AS Level Media Studies project

1. QUESTION 1 – IN WHATWAYS DOES
YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP
OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?
By Laura Gregory

2. Historic research
■ For my historic research, I looked at slavery and what happened when in the
slavery moment. I also looked at the treatment of slaves and what happened
after slaves were sold off to higher class families.
■ From this research, I saw that slaves mostly done farm work, and worked as
sharecroppers.They had very little rest stops and were never paid unless they
worked as a sharecropper, but as industries started to rise, the profit of crops
such as cotton and sugarcane started to decrease dramatically and therefore
slaves were getting very little out of this. In conclusion, slaves were the lowest of
society and were treated inhumanely because of the colour of their skin.
■ I wanted to make sure that I included this in my film, and this research helped
me figure out the kind of narrative I wanted to write about and I was able to
come up with the backstory of the film.

3. The Scarecrow concept
■ I was talking to my dad about my ideas for the horror film and how I wanted it to relate to
the slavery period in America. I had a few ideas of maybe a witch hunt or something to do
with a cult, but I thought that it would be hard to find 1800s clothes and therefore I wanted
it to be somewhat modern, but the slavery period was the rooted idea in the film.
■ He then said to me that she had a dream the night before that someone had put a
scarecrow in the field that is just behind our house and the scarecrow kept moving to
different places within the field.This sparked the concept of having a scarecrow as the
antagonist of the film. I then furthered this idea as I thought it would be a good idea to
insert the slaves spirit into the scarecrow after his death.
■ With this, it also secured the sub genre – Fantasy horror.We also had a very unique concept
for our horror movie as there are not that many horror movies about scarecrows.

4. What did I not want to do?
■ I wanted to have little jump scares in my film. I feared if there was a lot of jump
scares, the audience would find it repetitive and filled with cheap thrills and there
would be no time to have an actual narrative.Therefore, I avoided jump scares and
developed a story that surrounds a horror idea – and from my audience survey,
many people didn’t want to watch a horror film packed with jump scares.
■ I also didn’t want to make females a the damsel in distress. I feel that this type of
stereotype on women has now evolved and victims in horror films have now
started to be accurately represented as male and females because looking at serial
killers throughout the years, many did not care who they killed, it was just an
impulsion.Therefore, I wanted to make sure I was continuing this by representing
victims as both genders and therefore not stereotyping women as the victims
which is seen in ‘Scream’ and ‘I KnowWhatYou Did Last Summer’.

5. The conventions I used in my horror film
■ Isolated/ rural location
■ Serial killer – ‘villain’
■ Victims
■ Props: Sickle, old tools and items i.e. the music box, old cassette tapes etc.
■ Costume: Long trench coat for villain, villain doesn’t have a mask but he has a
pumpkin for a head – loosely based on the convention
■ Set at night for a lot of the film
■ Fast editing to build tension