Evaluation Questions - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? - Sarah Carter

What are the forms and conventions of the Horror genre? Give some examples of films you have studied.
Typically, films in the genre of Horror tend to follow the same conventions. For example, many horror films tend to use a multitude of close up shots to create tension. Provoking fear is vital when filming a horror and the conventions of a horror are very important. When creating our own film, it is important that we take into consideration these stereotypical views and conventions, therefore we have tried to incorporate as many close ups into our film as possible.

A female is usually used as the victim, and a male as the threat in conventional horrors. Children are also commonly involved in horrors, but this alternates between threat and victim depending on the film. For example in films such as "The Grudge" the child is the threat, as seen below:

In other films however, children are used as victims to provoke sympathy and pity from the audience. This is seen in the film I studied for research;  The Others. Here the children are very much a part of the victimization:

The setting of a large, mysterious house is also typical of a horror and reinforces this idea of mystery and threat. We decided to use a house in our film to emphasise this feeling of familiarity.

Here you can see how we have mimicked the use of setting in "The Others" in our own film. We thought this convention would be particularly effective.
Being a psychological horror, this film uses a lot of the idea that it's what you can't see that scares you. For example, noises in the house and slamming of doors is something that we thought was particularly interesting.
How have you used this research to make a Horror film? Why is this important?
We have used this research to influence our film and help to reinforce the ideas and conventions of a horror to inevitably make our film successful. We took into account this idea that females are often seen as weak in terms of character and that they are often sought after to become the victim in a film. We therefore used this idea of a female victim in our own film.

We liked the stereotypical idea of a woman victim and within the film "The Others"the ideology that women are weaker is very dominant.
I think that the research we conducted before starting the production process helped us to understand that conventions and techniques used in horror films create tension and fear. Without research, it would be difficult to pinpoint exactly what are the most successful features of a horror film.
Did you challenge these conventions? If so, why? If not, why not?
I believe that in some cases, we did challenge the conventions of a horror. For example, instead of using a male character as the threat, we used females in this case. This is partly to do with the fact we wanted to use witches, however we also felt that by challenging this convention we would put across this idea that females can not only be the victim, but also the character in power (the threat).

By using this specific choice of casting and through the use of camera work, we are showing that females are dominant and powerful in this particular situation.
By casting only females in our film, we are challenging this idea and reinforcing our own idea and going against the stereotypical views. We tried to generally follow the typical horror conventions in all other areas however (i.e. an empty house, a female victim, series of close ups etc.) to try and make our film a recognisable and successful horror that will provoke a reaction of fear amongst our audience.