Hello and welcome to my blog, this is for my slasher film opening, Liar. The blog includes all research and notes. Enjoy!

Thursday 27 March 2014

Evaluation Q2; Representations

This is one of the evaluation questions for our film opening. "How does your media product represent particular social groups?"





Our film starred teenage actors and characters. After extensive research into the slasher genre, we found that the majority of the main characters are teenagers. We decided to use this for our own film opening, also using stereotypes for most of our characters, which again is an accurate representation of this genre.

We had two scream queens in our movie opening. The first scream queen was the girl in the film within a film, who was a stereotype.  We represented this with her costume as she wore revealing, figure-hugging clothes and she also had blonde hair and wore makeup. We used specific shots to make the character look vulnerable, such as when she screams, we used a high angle shot looking down on her to signify her weakness and vunerability. We also used a long shot for when the scream queen is running away from the killer, where she looked very small in the distance and the killer filled a large portion of the screen. This again signifies the scream queen's weakness and  is a stereotype of the teenage girl scream queen as they are often represented as weak, vulnerable, stupid, and naïve.

The second and main scream queen was also a stereotype. She had a revealing costume on which was also pink which shows that the girl is still young and therefore naïve. We reinforced this by having a pink bedroom with pink bedding that we chose specifically for the setting. We also cast a girl with long blonde hair as this is a stereotype of teenage girl, and blonde hair is often linked to being dumb and ditzy.

The scream queen's boyfriend in our film opening is also a represented as a stereotype. Although not much is revealed about him, we can see that he is wearing ‘typical’ teenage boy clothing. We did this so that the couple would seem like the average couple of a cheerleader and a jock stereotype typically seen in the horror genre.

The first killer in the film within a film was also a stereotype. His costume was completely black including a balaclava style mask. The darkness of the outfit contrasts to the blonde hair of the first scream queen, showing them subconsciously as binary opposites of good vs evil. We chose specific shots, such as very close cropped sections which makes the audience uncomfortable and also we used a low-angle shot as the killer swung his hammer, the camera looked up at him, making him look powerful. We used a specific jingle of music when he appeared to make the audience recognise the killer. We also chose to cast a male for the the killer character as this can signify a more physically intimidating figure and is also stereotypical of a slasher film. It is very rare that we see a female character for the killer. Despite the majority of the conventions we used being  very stereotypical of a slasher film, we decided to have the killer use a hammer rather than a knife the murder the girl. We thought this would make him stand out from other killers and give a more post-modern twist to the opening.

The second killer in our film opening was again a stereotype, however he was more a stereotype to the slasher genre rather than generic horror which the previous killer could be applied to. This is because the killer wears an old man mask and is seen as mentally deranged. He uses a knife to kill the boyfriend which is stereotypical of the genre and can particularly link back to Scream, as they also use a knife to murder the boyfriend Steve, and is also adapted from Psycho as the killer draws back the knife and stabs several times with a non-diegetic sound effect played over the top, as seen in Psycho.


Overall, our movie opening was very stereotypical of the genre. We thought sticking to stereotypes was a good idea because it followed a strict line with regards to how the characters acted and what they were like. This made it easier for us because we had lots of examples to draw ideas and notes from. 

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