Take me ThereMedia Evaluation

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

Before creating the final product of the film introduction, I conducted some research to help

choose the type of horror film we wanted to create a film introduction for. I watched a wide range of

horror films and analysed them in order to inspire the group with ideas for our own films and how we could

turn these into a real media product. Three of the films I watched which most inspired my views on the film were ‘Psycho,’ ‘The Shining’ and ‘Donnie Darko.’

The Idea:

To get to our idea for our horror film, we used all the resources we could. We created mind maps of types of horrors we could do, including mental illness. We then looked at these theme in more detail, discussing ideas for each theme to see which ones would be easy,

effective and achievable for us. We first thought of doing a slasher film. But we then came across the idea of using mental health as a theme. We knew this wouldn’t be easy to convey

in a short film introduction but it was different and an interesting theme to use for our horror film introduction.

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Psycho

‘Psycho’ (1960) directed by Alfred Hitchcock really inspired us to create a psychological horror. Although Psycho is a slasher film, we were intrigued at how much Alfred Hitchcock

was able to create tension and fear using the mind in this film. One of the ideas in this film, how the film made anyone feel scared to walk into our own (or any) bathroom. I was intrigued at the idea of the social psyche and how we could make an audience feel scared and anxious in their own home. This is why we chose to create a psychological film, as it is a more interesting and intriguing way of scaring an audience. Psycho also gave us the idea

to set the film mainly inside the couples house, as this was a setting that is supposed to make people feel safe, secure and comfortable and we wanted our film and our film intro to make people feel uncomfortable and unsettled which our felt the house was a perfect

setting to do this in order to disturb and scare.

Donnie Darko

We were also inspired by the film ‘Donnie Darko’ released in 2001, directed by Richard Kelly. This is personally one of my favorite films and it really interested us in creating a psychological horror. Donnie Darko is a strange and uncanny film that focuses on one man who keeps seeing an imaginary figure. This helped us to create the idea of the protagonist having certain ideas on how his past was created, however it isn’t a true representation, just like Frank the Rabbit.

Jake Gyllenhaal, the main actor in the film, said that the director “used the mainstream style of film making against itself, to be subversive.” This reflects the style of the film, as it was very disjointed, weird and mysterious and nothing like any other films I have seen.

The ShiningThe final film that inspired us was, ‘The Shining’ (1980) directed by Stanley

Kubrick. This classic horror movie gave us the inspiration to create a film intro for a film linked with mental illness. The Shining shows how one person can decay through being mentally ill and this we believed was powerful and scary, again linking with our thoughts on having a psychological horror. We also felt like

doing a a film introduction with a man with a mental illness of schizophrenia as we thought this was an interesting theme and it was one that our group really

enjoyed doing and creating ideas to portray this theme within the trailer.

Although we enjoyed creating a film introduction out of the theme of mental illness, we questioned why mental illness induces horror in some films, even though it is a serious medical illness which people cannot help. I looked at a

couple articles online and found different answers. The most common was the fact that there is a stereotype on people with mental illness for being violent thus being scary. Also, the thought that many of us could develop a mental

illness may be scary in itself causing us to subconsciously separate ourselves from “them.”

Developing Media Conventions

• In the film introduction, I think our group haven’t challenged media conventions, and more followed them. This is shown through the stereotypical view of our protagonist going to a therapy group, and a stereotypical therapist, who is represented as calm and resourceful. The flashback scenes are also typical in a psychological thriller, which help show our protagonist and how disjointed he is from society.

Challenging Media Conventions

• As previously said, Jake Gyllenhaal, the main actor in Donnie Darko, said that the director “used the mainstream style of film making against itself, to be subversive.”. Our fim introduction doesn’t challenge many conventions, such as using titles that are similar to those seen in Se7en and using what was already there to expand upon it.

We also used real media products with our use of music. When researching existing short film introductions, we watched them on mute and found that when watching these with no

sound, they were not as scary to watch as when the sound was on. This showed us how important music and sound effects are.

For us, this took the most time as we wanted our music and sound effects to fit our intro perfectly and make the trailer feel eerie, mysterious and above all- scary as this was very

important in making our short film introduction effective.

Overall, our short film intro was able to use, develop and challenge the forms and conventions of real media products. We used ideas and influences from existing media,

music and information but we developed these ideas into our own and changed them so that we could challenge the stereotypes and ideas of existing media products.

By Connor Flello

Music