After our film “She’s Here” was released, many questions began to form, one of the questions that stood out to me the most was how our products represented social groups or issues. To begin, the main representation in our film was disability where the kid that the babysitter is taking care of is a mute child. We made this obvious to the audience when the child, Lana, began to write in her daily notebook to communicate with her babysitter. The use of the mute child showed how lack of communication could occur even when you say everything properly, but the tone you say it can have a strong impact on how the person receiving the message interprets the message, which is an entirely different form of “lack of communication”. This can also connect to social issues in life, for instance, the experience the child goes through can sooner or later lead to post-traumatic distress for the child and even the babysitter, affecting the mental health of one another. Along with this, the child being mute can cause a form of isolation. What this means is that when the child is attempting to inform the babysitter about the ghost and she does not believe her, the child could feel unheard or ignored by someone who is supposed to care for them, which is a social issue that may happen to anyone.
Many have asked how the elements of my production work together to create a sense of branding. When creating different elements for my film, my main goal was to provide the same purpose and maintain a consistent color scheme and theme. To begin, the website I created to promote our short film contained colors such as black, white, and grey. I used these colors because the genre of our film was horror. In horror films, the lighting is usually low-key lighting creating a dark and ominous atmosphere, it is made this way to make the audience evoke fear and terror. Along with this, our film included these colors in the movie itself, therefore we found it efficient for our other platforms to have this color scheme as well. One of the main props in our film was a flashlight which the babysitter uses to travel in the dark house. When we first opened our social media platforms the first thing we published was a small clip of somebody grabbing a flashlight in a dark room. We also included scary sounds in that video we also had in our film. The idea of doing this was to allow the audience to get a sense of what the film will contain. On our social media platforms we also included photos of the set and photos from the actual filming part. Doing this allowed the audience to feel they were a part of our journey and allowed them to see what the film would contain. The photos we posted included photos of the cast members, the locations of our filming locations, and many photos of our props. Doing this we were allowed to speak out on our film to the public without fully giving context on the plot twist and creating tension with the audience, making them more excited to watch the film. Branding in the film has a strong impact on film and production companies.
Another question many people seem to call on Is how my products engage with the audience. Well for one the website included most of the information overall such as previous awards won at festivals, release dates, reviews, and a link to all our social media allowing the audience to be able to have access to whatever they want to inform themselves about our film. We have done several polls on our social media accounts allowing the audience to pick several moments or so they could let us choose between conflicted choices. This gave the audience a sense of inclusion in our film. As mentioned before, we wanted to create a sense of tension within our audience, and we did this in different ways. The first way we accomplished this was by publishing certain content that gave details but didn’t reveal anything about our movie making the audience rapacious for the film or more content. It also created tension between their predictions and the actual occurrence in the short film. Another way we created tension was with the music and sounds we included in our film. For instance, we used sounds such as the creaking of the door, faint giggles, footsteps on wooden floors, and heavy breathing to highlight certain experiences the characters were facing. Along with this we used suspense music that was found on our editing app. The music choice could have been more ominous than the one we had originally picked, however, with the choice we did pick we were still able to create a sense of tension in the audience by adding suspense to certain scenes making them anticipate something, but it is going the other way around. One feature we added was introducing the kid, Lana, as a mute child not being able to properly communicate with her babysitter unless she writes it down.
Another question many people ask is how our research informed our products and the way we use or challenge conventions. When we were researching for our film, we focused on our genre which was horror. After researching several websites, we could get multiple opinions on this genre. We later discovered that many horror films contain jump scares, eerie music, and dark lighting. However, we challenged these conventions by trying to make a horror in a lighter setting and the music we used was not the typical sounds you see in your blockbuster movies. We also focused on avoiding predictable jump scares, making it difficult for the audience to anticipate them. Our horror film included ghosts, so there would be less gory props on our set. Instead, we used lighting effects and glitching effects as well to make the house look more haunted. In many horror films, there is always a conflict that sometimes cannot be resolved or makes the situation more difficult. So, for our film, we made sure to use this convention. The main conflict was between the babysitter and the child, where the child was mute making it difficult to communicate with the babysitter. Throughout the film you can see the child constantly writing in her notebook, showing less emotion with words making the babysitter not believe her at first about the ghost. Another interference we added was the doors being stuck. In the film after the first interactions with the ghost, the babysitter and Lana run to the front door to escape but are stuck because the doorknob is jammed. Then when they begin to run towards the back door, they struggle to open it as well and as it begins to open, they interact with the ghost again and it is too late. Our goal was for our film to stand out, so we challenged more conventions than use them. The research had a strong impact on our filming journey because we learned the basic structure for a horror movie allowing us to see how we can go out of the ordinary.
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