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Genre elements Conventions presented in MOTHERS DEADPerformers/Characters – representations, stereotypes, behaviour, body language, specific pop stars

Young girl who is represented as an innocent girl dressed in grungy dull clothing challenges the stereotype at the beginning of the film when she kills her mother thinking she is dead but just as she stabs her, her mother is awake. Uses Neales repetition and difference theory.

Strange attitude of the girl character acting as the villain of the film when stereotypically in horror films she would await to die or not. This creates a new genre of horror film making it more modern.

Stereotypical killer characters at the end of the film – Zombies tell the audience that it is a horror film.

Girls appearance is quite pale which connotates with innocence and naïve – challenges the stereotype (although at the end of the film you find out that she has done it for a reason at the beginning the audience wouldn’t know that)

Genre Type: Performance, Narrative or Conceptual? Are there elements of each?

The genre type is narrative because the story is being told throughout the film it is a linear narrative because it’s being told in chronological time order – whilst the voiceover is giving an insight into what has already

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Describe them. If there is a narrative, what type of narrative is it? (Linear/Non Linear?)

happened leaving the audience to guess what the ending of the film will be.

Iconography – props, symbolic codes

The props used in the film symbolise horror films and tell the audience that they are watching a horror film. E.g. the knife the girl uses to kill her mum symbolises horror as it is stereotypically used in most popular horror films e.g. Scream.

The use of white colour used at the beginning of the film challenges the stereotype of horror films because white has the connotations of innocence and purity – The girl is killing her mum although she looks innocent what she is doing isn’t. The white bed sheets symbolise heaven as the woman is dead on the bed, wants the audience to assume she has gone to heaven.

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Setting- mise en sceneThe mise en scene of this film is traditionally stereotypical of a horror film because it is set in what seems to be an abandoned house which is a stereotypical setting for a horror film to be set in. The audience will then be able to tell from the setting of the film what genre the film will be.

Technical and audio codes – camera use, editing, lighting, diegetic/non diegetic sound, sfx

Slow paced non diegetic sound to build up tension (makes audience squeamish wondering what will happen as the music builds its pace)Non diegetic sound of girl character playing the voiceover telling the story as the film is being played.High key lighting challenges the stereotype of horror films at the beginning of the film because stereotypically horror films use low key lighting – this confuses the audience leaving them to question if it is in fact a horror film they are watching.

Neale’s ‘Mental Machinery’: How does the text meet audience expectations? How does it conform to convention and/or deviate from convention?

The text meets audience’s expectations because the producers of the film try to target the mainstream audience who like horror films by including typical horror conventions including the typical villain of zombies who are trying to kill everybody.