This document contains an essay response from Clarissa Shulungu discussing their opening film sequence and characters. The key characters are a little girl presented with a demonic toy and a mysterious man of unknown identity. The little girl represents innocence corrupted by evil influences, shown through close-ups and changes in behavior. The mysterious man embodies mystery and evil for providing the toy. The characters are compared to those in the film "The Possession" for similar portrayals of possession. The intended audience is ages 15 and older, targeting females for their ability to relate to challenges faced by young girls. Elements like mystery, suspenseful music, and unnatural occurrences align with audience expectations of the thriller genre.

1. Clarissa Shulungu – ESSAY QUESTIONS.
Q1: How does your opening sequence represent particular social groups?
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Who are the key characters in your film? Refer to key characters who appear in the opening
sequence as well as any others in the rest of the story
The key character is and she is the little girl who is presented with a demonic toy, there is also a
mysterious man who has not got an identity however he plays a big role in the film as he makes the
viewer’s question the decision he makes as they are cause a lot of consequences.
These two main characters and mysterious man appear in the opening sequence. The little girl Annie
played by, is in the very first scenes and already has the characteristics of a crazy, demonic person, as
she is positioned sitting down in the corner of the dark room rocking in anger.
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Analyse the representation of each character with reference to technical aspects (camera,
sound, editing, mise en scene)
Our main character, the little girl named Annie represents the innocence of a young child who is naïve
and is opening to anything ne that is presented to her and the purpose of this main character is to
show the progress of influence that particular objects could have on her, this then resulting into
showing how evil has overcome her innocence. The question that she faces at the end is will she be
able to override such evil? The camera will be taking lots of close up shots of the little girl to
exaggerate her expression so its more known how she is feeling, and showing the audience the emotion
in her face a lot could signal to them how evil she has become. There will be a lot of playful children
nursery themed music that will play on her behalf. This is to show how a child has had her childhood
ripped away from her and is now following a new more dangerous path. Editing for this character will
be difficult because the locations we have decided to film her in are in 3 different locations, so
maintaining continuity is crucial.
The mysterious man represents mystery and 1st class evil as he is the one who provided the evil
occurrences to the little girl, the fact that his identity has remained a secrete i
•Compare your characters with characters in other REAL thrillers. Who do they
remind you of? Why and how?
It reminds me of the little girl Natasha who plays the character ‘Em’ from the
film ‘The Possession’. This is because similar to the character Em in the
possession our character is also similar as she is a young girl who is in the
process of being possessed by evil and thy share the same side effects, like
become more isolated, losing her sense of childhood, things that she used to
like don’t really appeal to her and she is more attracted to the more gruesome
stuff.
It also reminds me of this character because they both take interest in an
object that has probably been causing trouble to many other young victims so
the story is always interesting and this concept and idea can always be used
and will never get tedious, it just needs a different environment and
characters, which is what we have done.
Q2: Who would be the audience for your specific thriller?
The target audience would be 15 years and above, this is because 15 is legally the minimum age which
we are able to target, plus a similar successful film called ‘The Possession has a similar structure to
our film, it includes young children, demonic occurrences and the age rating is also 15, so I have
decided to the same as it seems appropriate enough for almost any ages to watch the film.
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Create a profile of your target audience in terms of age, interests, gender and ethnicity
Gender: Females.
We believe that our film is more targeted at females because they can
relate more, we want to pay attention to detail on the innocence of
young girls and how there are many troubles that they face which
makes there life difficult therefore adding dramatic challenges is
appealing to either see the little girl overcome the impossible and grow,
or fail. Having short clips of the typical conventions of romance that
girls would like to experience could be included to show how it the
future could turn out well however adding in the psychological aspect
to the film will change the audience experience of watching this all
together. For example like the film drag me to the hell the main female
character experiences romance however she has not got the chance to

