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

Genre

The genre of our film is horror, in our film we have a male capturer and a female slave. This is a typical convention used in horror films, this is because females are much better suited to the role of the prisoner as they are physically weaker and males are more suited to the role of the capturer as they are physically dominant and can be scary.

A film that also uses this convention is ‘Kiss for girls’. Starring Morgan Freeman. In this film several females get captured and raped. There are male capturers who keep the girls in poor conditions, similar to our film ‘FIXATION’

Another typical convention for the horror genre is keeping people imprisoned in dark, gloomy and poor conditions, for example a prison, cellar well and in our case a shed. So for the area where our events take place we have kept to the conventions.

However we have chosen the capturers house to be a very average, clean, bright place with everything very tidy. This is because our capturer has OCD, this is different to most films as the capturer normally lives in a dark scary place which is not tidy or clean.

When it comes to themes of the genre we have kept to the normal forms and conventions. Although we see no sexual content in the opening sequence there are clues that sex or rape may be included in the film somewhere. This is due to the girl who is attractive to be wearing a short dress with her make up still on, and her being tied up showing if anything sexual happens it would be without her content.

Rape is a common theme in horror films as it is a good way to show that the male has the domination over the female. A horror film that uses rape in the storyline is ‘Gothika’ a film about a lady finding out her husband is a rapist.

As rape is an act that only a mentally disturbed person would commit it is a good way to show that a person is mentally ill, and many villains in horror films are mentally ill as they carry a scary and intimidation persona.

The Costume that the female is wearing in our opening scene is keeping with the normal conventions of a horror film. She is dressed up in a short black dress and make up done. She represents the average teenage girl that is badly behaved, and has no respect for herself or others. Female characters that are partiers who take drugs, drink a lot and have a lot of sexual intercourse are commonly used in horror films as their imprisonment is a type of karma. An example of this type of girl is Paris Hilton in the 'House of Wax'.

The male villain's costume however breaks the normal conventions of horror films. He is wearing a suit and has a briefcase showing he is off to work. This is abnormal in a horror film as most villains are clearly mentally disturbed and unable to live normally in the world and carry out a normal desk job. We made our villain look like a normal man as it adds to the suspense and we need to find out a lot more about him and so does the world he lives in.

Narrative Structure

When it comes to narrative structure in some ways FIXATION keeps to the normal conventions and in some ways it doesn’t. At the start of the film is does, we have a male capturer who is mentally ill and female victim who is kept in a dark cellar with little clothes on. This is very simular to silence of the lambs when the mentally ill man imprisons a girl in his cellar.

However towards the end of the film this changes, the female victim who we all thought was helpless manages to escapes and in turn goes to warn the next victim of this crazy serial killer, After being not taken seriously when warning the fourth victim the girl goes in search of the killer on her own, changing from a victim to a heroine.

This is very rare in horror films, there is normally a third party who acts as a hero and saves the helpless girl. The two storylines of the man going to work and the girl in the shed are happening at the same time, however we don’t show them at the same time as a parallel structure we show the man first and the girl second.

We used alot of binary codes in our opening sequence, these are commonly used in films to make differences clear and make the story-line obvious.

Form

There are different purposes to an opening sequence. Here are the main ones:

• Introduce characters

• Introduce setting

• Gives clues to what might happen in the rest of the film

• Introduce genre

• Introduce narrative

Our sequence ticks all the boxers when it comes to an opening sequence’s job. Firstly it introduces the main characters in the film. We see the villain who plays a major part and we also see the main character, the girl who is trapped in the shed.

Also it introduces the setting, there is about two minutes of footage in the house this is the main setting for the film it is the setting for the beginning and the end of the film the two most important parts.

Thirdly our opening sequence gives us clues as to what happens later in the film, the purpose of this is to tempt people into watching the whole film and make them involved and interested. The clues our opening sequence gives is that the girl is captured at the beginning this must mean that she either escapes or is killed, also the girl is wearing a short black dress and is attractive, this might mean that something of a sexual nature could happen at some point in the film. Also we see the man have a relationship with the number four, this could play a part in the rest of the film.

Our opening sequence has all the typical features that you would expect to see if watching a real horror film. This is represented using a spider diagram:

Style

The music plays a big part in our opening sequence, music is commonly used in horror films as it adds to the atmosphere, the type of music you use is able to influence the mood of the whole scene. For example slow, acoustic music can great a sad atmosphere.

This is demonstrated in scrubs, even though this is a TV programme it carries the same effect, the sad music adds to the already sad atmosphere of a funeral.

The music we used is slow and eerie this made a very spooky atmosphere which was perfect for our shed scene. We didn’t use the music when the man was in the house as it wouldn’t of had the same effect. The most important dialogue we used was the screaming of the girl in the shed, this made us know straight away her emotions, of fear, panic and pain. We also knew she was the victim in the film.

The colours in the shed was very dark, this is for two reason the first is that it adds to the atmosphere and theme of prison, if it was really light it would be as spooky as it was in the dark, the other reason is that we didn’t want to give her away straight away we didn’t want the audience to see her whole body straight away we wanted to build it up.

As you can see in this picture if the room was light we woldn't have the same atmosphere as is needed for a horror film, we would give the girl's body away straight away and we would know everything we needed to know in the first shot.

As well as making the shed dark to not give the victim away straight away the first shot used in the shed was a slow moving pan across the room, we used a scate board to create the movement. This was done to let us know the was a person in the shed but to not give away too much information initially.

We decided to show the whole of the house scene first and then the whole of the shed scene second because we wanted to make people think about the clues we gave them in the house scene, we wanted to make them think so they were interested in the film, examples of these clues are the crossed out numbers on the calendar, also the man repeating 1,2,3,4 when he talked, the man looking at the shed and finally the dialogue on the radio. The fact that we did the whole house scene first meant that the audience could link the two scenes together, which let’s them get involved and get’s them thinking.