Foundation Portfolio

Question 4: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The horror genre typically represents social groups by things such as age, gender and the stereotypes that apply to these groups as this will draw in their target audiences such as a film aimed at aged 15 - 18 year olds would include a younger cast around the age of that of the target audience. We applied these typical representations to our original idea as we planned to show a group of teenagers at a party as this is a typical stereotype for a group of teenagers, we also planned to show them going to a fair and this also adds to the stereotype. As we changed our original idea we applied these representations and stereotypes to our finished film by casting our actors around the same age of our target audience (aged 15 - 24) we used female characters as in horror films these are considered the most vulnerable and we set it in an area where teenagers would typically hang out and feel safe. We also represented another social group by the fortune teller, we had our actress dressed up in a patterned old robe with a scarf over her head, we also gave her jewellery such as old fashioned clip on earrings, a big ring and a number of bangles to give her a more creepy look. Some examples of what we were insipired by are shown by the pictures (taken from Final Destination 3) on the right above and below, the picture above insipred us for the look of our fortune teller with lots of jewellery and old looking clothing. The picture below is a good example for the typical representation of teenagers in a horror film as it shows a mixed group of teenagers at a fairground.

By Rebecca and Annalise.

Question 2: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convetions of real media products?

Some of the forms and conventions of of the horror genre include focusing on turning safe things scary, using music to create tension in the audience, dark lighting, normally focusses on the victim as the main character, gore and violence are often used and are normally restricted and aren't very linear. We researched different films such as Steven King's IT in which conventions were used such as focusing on fears, dark shots were used, it was non-linear and restricted and the music was used to create the atmosphere. Also Final Destination 3 included conventions such as turning a fun place into a death trap, using dark lighting, it was restricted and linear and also had a lot of gore/violence incorporated into it. We used some of this research to make our horror film, this is important as it makes our film instantly identifyable as a horror and means the audience know more about it. We conformed to a lot of these convetions in order to make our film genre specific and to help us to create the right mood/atmosphere within our open sequence.
Here are some examples:

By Annalise Potaczek

Question 1: Introduction: what did you make, who did you work with and where did the original idea come from?

As we were planning to make a horror film, so decided that we would look into other films, and determine just what it was that made them so scary. We soon realized that it was the placement of phobias into everyday life that did it. Somewhere you would have thought was safe was not!

We were inspired by two films, both of which demonstrated bringing peoples' fears to life. The two films were 'Final Destination 3' and 'It'. It was the featuring of a clown in 'It' that made us decide to use one as the main antagonist. 'Final Destination 3' features the title sequence as a fair ground, which is from which the title for our film 'Fear Ground' was derived.

The presence of the pin ball machine added to the tension, and ended with 'death'. Due to these, we decided to base our film on the idea of a 'fair of fears'. This is why we decided to to open the film in a house with a person putting on a clown costume, in fitting with the fairground theme (as we were unable to locate a fairground). After this, a black screen was shown with the words 'Fear Ground' upon it, and for the next scene we decided to feature teenagers in the room of a card reader, showing them tarot cards, and warning them not to leave.

When first shooting, the camera was out of focus in some places, so we had to reshoot some of the camera shots. Also, in one of the shots you can see the camera light in the window. Before we started filming, we asked the opinions of some members of our target audience of 15-24s. Whilst many thought the concept was a good idea, some were a little unsure about the clown being in the film, as they had coulrophobia, a fear of clowns. Because of this, we decided to include the clown in our film.

The people in our group were Rebecca, Emily and me amazing Annalise. At first we were all pumped up with our idea of filming at an real fair but we never had the chance due to harsh weather conditions. So after, we decided that we would film our horror film at Emily's house. but due to circumstances beyond our control (redecoration) Emily's house was out of bounds. So we decided to film at Rebecca's house the following day but Emily was unable to attend so we went ahead without her this also happened for the other two times we filmed. An big problem was that one of our members hardly turned up to lessons so we just had to edit the majority of the film.