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

‘The Chain Mail’ is a mix of the openings of horror films over time: Halloween II and Saw VI. The conventions of both films are different in the opening sequence with Halloween II creating suspense and a supernatural feel with the shooting of a man who then disappears after falling from a balcony. Saw IV attempts to satisfy modern conventions of a horror with gore. We also researched some thrillers such as What Lies Beneath. The opening minutes of this film contain a task from Jigsaw, which leads to two people cutting off their flesh in order to survive.
At first we wanted to challenge the modern convention of gore and stick to the suspense and supernatural element of Halloween II. We therefore created the clown character and discussed him being a supernatural figure rather than a conventional thriller serial killer. This was our aim throughout principle photography, however when we reviewed our footage it looked more like a thriller as it was lacking the gore modern audiences associate with a horror.
On our second shoot we succeeded in adding the gore element using red paint as blood. Using this modern convention helped us to create a sense of horror rather than a thriller. We then developed them in post-production editing, mixing the two different conventions from the two films to create a new horror.