Day 47 : Early stages of our production

This video highlights me and Priscilla's perspective on how our creation progress has been so far, highlighting research we have carried out, discussions as a group and gaining opinions from people outside our group. Afreen was unable to appear in this video, however she engaged fully in our creative process so far.

Day 46 : Update

Last week we created drafts for our storyboards. This will be greatly useful when creating our final trailer as we could refer back to it for details regarding shots and angles but also transitions in terms of editing. This week we are creating final drafts for a our storyboard, which means they will be published to each members blog in due course. I will post about the challenges we faced but also what are strengths were as a group but also me as a individual. 

Reference: http://japaneseemoticons.net/

Day 45 : Our Narrative - "Insanity"

Here is our narrative that we produced as a group. Aspects of this narrative will be told in our trailer, however we will sustain an element of enigma so that our audience is curious to see "Insanity".    

Day 43 : Exploring Narrative

Narrative refers to the order and sequence of events which characterise a plot. Before creating our trailer we must consider what the narrative of our film will include, which proved difficult at first as we originally thought of our narrative in terms of our trailer. 

When considering the concept of narrative it is important to evaluate what makes a good or bad narrative, but also what themes are reflected within it especially in terms of the Horror genre. 

I thought Well's perspective of the genre of Horror films was important to consider before writing a narrative, as I strongly agree Horror portrays fears in society. 

Below is a brainstorm I made which reflects potential fears we could portray in our trailers. 

Creating this brainstorm using Bubbl.us helped me gain a sense of what themes we could potentially include in our narrative, but also that most Horror movies are based on a fear which is still evident in contemporary society e.g the constant theme of fearing outsiders is presented in media everyday with the demonised presentation of subgroups like gypsies. 

Day 44 : Working as a Group

Here is a slideshare I made which presents the progress and development we have made as a group so far, in terms of movie names, narrative and who the main protagonists will be.

So far me Afreen and Priscilla have worked well as a group, demonstrating good use of time and communication using social networking through Web 2.0. In the future these skills will be beneficial as we will have to stay behind after school and plan ahead when finding actresses and actors to be in our trailer.

Day 42 part 2 : My Own Qualitative Market Research - Representation of Women in Horror

When creating this questionnaire I purposely added  an element of influence to one of the questions ("Do you think Horror should have a diverse range of women, in terms of representations? If yes describe), to see whether there were women who disagreed with women gaining more opportunities and roles. I than had a debate with this participant to find out further why she answered no on this question.

Overall my sample consisted of  7 people of which one was male, it produced mainly qualitative research but also quantitative.  I specifically wanted to focus on women as I believe women should be represented in variety, as in terms of modelling and intimation it could lead to some women being socialized into thinking they can't do the same things that men can do. 

In regards to the other 6 participants they all agreed women should have equal opportunities to men. Question 1 asked "What do you think about the representation of women in Horror movies?". One participant answered that "women are often perceived as scared, screaming and in the need of protection", he disliked the limitation in representations women faced which highlights the idea that some men do infact want equal opportunities for women. 

In Question 2 I asked "Do you find the "Final Girl" a character which is revolutionary in terms of the typical representations of women? Describe in the lines below. The majority of participants except from "A" and others found the "Final Girl" unifying to a certain extent as they believed in current times women are now "taking the lead more than men" in terms of the representation in Horror. This relates to the idea that opportunities for women have have increased, however I believe it hasn't improved enough. 

Lastly in Question 3 6 out of 7 participants agreed "women should have a diverse range of representations" I (quoted from a participants answer)This research made me even more determined to subvert the typical representation of women in our trailer, as personally I believe women shouldn't be marginalized in the movie industry due to their biological differences to men. This relates to postmodernist film as Postmodern film often subverts the typical representations, in terms of social class, gender, age, ethnicity and narrative.

Reference : http://wifflegif.com/tags/131459-feminist-rant-gifs

Day 42 : Market Research to develop knowledge of audience

Today me and Priscilla carried out research to develop our understanding of audiences. Here is a video which presents their reactions and views regarding their fears. The clips compiled below only demonstrate the best reactions, which are mainly in relation to shocking imagery, use of sound to scare the audience and a sense of enigma through the narrative.

The reaction video with best bits is below

These pictures represent our findings but also why we changed specific aspects of our research.

We also made a video addressing our findings.

Carrying out market research enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of what our audience would like to see changed, what they found the most effective and how certain presentations make them feel uncomfortable. Age group and gender certainly had an impact on our market research as yr 7 - yr 9 found the more violent and suggestive imagery uncomfortable. In terms of gender only 2 of our participants were male, however they were less reactive when shown trailers in comparison to the women and girls. This could be due to their gender, however the research is not representative as our samples were extremely small. When deciding our audience we will have to take into consideration ethics of our participants but also classifications as certain age groups can't watch certain images. I will definitely refer back to this research in the future when gaining reasoning behind decisions I make or put forward in my group.