Q2 (Part 2) - Reflective Evaluation Isabel Wong

(Part 2)

This is the leading actress we've chosen to act the girl ghost. She is our actress because she matches the convention of our sub-genre that the ghost in horror film is always a creepy looking young girl. As Katie is relatively thin and small in size, she is the most suitable person to act as a little girl ghost. Also the makeup she is wearing for filming has got main focuses on her eyes and face with her eyes black and face pale white. Furthermore, there are the ghost's whispering and eerie laughter in the film, these make the character of Katie to be more scary.
In the story, the girl is dead in Simon's house years ago and her restless spirit remains her in the house and starts haunting people. One day she takes Simon to a playground when he is asleep in order to play tricks on him. When Simon wakes up, all he sees is an empty playground, but then the swings move automatically which matches one of the conventions in our sub-genre. Also, we've planned to make use of 'things appearing and disappearing on their own' with the girl ghost keeps appearing, disappearing and reappearing.

I've done my target audience research with Sixth Sense, the table shows the target audience of the film is a younger group of people which is teenagers around 12. This helps us to plan our film more effectively, since we are close to this age group as well, we know what teenagers would love to have and see in a horror film. So we've chosen a story which is so close to daily life of teenagers in order to create their sense of mutual threat. Location we selected is a public playground which is easy to access, and a playground is also a place where teenagers might walk pass everyday. When they walk pass a playground, they might think of the horror story we've created. This is our strategy to add the elements of everyone's (especially teenagers) daily routine into our media production.

Q2 (part 1) - Reflective Evaluation Isabel Wong

This is an extract from one of the 4 stories in the Thai horror film 4bia (Phobia) which is named The Last Flight, is about a flight attendant, Pim, who has an affair with a prince of a country and the wife of the prince knows everything about their affair, then she demands Pim to be the only flight attendant serving her throughout the flight in order to insult Pim in person. Since the princess has allergy of prawn, when she rejects to be served with the booked royal meal but only prefers Pim's meal, both the princess and Pim are then very close to death. This is because there are prawns in Pim's meal, thus she kills the princess accidentally. Pim is then stuck with transporting the corpse of the princess back to her relatives on another flight. Then the restless spirit of the princess starts haunting Pim.

In this extract, the victim Pim is haunted due to a very obvious reason: she has an affair with the husband of the princess and so the spirit of the princess gets back to Pim out of hatred. Pim can be interpreted as materialistic and shallow women in the society who try to stick with rich men with wives, she can also be described as a social climber. In everyone's mind, if they don't strive to get into a higher class, they will be neglected, everything won't run smoothly only if they carry power and money. Pim is a caricature of a typical social climber, her consequence of being an aggressive climber is possibly related to the message behind the story. The director might want to warn the audience to mind their 'strategies' when they are trying to achieve what they're long for. A wrong strategy which might hurt other people causes them to eat their own bitter fruit at the end.

The story even matches the stereotype we usually share upon women.

Women nowadays are always seen as materialistic and ruthless in order to get whatever they want,

they are very good at playing plots which is sort of lack of morality. None woman in the extract is shown as a kindhearted one. Pim is being treated cruelly due to her disturbing behaviour, which is having an affair with the prince. However, the Princess doesn't seem any better than Pim, she as a prestigious royal princess, she tries to insult Pim with annoying means, like spilling a cup of hot coffee deliberately on Pim, stepping on Pim's diamond ring, rejecting the royal meal but Pim's meal, she somehow leads to her own death. This tells the mutual moral in our society that people fancy playing plots won't end up with what they desire, or their success won't last long. So there is demonstration of representation of gender in detail, and the general attitude of male and female towards relationship has been discussed well here.

Evaluation Q2: Emily Bland

It is important to look at representation to understand how certain characters should be portrayed to the audience of your horror film. For our film we have looked at different extracts of films and have seen that the majority of victims have been represented by young females to appeal to a male audience.

From this clip of the ring you can see that the female, Rachael, is the victim. this is evident through her posture and clothing. She is a single mum and has been portrayed as a weak woman in this scene as she is wearing casual baggy clothing and isn't bothered about her presentation. This is the typical stereotype for a single parent, they are made to seem as though they cannot cope on their own and so seem in need of help. mostly close-ups and midshots have been used when focusing on Rachael in order to see the pain and worry that she is feeling making her seem much more vulnerable.

(4.47-8.10mins)

In this clip from The Messengers the main victim is a female, some high angle shots have been used to portray her as a weak and vulnerable character which is how females are normally portrayed. The tight fitting clothes show that she is quite feminine and gives the impression that she may not be able to handle herself in the situation that she is in. The fact that the victims family does not believe that strange things keep happening to her make her even more of a vulnerable character as she is purely alone with what is happening.

We used a fairly small female to play our ghost as through research we have found that the majority of ghosts have been young small girls. This can be seen in films such as 'The Ring' and 'The Grudge'.

