Friday 22 October 2010

Blog 7 - Comparing within the Teen Horror Genre

Teen horrors have conventions just like all media products, Coventions are the usual ways of doing something. Conventions are usually used to keep withing a genre and to make a product successful.
My film fits into the conventions for a teen horror because:
- Teenagers as the main characters
- Relationship involved
- College student
- Darkness
- Mysterious

The similarities between my film and sorority row is that they both have girls as the main charcaters, the difference is that in sorority row their are a group of girls as the main characters whereas my film has only one girl. Another similarity is that a relationship is featured in both of the films, the relationship in both films is between a girl and boy, In my film the couple are together whereas in Sorority row the couple have broken up. There is a car scene within both of the films and in both films it is dramatic and involves quite a bit of the plot within the film. Both films use darkness to make the film more scary and to have a more dramatic effect on the story line. In sorority row a party is the opening sequence and teen music is used this is the same for my film. Horror music and sound effects are used in Sorority row to build suspense, if i was creating the rest of my film this is what i would include to do the same effect.

The similiarities between my film and Jennifers body is that like sorority row the main characters are girls, in Jennifers there are two girls. Also like Sorority row a relationship is featured, in Jennifers body the relationship is between two bestfriends and another between a girlfriend and boyfriend, in my film a relationship between a girlfriend and boyfriend is featured. A similarity between Jennifers body and my film is that the two films have a sense of mystery, they both have questions that the audience are thinking about the film e.g. why is this happening? what happened before? Another similarity between the Jennifers body and my film is that flashbacks are used to provide the audience with more information. The difference between them is that in Jennifers body it shows the ending of them film then goes back in time to what happened previous whereas in my film the flashback just gives information to help enable the story line.

Blog 6 - Appealing to the Target Audience

My film is targeted at 15-21 year old's. My film appeals to the target audience because the main characters are teenagers therefore the audience can relate to the characters as they may be similar to them. Also the characters go through different problems in the film including a relationship between girlfriend and boyfriend which the audience could relate to or even sympathise as they may be going through a similar situation.

The type of people that would be appealed my film would be 15-21 year old girls. I think girls would enjoy my film more because the main character in the film is a girl and it features a relationship which boys may not be interested in as it is too sentimental. Boys prefer more gory films as they are more action packed. Depending on the budget and the hype around my film it depends on the type of people that would watch my film. If there is a lot of hype and a high budget then Mainstreamers would go and watch my film as they don't want to stand out they want go with what everyone else does however if the film was low key then individualists would be the type of people that would watch my film because not many people would no about it so its different. I think my film would be watched my mainstreamers because the story line is not very original. Socio-economic classification is not very relevant to the teen horror genre as many of the teen don't have jobs they are students.

Monday 4 October 2010

Blog 5 - Evidence of Wider Reading

Teen horrors all use the same conventions, they mainly include:
- characters at the same age of the target audience
- relationship between a girlfriend and boyfriend
- some scenes set in a high school or isolated areas
- involve different groups of people e.g. geeky, jocks
- stereotypes

This is a summary of the teen horror genre that i found off a movie review website:
'Horror films where the body count is skewed toward the 15-19 year old range, portrayed by people who haven't been 15 in a loooong time. Sex, drugs, and alcohol also tend to get you killed frequently' - movieretriever.com

Steven Cassey Murray, A horror movie editor from belle online picked out some of the positive points that sorority row had. This included the use of comedy and how it stuck to the main story plot throughout the film. Some of the negative points were that it included negative female stereotypes and that the film was not original.
The same horror movie editor from belle online wrote a review about Jennifers body and picked out positive points. The positve points were that like sorority row included humour and that Jennifers bodys dialougue was something new and original. This horror movie editor ovbiously enjoyed Jennifers body much more than Sorority row as there were no negative points about Jennifers body.
From screenrant.com was a review of Jennifers body which included a negative point of the film and that was that it was not really that scary.

When creating my script i will try to include the positve points that the two films included so i will have to have a original story line, create the sense of fear (to make it scary) and to include some humour.