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

In my opinion our group's film opening conforms and uses many of the conventions of a horror film and doesn’t really challenge those conventions in any proper way. One of the main conventions used concerns the location and the plot of our group’s opening. A lot of horror films are set in old buildings that usually have a dark past, and it is also iconic for horror films to feature something supernatural going on. What better place to exhibit the supernatural than at a place of religious worship - religion, of course, being strongly associated with the ‘spiritual world’). The plot of our horror opening again draws upon the supernatural theme as amongst the props is an enchanted, or possessed, object which turns out to be the catalyst for events. This object is a gargoyle pendant which helped the supernatural theme because gargoyles have historically been associated with spirits. 


The enchanted object

The mise-en-scene of our horror opening is also very conventional. For example the lighting outside the church is dark and dull, and the only source of light inside the church comes from candles. The candlelight makes our opening very atmospheric and also makes it rather gloomy. Horror films often work upon the fear that some people have which is the fear of the dark. People can get scared of the dark simply because they don’t know what’s ahead of them which makes them uncomfortable. Our opening offers low levels of light from the candles because we were hoping to create this sense of uncertainty as the audience doesn’t know what’s around the characters. The topic of people feeling scared because they can’t see what’s ahead of them brings me onto our title. The title of our opening is ‘The Unseen’ which, much more blatantly, suggests that our characters are unaware of what’s ahead of them and that there’s some hidden force working inside the building. This all explains how our opening uses more conventions of a horror film. 

"The Unseen"

Our characters’ costume was simply normal, everyday clothes. This displayed them as regular people, which again builds upon another convention that is, that horror films portray their characters as regular people in order to make the situation seem more real and possibly to show how everybody is vulnerable in some way or another. So our opening can be compared to the Amityville Horror (Douglas, 2006) where the audience sees how the antagonist, Ronnie, was a regular person as the film shows the audience pictures of him graduating for example. Then for the audience to see him as possessed really brings home the idea that everybody is vulnerable – shown in our opening when one of the characters becomes unconscious by holding the pendant.


Yet again another convention of horror films is used and this time it was for the soundtrack. Horror films commonly feature a constant sound that gradually builds up, creating tension, until the shocking thing happens that sets the course for the rest of the film. The same sort of thing happens in our opening as the soundtrack features a constant low bass drone, then whispers come in that continue building up the tension until the character falls victim to this dark object, at which point the whispers and the drone abruptly halts.

A final comparison to be made could be between our opening and the opening of Suspiria (Argento, 1977).  In the opening of Suspiria a flash of lightning reveals the shadow of a mysterious figure which creates enigma. Enigma is created in our opening as the camera slowly zooms in on the enchanted gargoyle pendant until it becomes blurry. The audience begins to wonder what is up with this object.


Overall it is difficult to think of ways in which our opening challenges conventions of the horror genre but I will say this: the non-verbal language of our characters is simply very casual as they stroll up to the church whereas in other horror films they would naturally be uneasy and on-edge. Another means by which our opening challenges conventions of horror films is that in a lot horror films, they will try to anchor the audience towards a young child as they are the most vulnerable and innocent of all (again using ‘The Amityville Horror’ as an example). They do this to create emotive feelings amongst the audience; however, in our opening no such attempt is made.