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

Evaluation Question 1 Niamh Carr - Group 1

How we used conventions of existing horror films.

Our opening title sequence Submerged uses 3 iconic aspects of existing horror movies to adhere to the psychological thriller form and the horror genre.
1. Water We used the films Below (2002) and Ghost Ship (2002) as inspiration for this element of our opening title sequence.
The Final Girl We used this iconic convention of horror in our opening title sequence using inspiration from Dont Be Afraid of the Dark (2011) and Scream (1996) Stalking We used this element in our opening title sequence and challenge the common conventions of this using inspiration from Cat People (1942) and Halloween (1987)

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3.

Our film

Existing film

These screen grabs from the 1987 film Halloween show how we have used this scene from an existing horror movie as inspiration for our stalking scene, shown in the above screen grabs, as both protagonists in these shots are walking anxiously as they have seen or felt an alternate presence behind them. Halloween uses a similar urban setting highlighting the mental instability of the female protagonist because of the stalker. Similarly, in Submerged we have used a comparable setting for a similar scene as our female protagonist can sense that the ghost of her friend is with her, but no one else in society can see her. This serves to show how we have used conventions of real media products.

This screen grab from the film the stalker scene in Cat People, 1942, equally shows how Submerged has used conventions of existing media products as in both films, the female is on her own, walking down a pavement on a main road yet still isolated and engrossed by the feeling of being followed. Alternatively, we chose to film our stalker scene in the daylight rather than at night to challenge horror convention and highlight the fact our female protagonist is isolated within her own mind rather than just physically and in her surrounding location and setting.

The two screen grabs below from the film Below 2002 show how we have incorporated conventions of current media products in the film industry but challenged them to make our film unique. In the photos Below the character is falling off a boat into the sea after shooting himself dead. In our opening title sequence, we have used conventions from this scene as our female protagonist is seen to be falling into a river, supposedly to her death, however by filming in the day time and in an open urban space rather than in an isolated setting out at sea the location serves to highlight the psychological thriller form and her mental isolation caused by the stimulus of her dead friend rather than an alternative motive in Below.

An iconic convention of the horror genre in film is The Final Girl, a young, vulnerable girl who is the main protagonist of the film and targeted throughout . In our film Submerged we challenged the conventions of the Final Girl by using a much younger, teenage girl who is not naive but physically strong and mentally strong until her best friend comes back from the dead to haunt her. We gathered inspiration from the modern horror film Dont Be Afraid of the Dark 2011, who used a very young girl who is being targeted by a spirit in her new home and her torment is unknown by her family. By taking inspiration from this existing media product it shows how our media product develops conventions of real media products by taking the concept of the Final Girl but changing her character traits, appearance and how she is targeted.

We also used the setting of the bath from the 2011 film as inspiration for our opening title sequence as we felt it connoted isolation, entrapment and an element of danger and suffocation provided by the surrounding water juxtaposed with being in the warm surrounding and supposedly comforting building of their own homes.

These 7 screen shots compare our opening title sequence Submerged to an opening title sequence we analysed during our research and planning, Ginger Snaps. Both films use teenage girls to convey two different sub-genres of horror but use similar shots, editing and iconography to convey the overall genre . Ginger Snaps is a slasher film and uses extremely graphic images to convey horror and disgust at the ordeal and horrifying acts they are doing to themselves. The opening title sequence builds in tension through the increasingly graphic images shown until the anti climax of returning to the class room. As a group, we have used some conventions of this horror film such as the main protagonist being a female, the placing of the opening title credits and the close up images as well as the iconography of the bath tub and paths.

Our opening title sequence challenges some of the conventions shown in Ginger Snaps due to the fact that Submerged is a psychological thriller, so the graphic images from the slasher subgenre are replaced with images of Lauren being present and then not present to highlight her mental instability. However it does build tension in a similar way, changing from location to location to heighten the pace and build to a climax which ends unresolved back in the same setting that the sequence began with, exposing some but not all parts of the cyclical narrative.

Similarly, Submerged is easily comparable to the film Ghost Ship, that as a group we also analysed for our research and planning into the art of the opening title sequence. The clear difference between the two title sequences is the way they tell the story and expose the narrative from the outset. Submerged opens with the shot of Megan in the bath which is a key element to the film as water symbolises death throughout but this is only alluded to whereas the subgenre of psychological thriller is more prominent through the camera shot of Lauren being present then absent making. This makes the viewer aware of the mental illness Megan is developing from the outset rather than the horrific events which are to follow.

Contrastingly, Ghost Ship starts on a civilised boat ship with no sign of horror or danger until the climatic end where many members of the ship are cut in half and die. This crescendo sets the film up for more horrific incidents whereas Submerged leaves the viewer trying to fill their own gaps as to where their relationship will take them. Both films do have other similarities in the fact they both use water to connote danger and both used civilised settings as initial locations which turn dangerous and lead to signs of isolation and entrapment.

The title of our opening sequence as well as the style of the title and font both adhere to the horror genre and are inspired by existing media products but distinct from existing conventions. The two pictures below show the titles of Scream (1996) and Thir13en Ghosts (2001). These pictures prove how we have used conventions of existing horror films as our Submerged title uses the same plain black background with white text. However we have challenged typical conventions of horror fonts and text by not adding a glow effect onto our title but rather having unaligned, displaced text to convey our sub-genre of psychological thriller and our storyline. The word submerged has connotations with water and suffocation which links to the method of death in our film and the sinking letters also convey a sense of drowning, similar to submerged, but also convey how her psychological problems cause Megan to drown within society and fade away before the viewers eyes.