2. experience it fully as the thrilling characters take that opportunity away. The conclusion is that having
a distraction of a little bit of romance for thecharacter can be a good way to keep the film interesting
this is why we are targeting females.
Age: 15 years and older.
Ethnicity: Our film is targeted at any ethnicity group because from the information that we have
gathered at the moment,for the film Is currently showing no signs of effecting or discriminating against
certain ethical groups. Our main character is of an Asian heritage and therefore targets that
community but does not meddle with any religion and so forth as we have made sure to leave that out.
The mysterious man is of
•Their expectations of the film would probably be something along the lines of a thriller which will have
sconce that are almost unbearable to continue watching, also they will be expecting the film to have
music which is completely opposite to the scenes as it will create more suspense and makes it more
scary. They could expect unnatural occurrences like ghosts or mediums.
•What would attract the audience to our film is the fact that immediately there is already some type of
mystery, which is displayed, in the opening sequence, this catches the audiences attention as it already
is interesting and exhilarating.
•If you were designing a poster for your film, what would you need to have in your poster to attract the
target audience?
A poster similar to the film ‘Drag me to hell poster’ this is because I like the colour s that have been
include; red, brown, and black I find theses colours express thrillers well. Also the fact that there is a
mysterious shadow lurking behind the main character could represent the mysterious man and how he
is always part of this mischief. The height and positioning of the shadow shows how it has control over
the main female character and that is how I exactly would like it to be, maybe just having the character
defined a little more so it looks more like another person.
The positioning of the main character will be in the same position as I think It is good where she
stands.
All the blank spaces I would like it to be filled up with toys, firstly toys, which look nice and new and
clean and as it starts to get towards to the bottom the toys are dirty, old
and torn.
•What other films would your target audience be interested in watching? What films do you think they
may have seen in the last six months?
They might be interested in watching films such as; the possession, the conjuring, Drag me to hell,
Nightmare on Elm Streetand the awakening. This is because all of these types of films are of similar
genres and also include objects, which have some sort of frightening demonic possession to it, which
influence characters to act in a similar particular way. The audience might also watch these films
because almost all these films include young children in it.
•What prior knowledge of a particular genre would you expect your audience to have? How can you
make use of this to attract them to your film?
Just the simple knowledge of a basic thriller, which consists on the following codes and conventions;
Darkness. This is important as it creates a sense of there being no guidance or help, the fear
of being in the dark can cause endless possibilities of fearful things to occur.
Colours such as, black red and wooden brown for fear, death and tension.
Typical scary scene like, a haunted house, dark forest, a basement, or anything old or
abandoned.
Objects such as, knifes, old toys, masks, deadly equipment.

3. •
How do the themes you have chosen attract your audience? How would your audience relate to
these themes? Refer to other successful films, which have also addressed similar themes
The theme is a ‘Psychological thriller’ and this will attract the audiences because thrillers are really
popular in this day and age, also we have chosen to make it a psychological thriller which is definitely
more interesting for the audience as it will be a challenge in many ways for the audience, like finally
figuring out who the mysterious man might be and what his intentions are would be a satisfying
challenge that the audience get to complete and experiencing solving this problem is like they are apart
of the entire experience too. This makes the audience feel more involved and a part of the experience.
Other successful films such as ‘Mama’ have a similar way of making the audience feel like they are
experiencing the film and making the audience feel that they are apart of it. One particular scene where
there is a dream within a dream is a very smart way of making the audience involved and scared at the
same time as the dream was telling a story solving many of the characters problems, this being another
challenge that is solved
Q3: In what ways does your media product USE, DEVELOP or CHALLENGE forms and conventions of real
thrillers?
We have used the typical outside persona of a healthy home, which looks normal to the outside world
however inside the environment is unhealthy, dirty, and filthy and a grungy place, or the place starts of
as a nice welcoming home and then gradually turns out to being in a disastrous state. This is common
in most thrilling films to have some parts of the home to be in an unbearable nasty state, whether it is
the back of the garden or the basement or a bedroom or a scary room, it is bound to occur in the
psychological filming environment. We have used an object to ensure to the viewers that a demonic
being is present; this is also mostly common in thrillers as it creates more suspense and fear for the
audience. We have used a female as the main character because the female gender are more appealing
to viewers in a thrilling situation, plus it is most common in the filming industry to have a young female
who is the damsel in distress and our group have taken this opportunity to expand on ourpiece in
making it more interesting by showing the progress of insanity in the girl and including this in our
opening sequence. We have also made sure that the man behind all this madness has been kept as a
secrete in the opening sequence, this is because we don’t want to limit something that could be
expanded into something very interesting therefore the identity has been kept hidden. This is common
in most thriller films, hiding the identity of the villain until later on in the film so that it keeps the
audience at edge, and the slow unravelling of clues which are discovered allows the audience to feel
involved and for there to be more suspense.
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What genre/genres is your film based around?
Our genre is a psychological thriller, and it is based as a psychological one because the content that
our film will include is mentally misshaping a character in the film causing psychological disturbance
to the characters and they are exposed to danger on a mental level rather than at a physical level.
What aspects of this genre does your film include?
There is not much violence towards human to human; however there are signs of potential self - harm
or just aggressive behaviour towards objects. The disturbing scenes will consist more of chilling music
accompanied by gruesome takes to show that this is the norm for certain characters and this is
something they enjoy doing. This implements the fact that evil has taken control over individuals
mentally and not physically.
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What are the main themes in your film and how are each of these seen in the opening
sequence
Fear – this is included throughout our entire film and this is hopefully what we areaiming for.
Man vs himself – hopefully we can get across to the audience the fact that the little girl will end up
fighting herself as the possession of the evil spirits will cause this.
Loss of innocence – For the audience they will see the child’s innocence and naivety at the beginning
because she is a child and doesn’t know better, but as the film goes along there will be a loss of
innocence as she grown more into the dark personas of life and has taking the more devilish route.
Revenge – this will also slightly be included as the young girl blames the mysterious man for the
troubles that the doll has caused her, therefore wanting to seek vengeance towards the person behind
this; that being the mysterious man.

4. Individual vs society – as time goes on the young girl will probably feel isolated towards the world and
how she doesn’t fit in as she has taken a new role of life which can lead to a terrible ending where she
has chosen evil over her family and friends causing conflict between herself and the rest of society.