Sophie questions 3 & 4

3: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for a horror film is generally teenagers, horror film are mostly popular from people 14-30 years old. This is shown by the audience ratings from “Låt den rätte komma in” (let the right one in)

audience rating reports for 'lat den ratte komma in' (let the right one in)

  This shows us that this age range would be an ideal target group and that we should make are film relevant and interesting for this audience. Many young males and females enjoy watching horror films as they are thrilling and gripping and unlike the middle aged they are more inclined to enjoy films that shock and thrill as they find it enjoyable as they are unable to predict the plot and are always questioning ‘what will happen next?’. I will use this information to make the film I am creating unpredictable in the plot as well as unpredictable movements and actions.  I will take things that have worked well from horror films such as sound and costume and blend it with my own ideas to create an original horror idea which has the key ingredients of a horror film that my target audience will warm too and enjoy, thus making a more interesting film for my target audience.

4: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 The horror genre traditionally views women as the weaker gender, they are normally cast as the ‘damsel in distress’ role and this is why  reviews of horror films show more men like and watch more horror films than women. This sticks to gender stereotypes and therefore we assumed that horror films targeted at males would be larger target market compared to horror films targeted at females. Therefore when deciding on a ‘bad guy’ and a victim  we stuck to gender role stereotypes and chose to have are female actor as a victim and one of our male actors as the ‘bad guy’. As our female actor was quite small we had a certain scene where the height difference was clearly noticeable. This showed vulnerability towards the female character making us relate to our target audience as the male character has a sense of power.

Women as victim in 'Nightmare on Elm street' (1984)

From the feedback we got from the class I believe I was able to show gender role stereotypes well as feedback said that the ‘girl was easily pushed down’ and that many people ‘felt sorry’ for her. This was what I was hoping to achieve as you want your audience to feel sympathetic for the character being killed.