Evaluation Q1

The generic conventions of a supernatural thriller is that the storyline involves supernatural beings such as vampires and spirts.
Our opening hints at the genre by showing small generic conventions such as location, props, shots and titles.

Setting
Our opening was set in a house. this is a generic convention for other supernatural films such as 'Amityville Horror 2: The Possession' (1982), 'The Woman in Black' (2010) and 'Insidious'(2010).

Our Location as shown in the opening.

 

 

Costumes and Props

Our costumes are more of a horror generic convention since they are all in nightwear. Horrors and Supernatural thrillers so we all discussed this and thought it would well with our film.

 

 

As you can see all the characters shown are in their nightwear. We chose to use this because it helped show their innocents and naivety to the situation.

The main props we used were candles and a ouija board. These are generic conventions because they are commonly used and shown as a way of contacting spirts and demons. These are shown in a close up birds eye shot to high light the importance they have in our piece.

 

Camera work and Editing.

The start of our film we use a tracking shot of the pictures. This is similar to the tilt down in Insidious. It is similar because it it helping set the scene also as it is slow in pace it adds an early feel to the film.

Tracking shown in our film.



 

Tilt down in Insidious

We also use the effect of close ups to pin out a important prop in our film. This is a generic convention which is also used by The Woman In Black on a close up of a cup and pot. This shot if very effective when it comes to trying to get a message or importance object to your audience.

Close up in our film.

 

Close up in Woman in Black

 



 

Another shot which we share with Woman in Black is a 3 shot. This is commonly used in an supernatural opening because it helps introduce the main characters and their surrounding. The difference between ours and there shot is that we use a high angle. This is because we represent age in a different way. Age is shown to be Innocent and naive in our piece so they need to be shown as belittle to their environment.

 

Our 3 shot.

Woman in Black 3 shot.

The generic convention of editing is to be slow paced. We used this in our film during the beginning and during the candles and ouija board. We broke the convention during the speaking part because we felt it worked better to pick up so speed there to show that the characters aren't really taking time to think.

Font and titles.

Our titles are mostly integrated apart from the title of our film. The letters of Cursed are spelt out by the ouija board and appear as such until the word is spelt then generation appears. This is similar to how one of the titles in insidious moves with the object in the clip. This is used to make the titles seem more like apart of the film as well as giving them a sinister look.

Our Title

 

Insidious Title.

 

 

Our font was picked so that it was a close match to that of the ouija board. We did this so that the film was continuous and the titles linked with the main focus of the film.

 

Storyline

Our film breaks the generic convention of mystery by introducing the ouija board in the first 2 minutes but this is because we would have a twist later on in the film which then adds this mystery.

 

Characters

The fact that we introduce our characters straight away by the opening dialogue goes against a normal supernatural film but this is because we wanted to make our film standout and capture the audience from the beginning.

 

Special Effects 

Since we are an independent company we don't use any special effects because of budget but most supernatural films have quiet a large amount of special effect due to the character types they have to use but we would keep it to a minimum by not making our supernatural characters human like and add effects with makeup.