In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products

After analysing the opening scenes of horror films, we became particular influenced by Friday The 13th (2007). In both films they enter the woods for unethical reasons with illegal intensions. In Bird Call, the group of teenagers aim to get heavily intoxicated by the alcohol even when they have been grounded by their parents. This is underage drinking as well as in a public place which is illegal, and without their parents permission. Early on in Friday The 13th we acknowledge that their main reason to enter the forest was to take the cannabis plants and sell it to make money. This is also illegal as it’s against the law to sell marijuana.

After the flashback, the film starts off with an establishing shot of the location which is of a river by the woods. In this shot there is no hint of society nearby, with no one featured or man made objects in the shot. This is to show that the area is deserted, and if anything happens at the campsite, no one will be able to rescue them. In Bird Call, our establishing shot was of the woods, showing no human activity and pure nature, such as the Friday The 13th ‘s shot. Also, we attempted to film at a similar brightness level as the establishing shot, which was the transition from the day time turning into night time. This brightness was essential to receive the similar effect of a possible danger occurring soon in the film

At the start of the film there’s a group of young adults walking through the woods to get to a cannabis site. The group has a strong chemistry with each other and everyone’s having a good time socialising at the campsite. They establish the good friendship when the two of the characters have a small argument which they sort out abruptly. Apart from this, all characters have content facial expressions and seem to have a positive rapport with each other. We modified this beginning in our film where we had the characters bonding over some alcoholic beverages in the woods. The other actors including myself were laughing, socialising connoted as having a good time.

Also in both films they consume a vast amount of alcohol. This instantly increases the danger in the film as drinking too much will make you drunk, reducing your speed of reaction, giving you possible blurred vision, and a lack of control in yourself. These symptoms put the characters in danger as they are helpless, should anything bad happen to them.

In Friday The 13th they also include diegetic sounds such as cricket noises and other wild life sounds. In Bird Call, we feature the diegetic sound of bird noises through out the film. Saying this, we manipulate the bird noise to establish when the danger is coming in the film which isn’t the case for Friday The 13th.

This group of people however are not the main characters in the film as they are all brutally killed by the villain in the beginning. This is to establish the killers characteristic and threat. In Bird Call, even though we didn’t discuss it, we could interpret this and make John the villain who later on kills other so called ‘friends’. Saying this, we could avoid the code and convention of that film and make the characters that were seen at the start, the main threat through out the film.

In Bird Call we attempted to use similar camera shoots such as the high angled shot displayed in Friday The 13th. This was to show that there was greater presence amongst them. This however is revealed later on in our film to be John, whereas in Friday The 13th the greater presence is Jason Voorhees.

The font of our title might be different compared to the Friday The 13th one however we included the splash of red. This splash of red represents blood and connotes the brutal and sinister elements in the film. It tells the audience that bloody deaths will occur. Me being the title creator, I thought that it would be a key element to include as it builds an expectation of the film, which is key for slasher films. This is essential as you can rather allow the audience’s beliefs of what’s going to happen come true, or you can have a plot twist. This will leave the audience with great ambiguity and excitement as it was unexpected.