Questionnaire & Gender In Slashers

Gender in slasher films is often debated about. The generic convention for the role of females in a slasher film is that they are often the victims and are portrayed to be in terror for a long period of time and they either die or survive. Our trailer followed this convention because our victim was Faisa who was portrayed as vulnerable and fearful of the killer. The killer in many slasher films is a male who is masked and often very strong, making it almost impossible to kill him. This emphasises the weakness of the female victim and the vulnerability. It is incredibly rare to come across a female killer. Our killer was a male who was portrayed as strong and big in the trailer.

Our group believed there are many stereotypes present in horror slasher films. Also, the women are almost everytime the victims and are always being abused and killed which portrays women as weak. However, not all films present women in a weak and vulnerable way for example films characters like Lara Croft. Additionally, men are also shown stereotypically in slasher films as they are often the killers in slasher movies which portrays them as violent killers. We chose to follow these roles to make our audience more aware of these stereotypes and how they can work against them.

Faisa's evaluation.

 The evaluation.

Our group know what we’d like to expect out of a horror trailer, this has helped us to share our ideas and make this trailer an exciting one. My role was to be the person who chooses the props and where we were going to film; so I had to decide the perfect location for our trailer. I was also one of the actors this has helped me to play a big part in this trailer also helped me to get a good grade. I have been doing some work on our group blog so far I have completed our locations, script and all the health and safety issues we decided to make our trailer a slasher; this is because it will go perfectly with our target audience of teenagers. As we are teenagers ourselves we would have to face. This has helped me to gain a good knowledge of how a trailer would be made also gave our group the opportunity to share all our ideas and do each a part on blog individually.

Knowing allot about the horror genre has helped me to know what to expect whilst filming. Doing a horror film I’d know that you’d need it to scare your audience, you’d need to film in places that are dark and mysterious for example a park at night time this gives the frightening effect on our audience this is why we have chosen to film at a park when it’s dark.  I also know that you’d need some sort of villain/murderer; that’s why we have choses for there to be a killer who goes around killing people. You would also nee victims who get killed or get hurt in some way. This is all the conventions you’d need to prepare a horror film. My group used all these things this has helped us to make a horror film an effective one, one that our target audience will really enjoy.  My group were inspired by the movie ‘scream’ which is a sub-genre of a slasher we will also use some of the elements used here in our own, this is why we named our trailer 'the anonymous'. we named our trailer the anonymous because the killer is wearing a mask so no-one would know who it is this also links to ur sub-genre of a slasher. using the movie scream to inspire us will make its easier for us to use the elements used in that trailer to make ours just as good.  We planned our trailer by splitting the roles up within our group we done this buy having me as the one who chooses the props and costumes, locations and one of the actors. We had Naimah as the one with the creative input and do all the research also one of the actors. Waseem was the group leader and an actor and finally Yahaea was the director and camera man. By taking different roles this has helped us to do some extra work individually and post it on our blog, before we done anything we’d have a discussion and decide on the best ideas and then take different roles individually. We also done a story board and created our pitch and how it would look when we would film. Before we done all of this we had a booklet each called the production booklet this has helped us to gain an idea of what we would be doing as we start to plan and film. Our group has started filming; we still have some left to complete. However I would say that the filming was really good we got most of the footage we needed and this will help us

to make our trailer the best.  We could’ve improved our filming by filming when it wasn’t too dark; the camera we were using did not have good quality this makes it hard for us to watch over and not have a clear view of what is happening. This also helps us know that next time we should do it when it’s not too dark. We faced some problems whilst editing. One problem we faced was making the scene lighter so we could see what was going on. Deciding what soundtrack we were going to use for our trailer was easy because we watched allot of trailers beforehand and used the track we like from some. The track we used is called ‘scary music’. We chose this track specifically because the beat which comes with it gives the audience excitement whilst watching it and this is the sort of affect we want to have on our audience.