We have chosen to use a childrens environment to film our horror film as the creepiest locations in films tend to be them associated with children. The reason for this is that children are not supposed to die therefore those places are normally fairly eerie.

From looking at the audience research sheets we have used characters between the ages of 16-17 as these were the ages of the majority of the characters in the ghost films we had watched. We also have a white cast as the most of the films had predominately white casts. 

(5.10-5.27mins)

In this clip from the grudge they have used a young female as the victim as younger people tend to believe more in supernatural things. We didn't use a young female, however at young male still has a similar effect as a young life is being taken away by a ghost. We chose to challenge the stereotypical 'damsel in distress' character by using a male actor so the the target audience (mainly males) would be able to relate more to the character and his feelings.

I produced a Wordle to display the feedback we got for how successful our content was for our target audience. You can see that we had positive feedback therefore we have been successful in achieving the appropriate content.

Evaluation Q1: Emily Bland

Here are some images that have inspired our film and helped us understand some of the generic conventions of a ghost horror film.

Film Logo

I like the Dream Works logo as it opens up many opportunities for it to be adapted to a specific genre. To make the logo relate to a ghost film the blue night sky could be turned black to represent the blackness, the unknown of life after death. I think the fact that the font is very simple works well as there is a fair bit going on in the background and so we are able to focus clearly on the logo.


Our Film Logo

For our logo we took the idea of a cloud background from the Dreamworks logo. However, we changed it to be dark and gloomy to suit the genre of horror. We used a brightly coloured balloon to make it stand out and make it seem like it is in a dangerous place as it is much more vibrant then the background. Again like Dreamworks, we used a clear and simple font so the film company's name can be seen easily.

Titles

The titles from The ring are very simplistic yet effective. The use of bright white/grey writing, which is associated with the colour of ghosts, gives a bleak and empty atmosphere, especially when the main title is shown due to the circle of light creating a hallow space. The minimalistic titles  prepare you for the film as the writing is fairly child-like, suggesting that the story is based around a child.  By not using capitals for the names and by spacing the letters out it again gives the impression that small children are the centre of the film.





Our Titles

We decided to use a simple and clear font instead of a child-like font for our titles as we thought this had a much better effect. The use of red gives connotations of danger and death which is what we want our audience to see from our titles.

By creating an old time look to our titles sequence it has transformed a normal home video to creepy footage. This sort of footage is common in horror films.








establishes Sub-genre

By using a bleak and desolate looking setting to place the well, it gives the impression that this has been deserted for quite a long period of time. This is common in ghost films as the ghosts generally have died many years ago. By using blue tones this creates a cold and lifeless feel, which mirrors that of what our standard perception of a ghost is.

From this clip from our film you are able to see that it is a ghost horror film due to the boy in the foreground being unaware of the person standing behind him and because of the creepy lifeless way the girl is looking at him.






Establishes character

From this clip from The Grudge you can see that they have used the generic black haired, white clothed deceased girl as the threat. By doing so it creates a mystery as to who she is. Because the deceased girl is behind the victim this instantly makes the victim seem more vulnerable as they cannot see the threat.

From this shot we are able to see that the victim looks like an average teenage boy through the basic clothing he is wearing. We are also able to see that he is very confused about why and where he is due to puzzled facial expressions.





Mise-en-scene

This is a scene from the grudge, they have created an ordinary realistic bedroom which an audience would be able to relate to. The fact that people would be able to relate to it makes it even scarier as it is happening in a normal environment.

The use of a play park in our film gave it a creepy atmosphere as it is supposed to be full of happy children whereas here it is empty and eerie. Using locations that are supposed to be full of people is very common in horror films.






Key Images 

The still from The Sixth Sense suggests that the boy in the foreground is the victim as he is lower down in the shot.

We also used high angle shots in order to portray the lead character as the victim, making him appear weak and vulnerable against the girl ghost.

The dim lighting creates a creepy atmosphere, the old books and extra lighting that is needed from the character suggests that this is a fairly old place she is in which is normally the centre of a horror film.

We used fog to create a spooky, eerie atmosphere. This lets the audience know that the threat is about to appear in some way or another. the use of fog is a typical convention on horror films.

The little girl from Silent Hill has been transformed to look as though she has been brought back from the dead. This is done by making her seem very pale and using spats of blood on her face. This is very typical 'dead' make up.

We made the ghost's eyes look slightly darker to give a drained lifeless look to her and dressed her in a dress that looks like a hospital gown to make her seem even more out of place in the park. Giving ghosts costumes like this is very common as they always seemed to be portrayed as slightly insane characters.





By putting the victim in white clothing it makes her seem innocent and vulnerable. The dim lighting is in contrast with the character making her stand out and focus on her stance and facial expressions.

