Evaluation 1:How have you subverted or conformed to stereotypes typical of your genre?

Within our media production, our trailer, we revolve around three teenage girls, suffering under the torment and stalking of a psychotic masked, killer clown. Through this idea we decided to conform to the stereotypes that are usually portrayed in horror films with characters like this, so that we can keep an authentic and professional look.

For our protagonists/victims, we decided to show them as vulnerable, as when they are seen at the beginning of the trailer seeming unfazed and unaware of their surroundings, and the fact that they are being followed by a creepy clown that poses a threat to their well-being. Tessa Perkins would say that this is a simple stereotype, as these characters may not be a minority and oppressed, but the fact that teenagers are less experienced in life, and are usually less safe than adults would like them to be and therefore are an easier target, and therefore are branded with the “dumb” stereotype. This is carried on throughout our trailer and in one particular long shot, where we see our teenage victims constantly running, as they are being chased by the clown, and never seen fighting or trying to think of a way to overcome the clown. We also pair this with their facial expressions as constantly scared and panicked, with them never looking determined, or motivated to defeat their stalker. Through our protagonists mise en scene we wanted to show the standard day to day clothing that teenager’s in contemporary society would be seen wearing. Though we did want to show the innocence of their characters, with still showing the dark tones that are involved in horror films. We feel like the belief that women being less inclined to fight and manipulate, is shown heavily within our trailer, as it is intensely shown that the teenagers are terrified of the clown, and do not even attempt to outsmart and overcome his hold over the girls, therefore showing the stereotype of women being fragile. Certain audience members may dislike this approach as it doesn’t empower women, but we believe as teenage girls ourselves, it is more realistic for our protagonists to run away, and try to escape, rather than try and defeat a killer, who resembles paranormal ability’s. Like Stuart Hall’s theory of basing a film’s plot, over minor details about the film, we can judge on what will happen overall, based on stereotypes, so after watching our trailer, it is the ideology of our audience whether they will question due to our protagonists being innocent teenage girls, will they succumb to their death due to their disadvantage of being weak and frightened young girls, or will they overpower the clown, maturing and solving out the way to supress their psychotic stalker.

Our antagonist, the killer clown, shows almost complete conformity to the genre of horror, With specifically the overall mise en scene that is produced from his look, The mask that the clown is wearing, showing the stereotypical pale white face, smudged red makeup, and bright red afro styled hair. We felt that this would be the most effective look, of showing the antagonist as a mysterious character, as instead of seeing a physical face with clown makeup, a mask shows a sense of mystery to the plot, getting the audience to question who the antagonist is, we feel like this conformed effectively to the horror genre. We did however subvert from stereotype when we decided not to use any violent themes throughout the entire trailer, we felt that we wanted to concentrate on the frightening imagery of the clown, rather than showing graphic violence, as we wanted to be secretive on the plot to show a building of tension and suspense, rather than revealing the entire plot within such a short space of time.