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

The title of the film

The title ‘The chatroom’ reflects the fact that the male stalker hunts his victims over a social network called the chatroom. Other dark thrillers involving female teenagers being a victim and has an element of horror in it, just like ours have typical dark names such as ‘Nightmare on Elem Street’ and ‘when a stranger calls’. So the title of out media product challenges the convention of using a typical scary name in a horror.

Setting/location

The setting of ‘The Chatroom’ is shot in 3 main locations: a female teenagers called Meleks’ bedroom, a stalker called Kennedys’ basement and a local park. The lack of revelation of the location helps the audience raise questions as to where is all this happening and wondering if they are ever going to find out. I found that following the conventions of the opening of seven, where the reveal very little about the location proving very effective in thrillers.

Costumes and props

The mise en scene of our media project emulates on a dark theme being narrated. The male character is seen to be wearing no clothes until the final shots where he is wearing clothing that hides his identity; feeding into the enigma atmosphere trying to be portrayed. Much of the female attire is unclear and irrelevant to the narrative until the final close up shot

Camerawork and editingOur media project consists of distinctive close up and extreme close ups. This is a relation the the extreme close ups used in the opening sequence of seven that proved effective in not revealing too much an creating a mysterious theme. Even though many close ups were used, a long shot was used to set the establish that the following shot was in a park which follows the conventions of typical horror movies. In Seven or and other thriller, it is normal to have fast pace editing to build anticipation. Our media product is in contrast to that and consists of slow elliptical, intercutting, juxtaposing tension cuts to subvert general conventions, playing with the audiences emotions by building climax and anticlimax simultaneously.

Title font and styleThe font used for the introduction of the cast was Herculaneum. It is a normal basic font that we thought would be good to try subvert typical conventions of spine chilling horror fonts. We also did this because our movie is not a horror alone. At first we thought about showing the casts name as if it was being typed by someone there self, but It couldn’t be done at the time because my laptop broke and I wasn’t sure when it was going to get fixed. Luckily for me it came back it time and feedback from others reinforced our decision to do it. The typing effect relates to the plot of the movie as shown in the next slide

Story and how the opening sets it up

The opening sets up the story nicely. Its shows something that’s happening in mid story so after the opening sequence you would see a flash back to Kennedy in school getting bullied. I believe having the opening that shows elements of what is going to happen later in the story allows audience to brace themselves as well as wonder so much. The opening sets a pretty pleasant tone compared to how the rest of the movie is but the audience is aware they will be in for something as the goory final shot reveals hints of what is to come.

Genre and how the opening suggests it

The mise en scene, lighting and props in particular portrays our media project as a type of thriller/horror. The dark cinematography narrates the genre by giving it a dark atmosphere all is revealed in the final shot where there is blood all over the female character hung from a tree

How characters are introduced?Both characters identity has been to has been limited as a persuasive technique but both characters are introduced in the same way. However, there is sense of climax and anti-climax wen you see a friendly beautiful female then a contrast to the dark scary man. The juxtaposition here shows a sense of binary opposition as the female is good and the male is bad which feeding into the stereotype.