First shoot

Comments on technical areas:

Camera and Framing - All the shots in our film are steady but in the first two shots, the framing is a bit off centre and not so accurate. In the second shot, we even failed to follow the movement of the actor. The first POV shot is excellent but we need to have it shorter or faster because we find such long POV shot is quite odd. We've got several good canted-angle shots and over shoulder shots. However, too much lead room is left in some canted-angle shots. We've done a good job on making the shots which show the disappearance and reappearance of the girl because we kept the camera stable and remained in the same position when we were making it. In a pair of disappearance and reappearance shot, the actor shouldn't have moved that much and it ends up with an explicit jump between the shots.

Editing - The editing here is quite weak to build pace and tension because there is a lack of fast editing. But in general, we are able to achieve continuity editing without too many jumps, we've even done quite well on the editing of the disappearance and reappearance part because it has a suitable pace and continuity.

Mise en scene - To appeal our target audience, we've had a good setting but the costumes we've used can't really create the feeling we want our audience to have, maybe the colours don't show the characteristic and the position of the characters that accurately. Makeup here is quire well done. For the choose of characters, we are very happy that we've got two actors who are really good at acting, but the trouble is the male actor is slightly too tall for the character we've designed for our film and as a result the victim in our film is not so convincing to the audience, but he has done very well in the acting part of showing the fear of the character. But the actress we've chosen for the character ghost is extremely well suited, since Katy the actress is relatively thin and tiny, she being a little girl ghost is a favourable choice.

Improvements:

We will need another ending to make our film more scary and shocking. Based on the comments above, we might need to rearrange our storyboard and shot list a bit as we want to better our framing and add more shot reverse shots and close ups to build a tense atmosphere into our film. We will also try to use some fast editing when we're doing the editing of our film. Costumes used will be bettered by changing the costume of the boy to be white pyjamas to show innocence and vulnerability effectively and the costume we use for the ghost will be changed into black in order to create a strong evil feeling.

Q2 (part 1) - Reflective Evaluation Isabel Wong

Throughout the whole film of Sixth Sense, the protagonist Cole is a very obvious victim.
Since he is a boy who comes from single-parent family,  his classmates and teachers even call him a freak, and he is being treated as a sentimental boy. Cole's family background and behaviour make him vulnerable since no one is willing to accompany him and help him in the society he is living. When we put the same case into the actual world, it's not difficult to find the resemblance. In the actual world, people come from single-parent family or from lower class are seen as the ones who can be neglected and no one pays much attention on them. Some people might even look down on them. Same as the situation Cole is in, the birthday boy who is his classmate can be seen as children from richer family as his family can afford holding a birthday party for him. It's not a rare case where the richer people look down on poorer people. So Cole in the Sixth Sense represents the vulnerable group in the society thus he is always abused by his classmates and haunted by ghosts, but this also makes him willing to help the dead people as the dead people we will later realize they are also someone pathetic. Apart from the scary scenes, this might be a film to arouse the audience's awareness of caring the vulnerable people in the society.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The 5 films i chose: What lies beneath, Sixth sense, Grudge, The Ring all have the certificate of 15 and The Others is a certificate of 12.

This is the IMBd of the film 'What Lies Beneath'

This shows that the audience of this film is Males aged 30 - 44. This may be because the actors are of a similar age to the larger amount of viewers who voted in the IMDB.

This is the IMBd of Sixth Sense.

This shows that the audience for this film is Males 18 - 29

This is the IMDB of The Grudge

This shows that the target audience is for Males between the ages of 18 and 29

This is the IMDB for The Ring

This shows that the IMDB for the target audience is Males 18 - 29

This may be because males would watch it more because it might be too scary for some females

This is the IMDB of The Others.

This shows that the target audience is Males between the ages of 18 to 29.

This may be because it is set during the war and stereotypically males tend to watch war films more then females.

We planned our film to engage the target audience by not revealing the threat until the very end of the shot.This keeps the audience on their toes because they can't see what is making the noise and distressing the victim as we can only see what he can see at the time which make the audience very close to the action. 

We target our target audience of 15 because we used an actor (Victim) of a similar age to them so they can engage with the film

The location we chose was a park surrounded by trees so that it would look like it is in the middle of nowhere which gives off a eerie and spookier illusion to the film. We didn't use any props because we felt that it would look more realistic if the victim was dragged out of his bed with nothing to defend himself with so it makes him more vulnerable. Also, the fact that the little girl didn't have any props makes it scarier that she is a threat with no weapon. This will engage the audience because they will feel pity for the victim an fear for the threat. This challeneges the conventions because stereotypically, Men and usually the threat and Females are the victim.

The title sequence engages the target audience because its the back story to the whole story and sums it up in a brief way but explains everything they need to know to understand the opening. 

The msuic of our opening sequence engages the audience because the instuments used connote sadness like piano and strings. The music also increases in volume when the scariest part of the opening is, which is at the ending which increases tension to keep the audience intrested in the action.

From the feedback we got in the class, we can see that our peers enjoyed the film as they gave us good comments to do with the music and opening titles saying that they both built up tension and added to the atmosphere. As a group, we were more harsh on the level we gave our film compare to the feedback we recieved of other people.