1.) IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE,

DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS

OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?By Shani Casey

WHAT RESEARCH I DID History of Horror – Found Footage

When my group decided to do the found footage genre, I conducted my own research on what types of found footage films there were already on the market. I studied films such as the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal activity as they had the most common found footage conventions. We made these adaptions such as the actors holding the camera and no non-diagetic music added. In addition to this before we actually began our media production, we researched various different types of Horror ranging back to the early 20th century.

I felt that the fact we used a hand held camera instead of putting the camera on a tripod really set our film out from the rest of our class, and was a good convention to use, because the film comes across slightly shaky. This however gives the audience something to relate to, verisimilitude, because it gives the film a more realistic feel and therefore makes it more frightening. One of the main aspects which were keen to avoid was the night vision filter. The Blair Witch Project uses this sort of filter and we felt that even though it would made some of our scenes in our media product appear darker, it would also take away some of the key points in the film.

WHAT WE DEVELOPED AND CHALLENGED In our media product we developed various conventions in the horror genre, for example we enhanced the gore aspect of our film because we felt that the found footage genre didn’t involve enough gore. We wanted to show that whatever the unknown villain that kills our main two characters is that it can in fact cause the characters harm. We also challenged the found footage genre because we haven’t actually stated why the two main characters are in the forest during the film whereas most found footage productions would tell their audience slightly more about what the characters are doing in the film.