Critical Reflection

 How do your products represent social groups or issues?

Typically, in thriller movies women always play the helpless, weak, victim. It places women in a role to be saved by the big strong male figure. It has produced a dangerous stereotype in society where women are seen as being dependent on men. For a lot of history, that is how society worked.  In the thriller genre specifically, films continue to misrepresent women. If the film industry continues to place harmful stereotypes, we only continue to perpetuate harm onto the future generations of women. That is why films like Maneater are so crucial. We hope that our message ripples into the rest of the industry so that we will see powerful female leads. In our products we reversed the roles and represented gender inequality throughout film, society, and general perception. Both the female and male lead roles are both assassins.This puts them both at an even playing field. Nelly is given a powerful position. A position that normally only men can attain. She is portrayed as being dangerous and fierce which is a change in comparison to the mainstream media. Our products show how a woman can play a role that requires her to be more aggressive and assertive. This film is testimonial to the changes we are now seeing in nations across the world. Women are just now beginning to see the fruits of their labor and dedication. This all leads to the end of our film where we see how Nelly was able to carry out her mission and assassinate Kyle. This shows how a woman can be the victor in a horror film where she’s supposed to lose.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

Throughout our website, ads, and social medias; my team and I wanted to create a sense of branding by maintaining a general theme of content. During our research, we saw how the use of blood and gore is popular among thriller films. We wanted to incorporate that while also keeping true to our message and plot. So using images of a female with a knife and the graphics of blood spatter, we were able to create an ominous feeling and dark theme throughout our media marketing. The female with a knife continues to represent our social issue that I previously discussed. This gives her a preconceived dangerous feel to her character. We wanted to give our actress, Lauren Reitman, a spotlight in the advertisements. So we collectively decided to make her the main graphic and focal point throughout our content. The bloody graphics honored the horror genre itself. It is a staple in the genre so we made it a priority to use it in some way. One of the trickiest aspects of creating a sense of “branding” is by maintaining a color palette through your content. My team and I wanted to make sure our advertisements were cohesive and fit well together regardless of the platform we chose to use. I have seen a lot of companies do this. Dreamworks, for example, has produced the film series “Kung Fu Panda”. Through the years they have maintained the same color palette of deep reds, orange, and yellow. Then for the characters, some have green accents that contrast well with the warmer colors. In our products, we used the same warmer color palettes especially, with the deep reds of the blood graphics with the female graphic as contrast. As a team we loved how these elements came together so beautifully. Each aspect of the content we produced cohesively came together following the same theme, graphics, and color palette to achieve a comprehensive brand. 

How do your products engage with the audience?

Our social media accounts are used as our main attention grabbers for our audiences. This engages specifically with younger audiences in the teenage and early adulthood groups. Sprout Social tells us that as of February of 2024, thirty percent of Instagram users were the ages eighteen to twenty-four. We took this into account when creating social media accounts. With our younger actors, we wanted to attract a younger audience. Our film is a hybrid between action and thriller which in this season is extremely popular among these age groups. Our first priority as a production team was to stay active on Instagram because we knew that was where we would receive most of our interactions with our fanbase. So we would post on our story frequently, updating fans on showtimes. We also created a hashtag that fans can use to post content related to the film.  Our second priority was to start up a Facebook account. However, we found this extremely difficult. Now that there has been a substantial increase in cyber attacks and catfishing; Facebook requires new users to upload documents such as a Social Security card or proof of address. Neither one of us were comfortable with uploading these documents so we scratched that idea off our list.  Lastly, we tried to design our website with a modern, chic look. However, we needed to link the design back to our theme and branding. So, we kept the same color palette while incorporating our theme. Our website designer, Isabel Reyes, made sure to include different tabs in the website that showcased information like our cast/crew, about us, showtimes, and locations. Users can interact with the website and contact us with any further inquiries if needed. We also made sure to display our awards and accolades to show appreciation to everyone who helped us with the making of the film. Through all of these platforms, we were able to reach our audience and achieved a significant level of interaction. 

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Our research allowed us to employ the use of a multitude of products to challenge conventions in the film industry. First, we researched thriller films generally. We watched clips and short films to analyze the trends and cliches of horror films. We didn’t stop there. Our genre blogs dug deep into many other genres and stories used in them. As a group we wanted to explore the options we had for making a film considering we are an extremely low budget and a tight schedule. We needed to choose a genre that would be cost efficient and could be produced with the limited equipment we have to work with. Our top contenders for a genre were action, thriller, and coming of age. We first crossed out coming of age because we felt that the narrative was too cliche. It also did not address any social issues. It did not have enough deep meaning for us to consider it. Next was the action genre. As a big fan of action movies, I did not believe that we had the budget for it. There was too many purchases that would have to be made, and we simply could not afford it. So we were left with thriller. We felt that the acting could make the film as ominous as it needed to be. And inspired from the song “Maneater” by Nelly Furtado, we decided to make the assassin a female. When filming we had to use an IPhone. It has standard audio and camera quality. I used CapCut, a free editing software, to edit the entire film. It offers great tools like filters, titles, audios, sound effect and more.