Rachael Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representations work on the basis of stereotypes which is what people expect or believe to see. To understand representation in films which would relate to my horror film, it is useful to look at other films relating to my film and see how they deal with particular representations and stereotypes. Stereotypes reduce a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorization. They transform assumptions about particular groups of people into "realities". They can be used to justify the position of those in power. 













http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TC9bKyDB5Y


At first the female character is the one that is vunerable, which is stereotypical of a female, and the male should be the one too protect her. In the first film the male character is your typical hero, trying to protect his girlfriend from the spirit. But as the film progresses the tables turn and the female character is the more dominant character as she has more screen time and is the one that attacks the male character. They female character challenges the stereotype of a female and as this is a horror film, it plays with the fact she is the dominant character and can attack anyone.





In this film it plays with age, as it shows that the victims are the child and the dog. They are the most venerable in this situation and they are the character's which will hit the audience the most. 

How has your planning evidenced your understanding of social groups representation?

 

We did not go with the sterotype of a horror, as normally the person in the threat out is a women. But we went with a male as he gets possessed therefore I think him being a male works. This image shows the actor in relation to conventions of the make up, as its dark and you can see that we have put a pale base on his face to make it fit the sycological genre and then we have put dark make up around the eyes and then we have made dark cheek bones so they are definde. I reserched a stablishing character and so we tried to use that in our actor.

Discuss your story in relation to conventions of the sub-genre?


Our film is about a guy who is just watching tv, like an every day life, then the electricity trips. We took the casual living room idea from the film 'paranormal activity' as i think it works. A home is known for comfort and safety, therefore by playing with the stereotype of a home we have created the setting so you dont expect anything to happen. The film 'Paranormal activity' is shot in a house, they have played with it well as in there home they play with the pots and pans and make them crash together they make the cupboards open and door undo. We didn't want to use any of them ideas, but paranormal activity use the idea that they have a sella and everything happens down there. We used the idea but made it be a light behind a shed, this makes the audience ask questions and wants them to watch on.


These are my storyboard sheets for our film. These do not follow what we have done but we have took idea from our original ideas. The first storyboard is of the character proccessing pictures. In the first storyboard the character is hanging them up, but during our film he is proccessing them in the trays, this is becuase the setting had no place to hang up the picture i think the storyboard for the title seuqence matches what we have done for our film. The other storyboards show the character going towards the light, this is what we have done in our final film, the only difference is we added the scene where he is watching a film and the electricity goes off. Also on this storyboard it shows the light coming from the curtains, we didnt think that the idea of a light coming from the curtains would be scary, therefore we changed it to behind the shed. I think the disision made was a good one and has worked well.

Compare one sequence from your film that establishes social group.

    

These two shots are taken from our film .I have chosen these as they establish the social group of teenagers. They show that the regular teenage life just watching a film in there living room when all of a sudden the electricity goes. We have targeted the teenagers as we think they will be the perfect audience and from doing reserch most teenagers ages 15-19 watch phycological horrors. By using the scene of the young boy, it related to the audience, one thing which is notisable in the film is a green light flashing when the lights go off, this is the x-box controller light. This prop relates to teenagers as most teenagers play on the x-box, so as soon as they see the green flashing light they automatically know what it is. We have also taken a well known film which stars leonardo dicaprio to relate to the target audience.

The feedback from the audience shows that they didnt know what audience we was targeting at. Maybe it was not clear for them but i think we have represented it well. We have added things into the film to relate to the target audience such as; x-box light, film, actor the same age and set in a house. But if they have put down that they do not know what the target audience is, I think we needed to represent it better. To do this we could of added more thrilling parts, and made the music more faster to relate to other genres of music that teenagers listen to.

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