The document discusses how the student's media project utilizes conventions from real media products to develop themes of horror and unease. It explores the use of an eerie sound motif without dialogue, washed out color grading, jump cuts and crossfades in editing, strategic text placement, natural lighting, props tied to Alice in Wonderland, and a black and white costume to reference the source material while incorporating horror elements. While mainly adhering to conventions, the project challenges industry norms by focusing on a horror theme and including black and white shots.

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

2.  My media product doesn’t have any dialogue in it and so a lot of the
general theme is shown to the audience through the sound motif as
it is very disjointed and eerie, as well as instilling childhood fear
because of the nursery rhyme essence of the motif, giving off the
feeling that I was attempting to portray. By using this convention of
real media products, it allows the audience to predict the theme of
my project and also helps the audience to understand it a lot better.
The same convention is used in ‘Insidious’, where a small child
sings a song just before a major jump scare comes up. It also
concentrates on the fact that the film is an introduction to the setting
as well as the themes and character. By progressing this way we are
also introduced to the idea that the character has done something
very sinister. Personally, I think the use of a non-diegetic sound
motif is better in this instance than if I were to use any dialogue
simply due to the amount of mystery it adds to my project.
Although, I think if I added in a few voice over clips that I could of
manipulated to sound quite weird and creepy, they would have
been also quite effective.
Sound

3.  My project is very washed out, with scenes that were shot in
greyscale and others shot with the saturation turned down,
because I used these two conventions of real media products,
thus connoting horror and danger, I feel that the feelings of
eeriness were transcribed quite well. These conventions also
give the project a very dreary feel, when added with the
aforementioned eeriness, both generate a creepy, dark feeling.
I would have liked the colour of the ‘blood’ in the teacup to
perhaps have been a darker shade because it’s very obvious to
me that it looks quite unrealistic and slightly ruins the whole
theme I was trying to represent.
Colour

4.  I used a range of crossfades and jump cuts in my project
which are both again used in real media products. I tried to
use jump cuts to develop my project – for example, an empty
teacup which as the intro progressed, became filled with
‘blood’ and led to more of the “violent” scenes involving the
knife. I also tried to almost cross knit the editing of the images
and the sound motif that I had used, placing more “violent”
scenes, i.e. the knife and flower overlay, where the music
became more disjointed. This was quite effective I believe as it
raised tension and made the work seem very dark at some
points. By varying the lengths of each cut, I attempted to
make it as visually exciting, trying to create an atmosphere
where the audience doesn’t know what to expect in the
upcoming sequence.
Editing

5.  There wasn’t much text used in my opening apart from all of
the credits and the film title itself. I placed them strategically
around the images where it was a lot less dark, i.e. teacup in
the grass, so that they were easy to read and not ignored. I
placed most of the text in eye-catching areas so that they did
draw some of the audience attention to read them but also
keep audience attention on the images themselves. I made
sure that the credits were up for a long enough time and also
didn’t contain so many words ensuring that the audience
could read them without having to struggle immensely. I
thought to thicken up my credits that I should use the
original author of Alice in Wonderland and also the director
that inspired me to create my own twisted version of it.
Text

6.  A lot of the scenes shot in my project were done in natural
lighting as a lot of the footage was shot in my back garden
and in front of a well lit window. For the majority of the black
and white scenes, the lighting was substantially not as good
as those with the less saturated colour, but I feel like this
added to the horror theme of my work as the black and white
scenes were the ones with a lot more graphic images. The
darkness of the more graphic scenes was a convention used
from real media products so that it gives off an uneasy feeling
as not everything is clearly distinguished and makes the
whole idea a lot darker and this therefore creates confusion.
Lighting

7.  Again another convention I used from real media products
was the variety of props in my project. The props were almost
essential in my piece as they are what define my work to be
related to Alice in Wonderland rather than just a messed up
uncoordinated film opening. The flowers, cards, “potion”,
teacup, etc. all relate back to Alice in Wonderland whereas the
“blood” and the knife are what tie it in and link it with
normal horror conventions. The use of costume also linked
my piece back to Alice in Wonderland, but due to the dress
being black and white, rather than Alice’s usual blue and
white dress, this also helped my work and tied up the link
between Alice in Wonderland themes and also horror.
Mis en Scene

8.  My work mainly uses regular conventions of real media
products, but there are areas where I believe it to challenge
real products. Such as the horror theme, a lot of companies
stray away from horror as it doesn’t act as a major income
due to the smaller target audience rather than comedy or
romance movies where the target audience is a lot higher.
Another is the black and white shots, major industries don’t
usually use black and white images in their products. Overall
my piece really rather used usual conventions rather than
challenging them, but I think this could be a good thing as if I
completely challenged the norm of the conventions then my
piece may have ended up completely nonunderstandable.
General Filming