Using the following videos and imdb.com, we can see the kind of age/gender and race of people which watch these certain films. From this information we can understand how we want our media product to be portrayed to our audience.
1. In this extract from the film "1408", it is quite clear which social groups the victim and threat belong too, and how they are represented. Firstly, the victim is a male character which is uncommon in horrors, as the typical stereotype are females being the victim. However, as it is a psychological horror, the representations of gender can be changed, because the sub-genre is not particularly aiming at a certain gender. Also, the victims in this sub-genre are usually represented as teenagers however in "1408" the victim is middle-aged, which is showing that a victim can be of any age to create fear and tension in the audience, so therefore the film is challenging stereotypes and gender as to how they are stereotypically viewed, by an audience.
The threat is unknown to the audience, so it is quite difficult to put it in a particular social group. As the room itself is the threat, we can view the representations by the different fears it creates in the victim for example; the slasher man and the little girl. These are obviously two very different representations of characters and stereotypes as the slasher threat is a normal stereotypical character who is a male, middle aged and effects the victim physically. However, the little girl is effecting the victim mentally, as she is his daughter and very young. Typically in a psychological horror, the threat will effect the victim mentally, which is doing here. Both characters are following the normal stereotypes of gender and age as by one being a male slasher which effects him physically, there is also the contrast which is his young daughter who effects him mentally, which are the normal representations of a psychological horror.
1. In this extract from the film "The Haunting in Connecticut", there are obvious social groups and representations to the threat and victim. Firstly, the victim is a male teenager which is the typical stereotype from a psychological horror. Usually in psychological horrors, the main victim has some kind of problem/gift for example in Sixth Sense, where the child can see ghosts, however in this film the teenage victim has a severe cancer which adds to his vulnerability as a victim. In this film, the stereotypes of age and gender are followed from psychological horrors, but yet it still adds a significant amount of fear in the audience.
The threat in this film isn't seen so it is hard to put it in a particular social group, but the threats from psychological horrors aren't usually seen anyway as the pain is done mentally, so there is a representation there of a stereotypical psychological. As it shows in the trailer, we do see some possible threats such as the ghosts, which again are a stereotypical threat in a psychological horror, because usually the threat is in the victims head. In this film, I think that the stereotypes of age and gender follow the normal psychological horror, as even though we don't see the main threat we can see what it can create and how those smaller threats effect the victim mentally and physically.
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2.
We chose Katie as she follows the conventions of a typical psychological horror (and a normal horror at that) because the victim is usually female and young, which will also attract our under 18s target audience. The normal conventions for a psychological horror would be like this (Katie from Paranormal Activity).
In our story we have our character going to a large castle of which is haunted by unknown beings and occurrences happen which emphasises our threat such as lights flickering, doors slamming and lots of non-diegetic groans. Eventually our character ends up in a final room where she finds on a desk newspaper clippings of a girl who had died in the castle (our threat), and suddenly the room turns pitch black and as before lights go haywire and doors slam, and we finally see our threat behind our character.
There are many conventions we gained inspiration from our sub-genre such as the idea of a unknown threat tormenting our victim which we gained from Paranormal Activity, and we liked the idea of that kind of spine-chilling horror. We also gained inspiration from Haunting in Connecticut as the threat can is a ghost which had died years ago, and still haunts the premises. It is a typical convention but can be very effective if done properly. Finally, we thought of the different kinds of occurrences from the film 1408, which included lights flashing and doors slamming, among other things.
Here is my target audience sheet:
In this, I discussed about The Sixth Sense, and the kind of age group i would be appropriate for by going on IMDB.com.
Also we watched the clips of the film and saw how they targeted there age group of 18-45+ by seeing the types of conventions they added and how hey attracted the audience.
We also viewed on the user ratings what was the preferred gender, but both genders enjoyed the film.
The same is for race, in that it applied to anyone.
We can gain a lot of useful information from this because as the film is very wide spread in terms of age, gender and race. By having our film follow the same conventions and such, maybe ours can be appropriate for all age groups, gender and race. Although we are aiming at any gender and race, our target audience is the under 18s, but having a wider audience could be very beneficial.
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3.
The sequence of the ending from our film, where the hauntings get more dramatic is where we can establish our social group representation. This is represented because the hauntings are aimed at a teenager which would appeal to our target age group of 16+. Our social group representations are universal for gender and race. As we used a female being haunted, it will attract both male and females in my opinion because girls are stereotyped as non-horror fans, so our choice of gender representation may be able to draw them in.
We have chosen our representations to be similar to the Haunting in Connecticut trailer because nearing the end of it, we can see hauntings happening. Also the actor from it, is about the same age as our actress apart from the fact it's a male character as a pose to female. Although the same representations of age and gender can be the same as our film.
Feedback From Audience
Our feedback from our audience was all around very good. Using the Audience Feedback Evaluation form we used for Question 5, we can gather that our audiences reactions to gender/age/race were very good. Everyone circled the "positive" box for gender and age, as it appealed to our target audience and to both genders. However, as it was universal for race, the feedback was simply "neutral".
As we can see from the following Wordle of what our feedback was, it was very good and accurate. We had a good mix of people saying our age group was correct, it was universal for gender and race and much more positive comments.
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