How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our movie, our teens are rather generic naive people who don't suspect anything until it is too late, this is a convention used in other movies following the teen slasher genre of horror.
Our main character, plaid by Craig is a gamer who is talking with his friend, played by Ed, until he parts ways with Ed. Now alone, Craig takes a shortcut through some woods, where he is stalked, pursued and finally stabbed to death by his chaser, who is dressed in casuals with a white mask.
Craig, as the main character, follows the conventions of the initial murder character who is unsuspecting and naive, and as a result this ends in Craig getting murdered by a psychopath.
This bears resemblence to Hostel's Josh, who through his naivity gets dragged into a hostile situation and murdered.

You can notice some similarities between these characters, most noticeably in the age of the characters. Both of the characters (Josh and Craig) wear informal clothing and stand in a slouching manner. They also both get killed in the movie introduction of the film through their naivity, another convention used in many films. Both characters are portrayed as stereotypical teenagers as they both look for fun in life and act in a naive fashion, as of such they both fall into a hostile situation.

During the planning I told Craig to dress in normal every day clothes (old ones as they'd get torn and dirty) and come down to navigation wharf where we filmed the intro, this is because he needed to look like an average teenager, and I believe this worked well.

As a finished product, I'd say Craig represents the teenage social group well, as he dresses in informal clothing, he is naive and he also talks about casual everyday topics such as the internet, this worked to our advantage in the films I believe as they are both common topics for teenagers that wouldn't normally apply to older adults.

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

From our introduction to this unit of work we studied horror movie intros from Dracula movies, Link here, and the one thing above all that stuck out about these intros is the lighting and other various methods including titles, settings and other scenery.
Film makers use these conventions to key into our subconscience and make us feel the fears the characters are feeling, and as of such, we used them in our key scenes to replicate this emotion.
Below are 9 scenes which used the convention in this way:

Frames (From left to right):

1. Title

2. Setting and location

3. Costumes and props

4. Camerawork and editing

5. Title font and style

6. story opening

7. Genre conventions

8. Characters

9. Special effects

Screenshot 1 immediately implicates a horror movie directly from the name alone, it is a solitary title and connotes an underlying sense of dread and terror, creating a foreboding atmosphere. Other movies that use this title are The Uninvited, The Blair Witch Project and The hills have eyes. The lighting is low key also, once again this adds a foreboding atmosphere that will key into the subconscience of the viewer to automatically register it as a horror movie.

Speaking from an audio perspective it also stays true to the conventions in that it uses low tone music and a swift breeze of wind to make it sound foreboding and uninviting.

The camerawork is also typical for the horror movie intro as the camera slowly moves into the sky where the title appears.

Screenshot 2 is the summarisation of the location, as you can see, it is a lowly lit forest, which is incredibly isolated. This setting is quite typical in horror movies, as it plays on our fears as an audience member, the fear of getting lost in the woods. The most evident example of a setting such as this is the blair witch project, in which a group of teens venture into a forest to shoot a documentary, and were never found again.

The forest is conveniently located just east from Navigation Wharf, the location of our intro, just outside of town.

This location follows the old isolation convention of horror movies, and thanks to that, we could expand on it, where Craig doesn't know just what he's getting into until it's too late. This in itself is a convention of teen slashers, as teens are often portrayed as being naive.

Screenshot 3 shows some costumes and props used in our film, especially toward the ending. As Craig is just a teen he is only wearing casual wear, much like all other teen portrayals in movies. This is a convention as it can add a fear that it could happen to anyone, and sometimes it does.

The other props we used were the shard of wood seen in the image, this was pulled off a broken fence somebody had discarded near the forest, as a result it looks very painful and thanks to this we could also tear a hole in an old pair of jeans that Craig was wearing.

We also used a fake knife, this made it easier for the illusion that Craig was being stabbed as it was retractable so it looked as if it had been plunged into his skin, thus adding realism.

Screenshot 4 showed some editing we used, as we used a fade transition at that point, and also we placed Ed's name for the opening credits.

We also used other various shots, including the shot reverse shot, and also a Dutch Tilt.

Screenshot 5 is our title sequence, in the film the name appears and briskly blows out of shot and fades out. This allowed us to make the title sequence look more authentic. We also used a rigid font style in keeping with other various conventions of movie openings.

Screenshot 6 shows the story opening, in this opening, Craig and Ed are walking towards the camera, talking about a game that was released recently. As we can see, this is typical teen behaviour, they then conclude their sentence by saying I'll see you online. These are typical everyday conversations for most teenagers and so it adds that convention that is shown at every intro to a horror movie, where everything seems alright until they are isolated and suddenly everything starts going crazy.

Screenshot 7 is the genre conventions. In this shot Craig is alone in a forest, this happens just after I run through the shot behind him. These are typical in a horror movie as it shows that he is a vulnerable target and it also adds a foreboding sense to the film, thus creating suspense.

Screenshot 8 shows two of our 3 characters; Ed and Craig. These characters are typical teenagers and are portrayed as such. They follow the typical conventions of teenager characters in horror movies, as they are naive, and they talk about stereotypical things for teenagers such as video games.

Screenshot 9 shows our special effects, in this screenshot we see Craig get stabbed with blood coming from his mouth. This was our most noticeable special effect and it was also easy to make, food dye and water.

We also used transitions and slow motion blurring in our movie to add to the feeling of the atmosphere.