Evaluation Question 1

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

First of all, we chose Dead Mans Alley as our title, as this makes the film genre obvious from the start, we used bold bright red letters to make the title stand out and grab the viewers attention, therefore our media product has used conventions of a real media product as most films aim to grab your attention through big bold titles on trailers/opening sequences in a cinema to draw you in from the beginning. 

Our choice of location is what the whole of our film is based around, when we was thinking of ideas for our horror movie and what would be a good place to shoot our opening sequence, one member of our group suggested the alley that she lives by which is nicknamed 'Dead Mans Alley' the reason being is it is an alleyway next to a busy train station with railings and overgrown plants everywhere, it's very gloomy and is the kind of place you wouldn't walk down by yourself at night, the nickname inspired our film title and made the perfect setting, therefore developing our media product into a whole idea and image in our minds setting the base for our opening sequence.

We also used modern day costumes/props as mentioned before such as the mobile phone and clothes that teenagers would wear everyday, so in a way we used conventions here that a real media product would use to fit their genre and target audience, but I believe we also challenged and developed on some real media conventions as our characters costume was not basic modern such as jeans and a jacket etc but an edgy individual look, to really bring our sequence to modern day time, our character is also wearing long dark red/burgundy socks as red is seen as a symbol of danger and death, so there is a hidden message from the start.

In our camerawork and editing, we changed the contrast of the film to make it darker and gloomier to really add to the uneasy and mysterious atmosphere, and we chose to film the whole sequence as a point of view shot from the murderer's perspective to build on that uneasy atmosphere. We also added a clip of heavy breathing over the sequence to make it weird and scary, as well as a creepy soundtrack to build up the moment and set the scene/mood. Also, when filming the diegetic sound of our character talking, it wasn't very clear or loud which made it difficult to understand, so in editing we re-recorded our characters dialogue and put the clips of audio over where the character originally spoke to make it easier to hear and understand. This specific shot was to make the audience feel uncomfortable as well as get their attention to make them want to see what's going to happen and who this person is who's eyes we are seeing it through... But to make it a cliffhanger we don't reveal who this person is throughout our opening sequence, even at the end, too add to the mystery. The whole opening sequence being in a point of view shot perspective uses and develops on ideas from real media products as there are normally a few point of view shots in a sequence involving a psycho murderer scene, but we challenged this convention by making the whole of our opening sequence a range of point of view shots from one perspective.

When choosing our story-line and how to create the build up in our opening sequence, we imagined what would keep us on the edge of our seat if this was an actual film we was watching in the cinema, so we used the conventions a typical horror movie usually does and what you would usually see happen in them. We started by introducing the audience to our character straight away by showing her walking from a busy high street down a side road, it's very obvious who our protagonist character is as the camera follows there every movement, this distinguishes her from the rest of the people in the background, and by getting her to walk away from everybody else this automatically brings her away from the busy public place and brings her into a deserted location instead, separating her from the 'life' in the location, which is once again another hidden message, but purposefully making it very apparent that she is now alone. We did this as in typical horror movies you see either a lone person, or a group of friends get into a situation where they are often alone (or end up alone) in a deserted place with no other frequent form of life close by. Putting the protagonist character alone is the start of our build up and developing on the idea above, then having someone follow her closely adds to this. When the character is then in the alleyway we start building to the climax of the sequence, with the person behind (who's point of view we are seeing this from) getting closer to our protagonist character, and the two then finally coming face to face, however we only allow the audience to see this interaction between the two for a split second before the shot jump cuts to a black screen, building the suspense and mystery.

The genre definitely uses and develops on the usual conventions of a horror film by using a young attractive teenage girl as the protagonist character, the use of modern day everyday teenage clothing, the mobile phone prop etc, our opening has forms and conventions to suggest that it is a horror film with the use of the creepy slow soundtrack, the isolation of the character herself and the uneasy point of view shot from the murderer's point of view (even though it is not obvious who this person is)