Evaluation question 1

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

Conventions that our product follows and where they were sourced:

• Ominous soundtrack - Halloween/The Thing (John Carpenter)
• The titles - The Thing (John Carpenter)
• The enigma - Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
• The antagonist - Halloween
• The Setting - Eden Lake (James Watkins)
• The 'Final girl' - Halloween

The Soundtrack

The soundtrack we created for the sequence was very much inspired by John Carpenter's work; simplistic and repetitive.  For this we used GarageBand's on-screen keyboard feature to compose a grand piano score inspired by a soundtrack of Halloween. This was accompanied by a very deep 'throb' soundeffect similar to The Thing's opening sequence.  This made for a ominous, disturbing theme which indicates to the audience that something is about to happen; a popular device of horror movies to build suspense and tension.  Below are the soundtracks mentioned above in descending order: Halloween and The Thing.

The Titles

The titles were designed to be very plain; white on black, to conform to the conventions of a horror film; examplified in the opening of The Thing shown above.  The titles needed to be in capitals, fade-in and fade-out smoothly and the order of appearance was based on those of The Thing and Jaws.  The opening sequenceto Jaws can be found here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8SnZmUjhAA (embedding disabled)

The Enigma

The enigma we decided was going to be 'who is the man in the forest?' But after getting some early feedback from audiences the most common question was actually 'what happened to the couple?'.  By choosing to cut the murder scene from the sequence we have unintentionally altered the enigma, but an enigma nonetheless.  This has therefore challenged the form of the enigma as the fate of the characters' are of greater importance to the audience than the motives of the killer.

The Antagonist

The 'killer' we designed was based on Michael Myres of Halloween.  As you can see below the similarities are quite remarkable.

• Costume: plain; black/grey
• Props: A white mask - to hide his identity
• Weapon of choice: a kitchen knife - convention of the slasher sub-genre

The noteale differences between the two are obvious age/height; our actor was younger and shorter than Michael Myres; played by Tony Moran.  The mask we used was semi-transparent, had blackened eyes and drops of blood instead of Michael's plain white, full face mask - this was because we didn't want him to be mistaken as a copy-cat killer of Michael; we wanted something slightly original.

The Setting


The setting we chose was a secluded country park with a lake.  This was inspired by the setting of Eden Lake as well as one scene from Zodiac.  The lake is used as a point of interest for the couple and is associated with relaxed, calm and romantic emotions making the nature of the murder scene more dramatic and shocking.  A comparison between these examples and our own setting is that it had snowed the night before our shoot, giving our sequence a unique look.  Below is a shot from our sequence (top) and from Eden Lake (below) showing the similarities and differences of the settings.

The Final Girl

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl

The final girl is a trope in thriller and horror films (particularly slasher films) that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, Final Destination, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and its remake, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hellraiser, Alien, The Strangers, The Ring, The Grudge, and Terror Train. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.


A common plotline in many horror films, particularly prior to the 1990s, is one in which a series of victims is killed one by one by a killer amid increasing terror, culminating in a climax in which the last surviving member of the group, a girl or woman, either vanquishes the killer or gets away. According to Clover, the final girl in many of these works shares common characteristics: she is typically sexually unavailable or virginal, avoiding the vices of the victims (sex, illegal drug use, hedonistic lifestyle, etc.). She sometimes has a unisex name (e.g., Teddy, Billie, Georgie, Sidney). Occasionally the final girl will have a shared history with the killer. For example, in Halloween II, Michael Myers is revealed to be the brother of Laurie Strode and in Scream 3 the killer is revealed to be Roman Bridger, half-brother of sole survivor Sidney Prescott. The final girl is the "investigating consciousness" of the film, moving the narrative forward and as such, she exhibits intelligence, curiosity, and vigilance.


Studying the above, it is clear that the female character in our sequence is suitable to be the final girl for the whole film; to face the antagonist in the climax.  Below is a screen-grab of our intended 'final girl' (above) and a shot of Jamie Lee Curtis becoming the final girl of Halloween (below).  These images show that the emotional development of the character would alter the audiences interpretation of them.  Jamie's character Laurie Strode, would likely be used as a mould for our potential final girl.