Horror Movie Opening Evaluation: Activity 1

Activity one: In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

After studying various horror film openings such as 'Halloween' and ' A Stranger Calls' , we made our own by carefully following the key conventions of the horror genre such as the correct lighting, music, characters, story, location etc. After making an appropriate story and planning a storyboard we found our chosen location which we chose as the woods, we gathered the props and a stereotypical horror cast of our own group, (Jonathon Fromant and Josh Spoelstra) and additions in Rowen Elliot, Michael Walters and Harry Smith. After editing, finding a logo  and finally after a critical evaluation from the class, we improved the opening for our own evaluations.

I am going to analyze our horror opening myself by exploring how our product uses, develops, and challenges the forms and conventions of real media products by examining nine key shots below. I decided to choose these shots as they are key to the opening in representing many aspects of our film, such as the title, the setting,costumes,camerawork,the title's font,the story, the genre and the introduction of characters as well as some of the special effects used in it.

This is the production logo for our horror opening and it is also the first shot in our film. We choose this as our logo because a raven is stereotypically though of as a symbol of death, and this has been its general connotation throughout time so I thought it would be appropriate in linking with the genre of horror. This makes it link quite nicely with the conventions of a typical horror film. The logo also looks quite modern and by it coming out of a blue screen it links with the 3D era that is a very popular at the moment, it also emphasis that our films are detailed,modern and also have a classic feel to them with this neat font. This appears to challenge the conventions of horror as it doesn't look as modern as the logo itself does, however it does imply that our logo has classic elements from films that modern films lack, and this is what I wanted to convey to the audience. The general colours such as red,orange and black also clearly connote death/danger which goes along with the general conventions of horror films today.

This is our second shot from our horror opening, our title sequence. Our title sequence is a pan across the river itself, with black titles appearing slowly then disappearing. I did this because a river can be a dangerous thing with connotations of drowning etc, it also links with the title of the production as well. The shot acts as an establishing shot too by showing that our opening is based around a river and a wood. the isolation that comes with this shot is also quite efficient especially for the conventions of horror as it shows that our characters are all alone and the river,bare trees and the shadows here shown here also connote horror as the audience has most likely seen other horror films in woods so they can already have some expectation of what could happen here. The font used also looks quite ominous.

This was our main prop throughout our opening and it was very effective in driving the story forward as the whole plot featured around it. This is sometimes the case in other horror movies like a group looking for something etc but not for all, so it can be seen as to both challenge and use the convention in the horror film. Although the ball may not be completely conventional to the genre it's the reason why the children go deeper into the wood. It later acts as a tragic device as after its found the first time and a scream is heard the audience expects that whenever its found something bad will happen so this gives the audience a bit of predictability, developing conventions of such other horror films, so the audience can begin to feel the rise in tension produced in the scene. The ball also shows the increase of evil throughout the opening as with the colour white (a connotation for purity) then being tainted by blood connotation of evil/danger, showing how the children s purity and innocence has been taken away by evil forces.

This shot is the climax of our opening and it works well by foreboding whats to come to the audience. This shot was originally filled with numerous effects such as ghosting, which made the two masked men appear inhuman, the two masked characters themselves can easily be related to films such as 'Scream' as well as 'Halloween' so they clearly link with the horror genre, the original special effects worked very well and really appealed well to the horror conventions however in the end they had to be removed because they went blurry, this is a shame as it would have greatly added to our opening, effects like this are used quite often in horror productions featuring ghosts etc.

This shot  comes near the end of our horror opening and this was done to show that what just happened is nothing to whats to come so this gives many expectations for the audience to look forward to. The titles in horror films are often shown after the opening itself, like in 'Drag Me To Hell' for example, by giving an explanation of the title and also hooks them into what to expect further on. The title itself links with the typical conventions of horror as films often use 'the' then something else as titles, for example 'The Others', 'The Thing' etc, so i thought 'The River' would be quite appropriate. The title itself is in quite an ominous font and the 'waving' of it links to it through water etc. The colours are also key here as 'white' connotes goodness whilst 'black' connotes evil, as their is more black here it emphasizes the sheer amount of evil compared to good in the film.

The story is set up quite nicely with the introduction of the two antagonists of our opening it clearly addresses the genre through a masked villain and also sets up the story to come, that its about strange masked men in the woods, so this shot is very effective in setting up the story to come for the film by including such key conventions of the horror genre. This shot also gives a look into costume with the white mask, it shows how a simple mask can add the difference, just a normal man wouldn't appear as scary as this does, so the mask does add a lot and links to other horror films such as 'Scream' and 'Halloween' as I mentioned previously. So overall our horror film both addresses the story and forebodes what is to come as well as establishing the genre of our production.

This shot is near the beginning of our opening and it nicely introduces the main characters to the audience with their names appearing near them, allowing them to link names to faces, this is done in various other films also, not horror alone. The audience get to see the opening's victim's relationship and realize that they are average people which makes them quite relatible indeed. In this shot the two are addressed in a mid-shot, so both characters are visible side by side, showing their relationship etc. The two characters also link to stereotypical victims of a average horror movie as well, seeming young,weak and defenseless, following the conventions of typical horror victims.

This shot is of Michael (the first victim of our opening). For this low angle shot we didn't have a ladder so i needed to kneel down on the ground to give it the point of view of Rowen, showing that the character is higher up then he actually is, so it seems more realistic when the drop of blood fell on the ball from a high. This shot adds to the realism and fools the audience in thinking hat he is high up in a tree, rather then just on the ground. For this shot we used a skipping rope as the rope that was use to hang him and we also decided to put this shot in black and white to show that 'Rowen's' world has just crashed around her, seeing her brother in such a way. I think this shot develops the conventions of horror with a variety of shot types, showing that evil can be lurking anywhere and i think this is good  to show to the audience so they don't expect where the danger will come from and this is clearly developed from this scene as the danger surprisingly comes from above. I feel that the editing is key in this scene as well, again using dark colours known to the horror genre and a variety of editing effects should make it more engaging for the audience.


I believe that our media product has incorporated the conventions of horror well and also has developed such conventions, which is shown by the tense atmosphere of the production beginning with a reasonably happy scene which begins to spiral out of control until the main cast of the opening die, I think this is very accurate to horror and story as a whole beginning with a happy scene then transferring to a complication as it were.