Evaluation, Question 1

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

My media product has been compared to the Paranormal Activity films as it contains lots of shadows and silhouettes like my product. Also, the film Insidious was another film my product was compared to.

I used these films also as inspiration for my product, when doing my product I researched these films and looked at some screen shots of them. My product is similar to these screenshots as it is only shadows used in my production. I would say that The Red Book is more similar to Paranormal Activity. This is because in The Red Book there is only shadows and silhouettes such as in Paranormal Activity, where you don't see their faces, only see they presence, which is the same atmosphere we tried to create in The Red Book.












Insidious was an original idea for inspiration for out product because it has the element and atmosphere of something that is forthcoming and gets closer and closer. The start of Insidious was to the extent of our inspiration and the title sequence we thought was very effective, as the movie progressed, we didn't want our product to be that, so we just focused on the titles and opening with more shadows. We like the title sequence as it was in black and white, so we used that in out product and the soundtrack also inspired us for our soundtrack.

Our soundtrack uses ambient sounds with use of an eerie piano riff on top. We wanted it to be subtle as we wanted our audience to focus on the images, but also present enough to create a tense and suspenseful atmosphere. The film Insidious is more the inspiration behind our soundtrack but we also made it more original by adding the piano because it was eerie and really created that tense atmosphere. I listened to the Insisious soundtrack which starts off quiet, then loud violins are used when the title shows. We wanted our sondtrack to be more subtle than that because we thought it would keep the audience more tense as they don't know if it will crescendo or not. We also have put whispering into our soundtrack to make it more atmospheric. We used this idea from the film Knowing. The whispers in the Knowing title sequence is really effective and creates suspense, so we decided to use it in ours as well as we thought it would intensify it.


My product, I would say, it quite original and different as it is more paranormal rather than a plot that includes a serial killer or blood and violence, that is the only convention that I have disobeyed. Apart from that, the eerie shadows and the feeling of something creeping up on you adds to the tense atmosphere that thrillers create and my product does that. It is different because it is more of a psychological thriller which isn't an obvious choice to go for which makes it more original and different.