Evaluation Question 1

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

Our film opening that we produced was developed from themes and conventions that are in many successful and popular horror and thriller films such as, Paranormal Activity, Carrie and The Ring. We also used looked at some of our research into Hitchcock in order to help film, produce and edit our opening.

Alfred Hitchcock' ideas

'Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up bloody footprints'- Our film opening uses brunette victims but I feel that this still gives the same effect as they are portrayed as being innocent.

'Music cannot stand apart from the movie. Its function is to set the mood and give continuity to separate strips of film'- We use tension building music when necessary throughout the film and when we reveal the possessed girl the music becomes its loudest and comes to an end to create a jump scare.

'It's better if we know who the perpetrator is and the characters don't'- We suggest to the audience that the perpetrator is the possessed girl however the two girls don't initially know who the villain is but they get an suggestion that she is dangerous.

Characters

We took the idea of a young possessed girl as our villain from The Ring. We thought this would work well having a young girl as a villain contradicts the idea of her being pure and innocent. This also causes the villain to be portrayed as much scarier and creepier than if the villain was an older person or a male character.

Camera angles

We took the idea of just showing Gemma's hand in the final shot from a poster for Mean Creek. We thought this worked well as it did not show too much gore for the opening and was open to interpretation for the audience.








We took the idea of a panning shot from Paranormal Activity 2. This allows the audience to see what the characters can see and emphasises how they feel. We also took the idea of revealing the antagonist in our opening through a panning shot from this too.

Setting

Devil's Daughter is set in a quiet and derelict forest to show how alone and in danger the girls are. We took this idea from Hitchcock's Psycho where the 'Bates Motel' and his house is set in an eerie area. This made our film into a conventional thriller film.

Sound

The common sound conventions used in thriller films tend to be silence, tension building music and heavy breathing/footsteps. Silence allows tension to be built and heightens tension when at its fullest. We also use music to create an eerie atmosphere from when Rachel and Gemma go through the gate right up until the end which also helps to create danger. In our opening there is diegetic bird song. This helps to create a calm  atmosphere which juxtaposes the real theme of the film.

Lighting

All of the lighting in our opening is natural light. We filmed in late January/early February so the lighting was usually quite dull. This helped us to create a suspicious setting without the need for artificial light or heavy editing. We did go against the common conventions as little or no light is normally used but we felt that, given the setting and nature or our opening, natural daylight would work well. The setting of the forest also means that trees blocked out some of the light.