EVALUATION QUESTION 1

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

Continuity
From AS level to A2 i have understood more what continuity means and how important it is in a film this is why as a group we looked carefully into it and made sure we had planned out our shots using a storyboard before we started filming. With our media product this year we wanted to make sure that continuity and conventions were a major factor and have to be carefully focused on in order to make a successful film. At a technical level we stuck to the conventions of editing and filming, such as not breaking the 180 degree rule and making sure our shots would flow when put together on final cut express. We did this to prevent the audience from confusion and make the film more clear to view. We had problems however because the first rough cut of our film a lot of things in it did not make sense and the film was raising a lot of questions regarding the storyline  in particular. To correct this we ended up changing the boyfriend character in the film of the couple that move in after Agnes has died, and we ended up re shooting a total of three times to get the story and shots looking just right. We had to break continuity a couple of times though throughout the film especially with the time jumping of Agnes finding out she's actually dead and no longer lives in her home in which she is seen as a ghost by the new couple who move in. However knowing we broke this helped us to create a more interesting story line and keep the audience wanting to know more about our characters. Despite this up until this point our film is very focused on Agnes and her story with what happens to her because of her parents. Another part of the film that doesn't include continuity is the beginning where Agnes is in bed and wakes up from a 'dream' she has. Another factor that effected how continuous our film was, the time period of which we filmed because of peoples appearances such as hair cuts and colors so we had to even change the date of a hair cut that Emma was meant to have due to her role as the main character Agnes.

Elliptical Editing
Elliptical editing is a technique used to create an ellipse in the plot and effects the story duration, these can be done by using different elliptical editing such as jump cuts and dissolving the scenes from one to the next. By using a combination of sound and the dissolve effect we managed to create a scene that jumps from Agnes feeling uneasy in the kitchen to her walking into the living room an example of how we used elliptical editing to our advantage. This can be seen in the first minute of our film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyTp5zcvBes 

Conventions

Conventions of a media text are things you expect to find in a certain genre of film, this was a major factor for us in making our genre noticeable. In terms of the concept of our film I think that in the end it was meant to be a ghost horror based film but because of the story and Agnes getting killed by her own parents I think it did subvert the expectations of the overall film just adding elements of crime and drama in it. Because our film was based around scaring the audience and giving them a thrill we did look closely at traditional horror films such as The Others. We wanted to quickly scare the audience and make them jump, like the rocking chair scene which can be seen in the film, The Woman in Black, we recreated this by putting our own twist on it where only Elisha can seen Emma (Agnes) in the film where the couple are moving in, this would shock the audience and this would be expected as it is a convention of horror films in general. Another convention we included in our film which we spent a lot of time on and even included tutorials in our blog work was costume and make-up. Due to drug abuse being a big part of our film, because of Agnes' mum and dad, We wanted to them to both look washed out so we used pale make-up on them both compared to their natural shade, we did this because we took inspiration from the look created for the film trainspotting in which the main character a heroin addict looks ghostly white just like we tried to made ours look. Steve Neale a theorist who looks into the topic of genre stated that ' genres are instances of differences and repetition' and he also added that ' difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre'. We agreed with his opinion and to change our story from the typical horror film we added unexpected characters such as a police woman and a innocent couple that have nothing to do with Agnes' story. In addition to this we also chose to keep the story under wraps until the end when the audience finds out that Agnes actually died quite a few years ago so it wasn't set in the present day as originally thought. Despite this we did take some typical conventions such as a dark scary forest in which Agnes is killed by her parents, this can be seen in other films such as Blair witch project which takes place in a forest. Another iconic film we took inspiration form was Alfred Hitchcock's 1960's film in which he creates the shower scene where the actress is stabbed to death however the stabbing is never actually witnessed just like our scene where Agnes gets hanged by her Father. Using a combination of sound effects and fast-moving shots we were able to make it look realistic and gruesome for the audience to experience pure shock when seeing it for the first time. Another comparison that can be made is the blood flowing down the shower to the plug hole as the last scene from Psycho where the woman is stabbed to death, this is recreated in our film, The Intruders in which there is a shot where Agnes' feet are seen just dangling and fidgeting as she is portrayed to be struggling for her life. We added a sound effect of a weighted rope to add to the verisimilitude (0.25). Despite the murder being portrayed in the scene, the actress was not harmed and the 'hanging' is completely fake.

Scene from Trainspotting which we used for make-up inspiration for Agnes' Mother and Father. 

The woman from Psycho when she is being attacked by her killer. 

The iconic plughole scene in which we tried to recreate with Agnes' hanging feet. 

Conclusion for our Film the Intruders
The Intruders in terms of the question does successfully include good continuity and typical conventions, for a horror film. I think that because this is our first five minute film it was a challenge to incorprate everything into it but i think overall we included enough and didn't over do it. By looking into other films that were similar to ours it helped us to gain ideas and recreate scenes as a sign of idolization. We also looked closely at film theorist and tried to add their ideologies into our film so we didn't fall into the trap of filming a story that completely imitated another film that is already out there. To add to this the combination of good props, mis-en scene and shots used i think we achieved all we set out to do when we first got together to start our project. Below is a link to our final film The Intruders.

Final film