Media evaluation - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (question 1)

We all liked horrors, specifically psychological horrors, such as 'The silence of the lambs' and so after a lengthy conversation as well as watching more films we formulated ideas that eventually became our film.

Psychological horrors typically rely on characters fears and emotional instability in order to create tension and we feel that we have accurately captured this due to the nature of, for example, Sister Judith and Father Abraham and it could be argued that in a sense they mirror Clarence starling and Hannibal Lecter. Our film demonstrates it is a psychological horror when Sister Judith is walking with her child yet it is left to the audience's imagination as to whether she killed him after she gave birth to him as she does not register his existence. Moreover, we did two shots of the bridge scene, one of Sister Judith walking across with the boy and another where he walks out with his hand outstretched. In the editing process we were able to incorporate these two shots to question the child's existence. Our film is non linear but we used a montage of different shots in the opening credits to aid in establishing the plot as well as a voice over by Sister Judith. The boy in our film wore a red hat in homage to the British film 'Don't look now', all is not right with the person in that red garment too.

The montage in accompanied by conventional yet eerie horror movie music as well as the sound of incidental non diegetic church bells that played in rhythm with the shot changes. Furthermore, the typography of the opening credits is in white which itself connotes purity and this further suggests it to the audience. The mise en scene was an important aspect of our film and to authenticate it we used religious props such as buying costumes as well as filming within a church. I feel that in the slightly high angle two shot of Father Abraham and Sister Judith talking the natural lighting and somewhat dilapidated church really authenticates our film and is what we set out to capture.