1. In what ways does your media productuse, develop or challenge forms andconventions of real media products? {Evie Thornborrow

2. Our Film- The Presence 3. Comparison to The Shining 4. The Title of the FilmThe title of the film we created took a lot of thought as it is a very important aspect of the film itself. The title gives the audience first impressions of the film so they can decide whether they want to watch itor not. We needed a title which would fit in with the genre of our film and create a spooky, mysterious atmosphere, so the audience would be questioning it and wondering what its all about. By comparing it to The Shining both titles contain the, I think that by having the before themain word of the title, makes it more powerful and meaningful. It also fitsin with the horror film genre, a few examples are The Thing, The Fly,The Ring, The Exorcist and The Haunting, these are all popular horror films and therefore we thought it would make it clear of the genre. 5. The Setting Our film is set in the countryside, which is similar to The Shining, having a horror film set in the countryside might seem unusual as it all looks verypretty and peaceful. However, as it is in the middle of nowhere, it makes it more creepy, mysterious and deserted. Having it in the countryside alsomakes it look more realistic and relatable, it is very important to have realisticelements to horror films so that the audience can feel scared and get hooked to watching it. The countryside is a very isolated location and usually horrorfilms will focus on the fact that there is noone else around, for example in TheShining there is one car driving on the country roads and it uses bird eye viewshots, and extreme long shots to emphasise that they are alone. We do asimilar thing in our film, we use a lot of establishing shots to show howisolated and abandoned it is, and focus the attention on the one girl. 6. Costumes As there is no costume used in the opening of The Shining, it is difficult to compare our two products. However, we decided to use everyday, normal clothes that you would expect the average teenager to wear. Costume is animportant factor of addressing and relating to the audience, we chose ourcharacter to wear normal looking clothes so that our target audience can relate to the character, and feel more emotions towards her. We decided she shouldwear a vest top and leggings, this is a neutral sort of outfit which manyteenage girls wear and therefore can relate to. A lot of horror films try to makeit look like normal everyday life and therefore use normal looking costumes, however for their scary characters they may opt for a more dark, gloomy, frightening costume. 7. Camerawork and EditingThe camerawork used in our film and in The Shining are very similar. Asboth of the films are set in an important location, both of them use a lot of establishing shots to begin with. The Shining uses birds eye view and high angle shots, whereas we have a lot of panning shots. Using establishingshots sets the location and gives the audience knowledge of where aboutsthe film is taking place. It also shows how isolated and in the middle ofnowhere the location is, which is the case for both our film and The Shining. The Shining follows this one car driving along the road, whereas ours is setting the scene before the sudden action happens. Our running section took a lot of different camera shots and a lot of editing it all together, thereare low angle shots, close ups, midshots, over the shoulder shots, point of view shots, long shots, tracking shots etc. When we edited we had to makesure it all matched up, we used match on action and therefore it wasimportant that it was exactly right. 8. Font and StyleFont is also very important when it comes to setting the atmosphere of the film opening. After comparing our font to the font used in The Shining, I feel that thefont we used fitted with the genre better and created a creepier effect. The font used in The Shining is quite plain and basic which doesnt create much of anatmosphere and doesnt really match up with the music. However, the font weused makes the music even scarier and creates a really scary title sequence. We looked through a lot of different fonts before finding the perfect one which fittedin with our opening. We also created our own effect for it, so that it flickers whichmakes it even creepier, however The Shining uses a scrolling effect which is fairlyboring and doesnt really exaggerate the genre of the film or make it clear to theaudience. 9. Story/NarrativeThe storyline of The Shining is very similar to the storyline of our film. Theyboth are about a supernatural presence, they also both involve killings. Manyhorror films have similar storylines but are approached in different ways, tocreate a terrifying atmosphere for the audience to keep them drawn in. Here are the storylines for both our film (The Presence) and the popular 1980 horrorThe Shining.The Presence The ShiningLucy is being haunted by a ghostly presence, however A man, his son and wife become thenobody else believes her about it, they think shes making winter caretakers of an isolated hotel whereit up and its just in her head. Her friends and familyDanny, the son, sees disturbing visions ofthen start to mysteriously die, she knows it is somethingthe hotels past using a telepathic giftto do with the ghost. She then finds an old woman whoknown as "The Shining". The father, Jackhas experienced the same thing, who tells her to have an Torrance, is underway in a writing projectexorcism. The exorcism goes wrong and the ghost goes when he slowly slips into insanity as ainside Lucys body and she becomes possessed. She goes result of cabin fever and former guests ofmental, attacks her boyfriend, trashes the house and kills the hotels ghosts. After being convincedthe old woman who tried to help her. She then gets by a waiters ghost to "correct" the family,another exorcism and everything seems alright, until she Jack goes completely insane. The only thingstarts to lash out again. Lucys boyfriend decides to kill that can save Danny and his mother isLucy, as she is possessed and its the only thing he can "The Shining".do, when Lucy is killed the ghost dies too. Or does is?..(http://www.imdb.co.uk/title/tt0081505/) 10. Genre In the opening sequence of The Shining, the genre is not obvious. It is showing establishing shots of a beautiful looking place in the countryside, the sun isshining and it looks like it is people going on holiday. However, the score usedmakes it slightly disorientating and unnatural, as you wouldnt expect deep, dramatic, tense music to be playing whilst showing this beautiful scenery. The start of our opening is very similar to this, however because of our creepy fontand dramatic music, it makes it clear to the audience the genre of our film.Also, the fast editing used in our opening, makes it more tense and disorientating which adds to the creepiness, showing the viewers that it is ahorror film. In The Shining, the only part which makes the genre noticeable isthe score, other than that the audience are unaware, this may be a good thing as it adds mystery and questioning to the audience. 11. CharactersThe characters portrayed in our film and The Shining are also similar. Theprotagonist in our film is called Lucy, we used a young girl for the main character because it shows vulnerability and makes it even more frighteningbecause girls are seen as being weaker and more fragile. However, The Shining has a middle aged man as the protagonist, this is quite unusual for ahorror film, and subverts the stereotype that men are strong, tough people,and portrays him to be weak and vulnerable. However, he then kills his family, which makes him the bad one in the film, which is also strange to have the protagonist being the villain. There is also a young boy, this is tomake the audience feel sorry for him and feel emotions towards him, as young boys are portrayed to be innocent and vulnerable. In our film, we also have a teenage boy playing Lucys boyfriend, this is to show a sense ofreality and let the audience connect to the characters. We also have an old woman, who Lucy eventually kills, using an old woman also portrays vulnerability as old women are stereotyped to be weak.