Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our opening we decided to begin with a point of view shot in, that focused on a tent. There is only diegetic sound played during this shot, which mostly consists of the wildlife in the forest. 
This creates a neutral tone and sets the premise of the opening being a typical camping scene. We made use of this convention, which can ambiguously be seen to follow the horror genre. The horror film openings we reviewed in class, most notably Dead Wood are shown to have a similar opening scene. It begins with an establishing shot of the location with diegetic ambient sound only. We implemented this effect, as it would cause some misperception in the tone of film that is being produced. This convention is developed when we decided to use this common style of opening to create a fear for the audience. Furthermore the audience developed the fear of uncertainty via the casual mood set. 

Another way in which our media product uses a convention of real media is shown by the way we constructed our characters. In our opening we cast a teenage couple that had been camping. During the opening we were sure to display the male assertiveness often portrayed in horror films. In this case the male character proactively and independently goes out to collect the fire wood, and the female girlfriend willingly complies. This takes root from one of the three horror film openings we reviewed in class, called 'Dead Mary'. It is a well-known convention that we tried to take further and reflect, through the height of camera angles when addressing the victims. We were sure keep the early shots of the male character at eye level, in order to reinstate he is in no danger at certain points of the opening. Later on when the male character is attacked, we were sure to keep in tandem with real media products and reduce his viewing space drastically, thereby removing his power drastically.

The opening titles of Se7en are an example of a horror film with titles that quite obviously abide to the horror conventions. It uses its awkward and peculiar font to alienate the audience, and make sure that it provides no familiarity or becomes relatable in any way. We decided to go against this form of media presentation by making our titles a lot more functional, however while it is seemed rather ordinary we tweaked it slightly and made the font noticeably thinner. This gave it an off look, that pandered well to the audiences of this film. It is almost alluding to the tone with the opening of our film, that played on the audiences security on what would happen in the film.