Question 1 Evaluation‘The Horror in the

Woods’

‘In what ways does your media

product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media

products?’

Location In our film ‘The Horror in the Woods’ the location we chose to have our movie set in was a forest. This was because people tend to see forests as being empty and far away from civilization, we adopted this idea as it added to the idea of horror. The audience get this eerie, atmospheric feeling as they feel like they are in this location too. Forests are seen as a place where bodies may be dumped or where people will be taken to be murdered as it tends to be that nobody is around to help or to ever find the victim so this adds a lot more horror to our movie and fits to the genre we have chosen as the forest is what adds this feeling of loneliness and away from society with a large vulnerability in the forest. The location of the movie remains the same throughout, this also adds a sense of horror as it shows the audience that the characters are actually lost in this forest and the longer they run through the forest, the more they get lost which shows that there is no way that the characters are going to escape. As shown in the two images below, the image on the left is a photo of the forest in The Blair Witch Project and the image on the right represents the location of The Horror in the Woods, as you can see from both of the images, both of them present a dark atmosphere and shows that there is nobody around to help and that the only thing they can do is run away from whatever is chasing them. We had a few ideas for better locations that would provide an even better horror atmosphere, we had ideas of doing this in things such as a graveyard or a abandoned building, however as these weren’t available to us we had to stick with the idea of a forest. This however went well for us, although it wasn’t the location we wanted, the forest still let us provide an atmosphere and immerses the viewer.

ThemeThe horror theme we used relates to a lot of different psychological horrors, in movies such as The Blair Witch Project the horror of the movie is in the atmosphere and the feeling that is created and the tension, in the Blair Witch Project you don’t see the thing that is chasing them but instead you can hear it’s footsteps and it moving about outside in the dark, similarly in our movie, we build up the same tension that is expected from a psychological horror, we do this by including the feeling of them being chased and being vulnerable to being killed at any moment, this tension builds up until the end when they finally stop and as their back is turned the killer sneaks up on them to kill them. Along with this we also tried to get the filming done on a dark day, this was because we wanted to try and create a dull atmosphere that would also add to the tension of a psychological horror. This tension is built up by the fact that the characters are constantly on the lookout for whoever is chasing them and they still have no idea where the killer is.

To compare these two examples of media product the image on the left shows an image of the ending of the Blair Witch Project in which the victim is concentrated on something else and whilst her back is turned she suddenly gets snuck up on and attacked.

On the right is an image of my product which uses the same idea of first of all having the victim have their back turned whilst they have their concentration on something else and then they get attacked whilst they don’t expect it.

Use of psychological horrorWe done some research into other media products that’s genre was psychological horror. One example of a media product that I did a lot of research into was The Blair Witch Project, I would say that our product relates a lot with this movie as they both provide a sense of being alone and this is what adds to the atmosphere of a psychological horror as it provides a horror like atmosphere that shows that the people in the movie are vulnerable and could be killed at any moment which builds up the tension that is expected from a psychological horror. In the Blair Witch Project we only get a bit of background information of the area and the thing that is chasing them and trying to kill them, we used this same idea in our media products so that we could make our movie a psychological horror as the killer isn’t revealed and we don’t know where the killer will be or when he will show up in our movie until the end, there are hints as to what and why this thing is killing them in the Blair Witch Project