 

To conclude, I believe that our trailer was good but not great there are still things that we could improve on; for example some scenes are too dark to see what’s actually going on. My favourite shot from our trailer is when the killer does a double turn around, this is because it shocks the audience when they see a repeat of the same shot. We did not break any horror conventions because we wanted to follow the rules of how to make a trailer with all the conventions we needed. We linked our trailer to teenagers we done this by showing us going out and living the normal teenage life; this will help us link our trailer to our target audience effectively. Our killer was shown as a serial stabber we done this by following all the conventions; for example in our trailer the killer would always be dressed up so no one would know who he is until they watch the film this encourages our target audience to go watch the film.  I believe our trailer was successful enough to reach our target audience because our victims were teenagers so our audience could relate to them. Finally, the main lessons I took from filming was that; in the future I would know how to use a camera for a sort film also how to edit it and add all the things you would need for a film. This has helped me gain another skill of using different camera shots.    

Naimah's Evaluation

The Evaluation

Our group decided to base our trailer on the sub-genre of slasher. This was because our target audience are teenagers and slashers appeal to teenagers because this age group is often featured in these movies as protagonists.  Also, this sub- genre contains a lot of violence and blood which appeals to the young audience. During the production process, my role was to input creative ideas into the trailer and research the media for inspiration for our trailer. During the filming, I was an actress and featured in several scenes. To make full use of our lesson time, we research other horror trailers to gain some ideas and researched into the sub-genre of slasher so we understood what the generic conventions were so we could include them in our trailer. We also worked on our blogs during lesson time to plan our trailer and update any filming evaluations on the blog. This helped us during our filming time because we were reflective on our work and understood what was successful and what needed to be improved.

We researched our sub-genre of slasher thoroughly and found out that there are many conventions within this sub-genre. We included several of these conventions in our trailer such as having a psychotic masked killer who kills a group of young adults. During the end, the killer is always unmasked and viewers get to find out who the killer is and we used this convention in our trailer. Another generic convention is that the weapon of choice is often some sort of blade. We used a knife as our weapon of choice in the trailer to fit with this convention. The American slasher movie ‘Scream’ influenced our trailer because it fitted with our chosen sub-genre and we both had the same target audience. We were influenced by the scenes in ‘Scream’ of the serial killer killing the young girl and chasing her. We liked this scene because it was exciting and got the viewers engaged into the scene. It also makes the trailer more thrilling. During the pre-production, I researched existing slasher trailers to help plan for our trailer and get some ideas and inspiration. I also produced a working title for the trailer to engage viewers and this gave me a better understanding of our trailer because I was able to summarise it in a couple of sentences. Moreover, I helped produce a storyboard of our trailer. This was helpful because it gave our group a visual understanding of how our trailer will take place and what will happen in it. Our filming was successful because we included many different shots such as point of view shots and tracking shots which made the trailer more exciting and engaging. Our trailer was mostly based outside of school which could have been a problem however we overcame this by spending our lesson time evaluating and researching. This allowed us to be more independent. Some problems we faced during our filming was coming up with ideas of what to film and sticking to the concept of the trailer. We decided on sound effects by listening to other trailers to get some ideas about what sound effects will work well.  We then listened to some music and sound effects together as a group and decided which ones will work best with our trailer. Our trailer is called ' The Annonymous' because our killer is masked therefore he is unknown. We felt that this name will emphasise that the killer can be anyone, usually someone close to you.

Overall, I think our trailer is up to a good standard as we have used many skills to put our trailer together however I think our trailer could be improved too. We worked well as a group which is the main reason why I think we produced a successful trailer. We didn’t break any horror conventions because we wanted to follow the conventions as our target audience is familiar with the conventions and using them will maximise views. Our killer was represented as a serial killer who hides his identity with a white mask and boiler suit. His weapon of choice was a knife which follows the slasher generic conventions.  In our trailer we represented the youth as social able and fun as they were put with their friends and socialising. Our target audience for this trailer is teenagers. I think our trailer was successful in reaching out to our target audience because our victims are teenagers so they can relate to them.  Additionally, our scenes were shot in locations where teenagers hang out such as parks. This will keep teenagers engaged as they will be familiar with the locations and will scare them more as killings are happening in the film where they hang out. To conclude, the main skills I will take away from this filming project is editing skills on a mac which will be extremely useful to me in any future film making, how to engage a target audience and appeal to them through your filming and learning about different camera shots so in future filming I can use these shots to make my filming more interesting with a variety of camera angles.