Evaluation Questions (half-term homework) - Katie Mckeag

 3. Who would be the audience for your media product?

·         Who is the target audience for a Horror film and how do you know this? (IMDB research/user ratings)

·         Post Bar Charts from IMDB user ratings to support your points.

·         Why is this group associated with Horror films? What do they like about them?

·         How are you going to use this information to help make a more effective film?

During the time we focused on our planning folder, we researched the target audience for our chosen genre Horror film. We used the movie site, IMDB to find this out for Possession/Satanic films. We found have its audience is general males.

The group is associated with horror films because males like to be scared. Possession films are usually about the devil with characters, like children or females, being possessed and going insane. They prefer them to say vampire films. Usually a main hero character perhaps is male; they are the lead to help the female, making them feel empowered. They don’t want a film that will make them think too much about what’s happening, it’s a Horror, it’s meant to be understood but frightening.

With this, we have made our main character female. We have no other characters in our sequence however; say a male that might help. Our female lead is both the one being possessed and vulnerable. A male audience wouldn’t want to see a male lead being a vulnerable character in a Horror. We’ll keep the storyline respectively simple but restrictive. This is so the audience can understood what they see on screen but realise there is more to come, for suspense and hitting the targets of a Horror film.

4. How does your media product represent social groups?

·         How does the Horror genre traditionally represent social groups and why? (Age, gender, stereotype, etc)

·         What did you do to accommodate these representations practically on your production? (Casting, mise-en-scene, etc)

·         Upload your images from existing films – your test shots, etc, to support your points

·        Use your evaluation research (questionnaire) to see if you were effective in representing these groups generically

A Horror genre traditionally represents a separation in gender. There are a few different ways a Horror can separate this particular social group. A film can have both a male and female lead, the man is there to protect the vulnerable woman when facing monsters, possessions, vampires, etc. Another way is to have a male character as the ‘villain’; they’re to be that monster or killer, etc, prying on the female. Men are seen to be the stronger gender so it works for a Horror. Age can also be represented in a horror. Teenagers can be used in horrors to be the victims as they’re seen as vulnerable characters too, as if they don’t pay attention so it’s inevitable for them to get into danger and possibly antagonise what may be after them.

We casted a female character for our production as she’d be seen as defenceless to what may be happening to her. We didn’t intend on making sure our lead was attractive but for Horrors the ideology is that ‘pretty blonds’ get stuck in the story and attacked, we fortunately had this. It makes our film seem cliché, but it works. Having looked at the qusetionnaires we believe we were successful and effective in representing these groups generically. Those that watched it could see we had a vunerable female lead that was also the 'bad guy'. She looked frightening for a horror as we had her with hair draped over her face staring at the camera. We also had her looking frightened when she noticed these things.