For our film, we recognised that the common conventions of characters in a paranormal horror film vary in ages and gender. We realised that it is normally a single mother with a teenager and younger children. We started to think about the mother and who could play this role. In our previous productions, we have occasionally used my mum, Gill Stennett. We recognised that she is quite a good actress and fits the age of the role. Therefore we used her as the single mother in our production. We chose to use a female protagonist due to our findings in audience research. We found that more women watch horror films than men. Therefore having a female protagonist will help the majority of the audience interpelate and relate to the character. It also affects the audience's relationship with the protagonist through relationships and security. A single mother suggests that she is weak and vulnerable, single mothers in the audience will be able to relate to the characters feelings.
For the teenager role, we decided to go for another female actress. We used a friend of ours who took Drama for GCSE and has been featured in our previous productions. We recognised that she is quite a skilled actress as she got experience from Drama GCSE. This helped us make the production even more professional as she was a good actress and fitted the age requirements needed. We used a teenage girl because we also recognised in our audience research that quite a lot of teenagers watch horror films. Therefore teenage girls will be able to relate to the characters problems and relationships in the film.
We also needed a younger child. We decided to use a boy as it fits with the storyline and conventions. In paranormal films like paranormal activity, the younger child is always a boy. We used a group members brother who was 9 at the time. This fit with the conventional age of the characters.
For the antagonist, i played the role. It wasn't a demanding role as they never make a sound. Therefore i decided to step in and play the role of the ghost/demon.
Location Research
Using our conventions podcast, we recognised that the conventional location for a paranormal horror film was a big isolated house. Fortunately enough, two of our group members lived in a loarge house on top of a hill. We decided to use this location as it fitted with conventions of the genre. We emphasised the isolation of the house by using a drone shot at the start to show how it is on its own which connotes loneliness and weakness.
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