-genre of our film is supernatural horror, and the main body of the film
being about possession of child by a devil/monster.
The purpose of film openings is to entice the audience into wanting to carry on
watching the film. The opening should establish characters and genre. In our film
opening the genre is established through the sound and low-key lighting we
used, and the character through the setting of the childs bedroom. In addition
we have used the idea of teddy bear to raise enigma about the how the boy links
to the teddy bear and the situation.
One of the conventions of film openings our media product doesnt use is
narrations, the characters have no dialogues and neither is there any voice
overs, I suggested the power of silence is often the better and effective tool to
producing good horror film openings.
Our production logos are adapted to reflect the genre and story line of the film.
Our initial idea for the production logo was an animation of a flickering street
light to give an eerie feel to the start of the film. However our idea turned out to
be too ambitious therefore made slight alternations to the production logo to fit
our available editing tools.
We have also designed to place the titles of cast and production team on certain
parts of the scene or in a title slate. For example we decided to put the title of
our film Revenge on a title slate by itself because of the importance of the letter
and how it connects to the film. This helps build more suspense and contribute to
the genre of the film.
At the start of the opening sequence there is a high angle shot of the bed room.
This shot establishes the setting of the scene e.g. inside a house. Our setting has
complied with the supernatural horror conventions by using a dark and gloomy
setting of the house and the boys room.
In Noel Carrolls The Philosophy of Horror, he divides the traditional narrative
structure of the film in three stages. The first stage is the Onset phase this is
when the disorder is created, general in the form of a monster or devil. In our
film it is the possessed child. The second stage is called the Discovery phase
this is when the other characters in the story discover that the disorder has
occurred. In our film the parents and friends of the child find out. The third
phase is called the Disruption phase this is where the other characters try to
destroy the source of the disorder/disequilibrium and restore normality. However
in our film, it is going to end with equilibrium of defeating the devil that
possesses the child but there is going to be a shot e.g. a close up of the boys
face with an evil smirk. When the audiences see this, they will get the idea that
maybe the story hasnt ended yet. It is similar to the idea of a cliff hanger to
entice the audiences to demand for a next sequel.

An important narrative theory I applied to our opening is Barthess theory of 5

narrative codes. His theory suggested that there will be one of more of the 5
codes used to describe the meaning of a text. The theory also suggests that
Barthes said that texts may be open which means it can be unravelled in a lot
of different ways or closed which means there is only one obvious meaning
behind the text. The 5 codes are Hermeneutic/Enigma, Proairetic/Action,
Semantic, Symbolic, Referential code.
For our opening we have mainly applied enigma code and symbolism code. We
have used the enigma code to create mystery in the opening, we only drop clues
of the link between the teddy bear and the boy but there are no definite answers
to the enigmas raised, this makes the audience want to know more. An example
of symbolic code used in our opening is the symbolism of the teddy bear, which
has a greater meaning than just being a creepy toy, it symbolises the boy, as
they are positioned the same way and same place. It creepiness of the toy
transfers to the boy, as from the information given in the opening, he could have
an association with the hung teddy bear. We focused on these 2 main narrative
codes because we wanted the opening to be impactful and interesting so
audiences would be enticed enough to watch more.
Similar to the narrative of the horror film The Others the boy in our film is
isolated, in the opening I did this by having only one source of light on the boy
and everything else is dark, this emphasises the loneliness and how isolated the
boy is. Furthermore the shadow created by the boy suggests that the boy is not
alone; there is someone within him e.g. the devil that possesses him. Another
main inspiration for this film opening was insidious, like the film opening of
insidious I wanted to build the eerie mood and atmosphere. In the film opening of
insidious there is a long shot of the boys room, leading to a dark hallway and at
the end of the opening there is a shot of the monster that haunts the house. The
image of the monster and the scene is still in my head, this shows just how
impactful that scene was. The opening did this using a creepy violin sound track,
low key lighting, and the narrative codes. I tried to follow the same principal by
adding in a chilling score, using low key lighting and making the scene even
darker using the editing tools, and also the narrative codes stated above.
However one thing the insidious film opening did that we have not established is
the binary opposition of the monster and the victim e.g. the good and the bad.
This is because we wanted to keep the suspense and tension of not knowing who
or what the monster looks like. This is another enigma generating code of the
film opening.