Representation of Characters

A media texts success partially comes from the effectiveness of the representation of characters throughout. Representation in the media often has a lot to do with existing stereotypes of particular groups of people. The main representations focused upon are class, age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, regional identity; whether it be commonly represented within media texts or not.

The example that I chose to depict was the horror film, 'The Cabin in the Woods' which shows a group of teens who spend time in a deserted cabin that leads them to the discovery that they are being played in some sort of game that leads to their death.

I decided to look at each individual character and investigate how they further or in fact challenge stereotypical roles through common representations of characters, specifically within the horror genre. 

Make-up Experimentation

Hair and Make up ideas: Character Two

Character and Costume: Character Two

We decided to make the antagonist a young girl who previously died in the house, she is trying to help the girl to get out of the house because she was killed by the spirits. Sally mistakes this as her being the evil spirit within the house and continues to make her way down to the basement. The dead girl stands at the top of the stairs saying "save yourself" in an attempt to get her out of the house. When she is in the mirror Sally doesn't see her, she repeats "save yourself" and walks past without being noticed. This will provoke further fear within the audience.

She will be wearing old fashioned looking pyjamas which will be dark coloured. Her hair will be brown, long and straight however, it will have a messy look to it in order to imply that she is in fact dead. She will be wearing extremely pale make up with dark eyes, we will use greys and blacks in order to create this look. She will potentially have fake blood dripping down her neck in order to emphasise the look we are trying to accomplish. She will be a teenager, around the same age as our main character Sally which will further provoke fear within the audience as the reality of the horror will become even more apparent.

Opening Sequence: Storyboard

Over the duration of this planning time, we have continuously thought about what our story will be a how we will approach it. During this time we have altered our ideas at different stages, to improve them and ensure that they are as effective as they can be. To begin the process, I looked at existing products to validate my understanding of our chosen genre. Then, I thought of some ideas and we collated the ideas as a group in order to begin to develop a clear image and direction for our opening sequence. We believed that the most effective way to do this would be a storyboard. Therefore, we sat down as a group and thought about the best ideas we had initially put forward, then came to a final decision and accumulated our ideas within a storyboard.

Focus Group Preparation

To prepare for our Focus Group we prepared ten questions to ask our participants during the discussion. We also decided to produce an information sheet to inform the contributors about the basic information they are required to know about our final ideas for the opening sequence. We decided to inform them about the title of our film, character profile and a brief description of the storyline. I believe that this will help us to prompt the group and ensure they are knowledgeable about our ideas in order to aid the discussion and for it to be a success.