Evaluation question

How did you attract/address your audience???

To attract an audience to watch our film, we first needed to see who would be the core audience of a horror movie. The main audience come to watch horror for the fear aspect. This 'fear', we constantly showed through our film; by the use of props, editing and sound. One scene which engages the audience through fear, is 'the chase', it creates anticipation and makes the viewer question themselves what will happen next; this scene is carried out for a long period of time causing tension. The last scene has a more visual use of fear, showing a gory murder, this is another way that audiences of horror are attracted. The use of blood and gore clearly in the mis en scene makes the viewer uncomfortable, also the acting showing the reaction and pain that she is going through makes the audience relate. Another aspect of horror that attracts people to watch, is the use of strangeness and weirdness. The scene in our film of the girl wearing the mask (and the killer), also raises questions, like why does it disappear and reappear? and what does it represent?. Another scene in which this is shown is of the girl sitting in the chair, fighting with herself and violently rocking from side to side. In this shot we used special effects like motion blur, to give it a dark atmosphere and make the girl look unreal and ghostly. The most important way that a horror film can attract an audience is the use of editing and music. In are film we used Jagged, jumpy, distorted editing to give it an edge which fits with the horror genre. Throughout we used quick short shots to grab attention and again to create tension, their were also close-up shots of the girls face showing emotion especially her fear. For the music we used fast tempo melodies with heavy bass, as it is very atmospheric, the music also included whispering and screams which fitted with the horror genre, especially at the end of our film, the music suddenly becomes loud with torturing screams, which brings our film to a scary and conclusive end.

How does your media product represent particular social groups???

Throughout our film the social group of gender is strongly used. The male is shown to be the aggressor while the female is shown to be the victim. This can be quite controversial from the male and female points of view. Although our film shows a more feminist view in terms of the aggressor being male, and preys on woman. This shows a patriarchal view, which is nowadays shown in films to be a positive attribute for a male character to have; for example in action movies the gritty, powerful and violent male is shown dominant and uses this for good. Although in our film we have used this patriarchal view in a negative way, as he is using his 'power' for murder. This cold blooded nature is a criticism of this view. Another controversial point is the use of woman and mental health in are film. Our film relates woman with mental illness and hysteria, showing her struggles coping with her illnesses again shows the feminine sex to be weak although trying to be strong. Unlike the male within our film who has accepted his mental illness as a way of life, the female is shown to be fighting against it, this is the one point of the film which makes the woman almost look stronger, as she has not given in but is pulling away and trying to detach herself from her negative state of mind. The psychopathic male is basically shown to be physically strong but mentally weak.