2. In our film, the two social groups expressed are gender and age. In relation to Propp’s NarrativeTheory,
common stereotypes of gender in film usually see a man being the hero and a woman being the princess.
This is due to men in general being stereotyped as the strong and dominant gender whereas women are
seen as weak and helpless.An example of this in film can be seen in the Superman productions. Clark
Kent (Superman) is viewed as a strong hero who is always rescuing the typical damsel in distress.This
accentuates that women are shown in a lot of films as weaker and a gender that need rescuing.Another
example of this gender difference can be portrayed in Insidious when it is the dad that saves his son and
the mum is left helpless.
Moreover, age also plays a big role in our production. In society young children are stereotypically seen
as vulnerable and innocent making them the victims in typical horror genre conventions. In Paranormal
Activity:The Ghost Dimension, the demon uses the girl by becoming her friend and getting her to do
what he wants. He acknowledges her vulnerability and the fact she is oblivious to these types of dangers
and uses this against her, manipulating and then possessing the young girl. Coincidentally, in his film the
victim is also female which accentuates the gender stereotype further.
The image below shows the little girls bedroom.The teddy bears and butterflies connote love and
innocence and the size of the whole on the wall makes her look tiny representing her age and how
helpless she is.
3. Our film only introduces one character in the opening; a young girl. After primary research
into what our audience like to see, (image below), I discovered that majority of the
interviewees said they like horror films that include child actors which does support the
conventions of children that other films have used. Due to the fact I wanted the film to
appeal to the audience and match what they are expecting, I decided to reinforce the
common stereotype of vulnerability in young children and use this in our film.To encode
the childlike innocence into the character, I added a bow to her hair.This will portray her as
young and sweet however she is also the victim therefore the colour red releases the
indexical representation (Pierce’s theory) of danger and hell.
The decision for the character to be female was also made because they are
stereotypically seen as weaker and I wanted to represent a character that the audience
could sympathise with and want to rescue.
4. Other ways in which the stereotypes have been encoded are through the use of camera
angles.The print screen of the camera plan from my blog (below) shows that Camera B
was placed above a rock.We filmed whilst standing on a tall rock in order to get a high
shot above the girl.This made her look small and timid accentuating her defencelessness
and youth.
Using the conventional location of the woods also made her more exposed portraying her
feebleness even further allowing the audience to show empathy towards her and
sympathise with her situation.
Moreover, the camera shots at the beginning of the film show the social group of a family
through a sequence of family pictures representing a loving middle class family home.The
construction of the nuclear family accentuates the vulnerability of the girl and allows the
audience to relate to the family therefore empathise with them more.
