Evaluation - How does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our production was heavily based upon films we ourselves as a group watched, we did this in order to make sure we adhered to the codes and conventions of the genre we had chosen to film, that being the psychological horror a sub genre of horror.  Myself I focussed heavily on the opening of seven hence alot of similarities between our final piece and that of the opening to seven. However another piece I looked at which we found useful was the opening scene to the TV series Dexter, while this was a TV series it adhered greatly to the codes and conventions we wished to abide by and was extremely useful in aiding us with our selection of shots and camera angles to use. In terms of how our product develops the common codes and conventions of the genre is the eerie atmosphere created by our shot choice and general style of filming. Heavily influenced by Seven we used a lot of close ups in order to prevent the viewer from being able to witness the whole scene in front of them, it allowed us to hide certain aspects of the scene and so in turn create an aura of mystery to the opening making the audience unsure as to what is happening and perusing a sense of enigma in the way they must keep watching to see what is actually going on in the scene. Another convention of the genre we used was the hiding of the characters face; in doing this we further amplify the feeling of mystery and horror in our piece. The audience in consequently not able to in the opening scene able to witness the true identity of the cannibal and so they are left out in the unknown left to second guess what is going to happen. By filming in an ambiguous nature we further adhered to codes and conventions of our chosen genre, the actual evidence of what is happening is so hidden from the viewer and they are unsure as to what is going on further forcing the insuring sense of horror and foreboding as to the persona’s actions in the scene. The general focus of a cannibal in our film furthermore continues to apply to the genre in that commonly psychological horrors focus primarily on the scariest part of the human psyche. Often this is the part most heavily repressed by people the urge to be crazy and let out a more insane side to a personality is something that we intended to portray in order to truly to create something that did scare out intended target audience. More over the use of effects which furthermore fragmented our shoot breaking up making it seem jarred and uncertain also boosted this enigma of horror, being a representation of the killer himself whereby he is also fragmented and broken in a psychological way which has furthermore led him the lifestyle of a serial killer and cannibalism. The music we used was mainly to create tension in the shoot, and primarily a sensation of foreboding, as if the structure of the shoot is leading up to something bigger, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats in true fear of what this something actually is.