Sophie questions 3 & 4

3: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for a horror film is generally teenagers, horror film are mostly popular from people 14-30 years old. This is shown by the audience ratings from “Låt den rätte komma in” (let the right one in)

audience rating reports for 'lat den ratte komma in' (let the right one in)

  This shows us that this age range would be an ideal target group and that we should make are film relevant and interesting for this audience. Many young males and females enjoy watching horror films as they are thrilling and gripping and unlike the middle aged they are more inclined to enjoy films that shock and thrill as they find it enjoyable as they are unable to predict the plot and are always questioning ‘what will happen next?’. I will use this information to make the film I am creating unpredictable in the plot as well as unpredictable movements and actions.  I will take things that have worked well from horror films such as sound and costume and blend it with my own ideas to create an original horror idea which has the key ingredients of a horror film that my target audience will warm too and enjoy, thus making a more interesting film for my target audience.

4: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

 The horror genre traditionally views women as the weaker gender, they are normally cast as the ‘damsel in distress’ role and this is why  reviews of horror films show more men like and watch more horror films than women. This sticks to gender stereotypes and therefore we assumed that horror films targeted at males would be larger target market compared to horror films targeted at females. Therefore when deciding on a ‘bad guy’ and a victim  we stuck to gender role stereotypes and chose to have are female actor as a victim and one of our male actors as the ‘bad guy’. As our female actor was quite small we had a certain scene where the height difference was clearly noticeable. This showed vulnerability towards the female character making us relate to our target audience as the male character has a sense of power.

Women as victim in 'Nightmare on Elm street' (1984)

From the feedback we got from the class I believe I was able to show gender role stereotypes well as feedback said that the ‘girl was easily pushed down’ and that many people ‘felt sorry’ for her. This was what I was hoping to achieve as you want your audience to feel sympathetic for the character being killed.

Evaluation-Questions 1,2,7,8,9 Michaela

Question 1- what did you make, who did you work with and where did the original idea come from?

Our brief said that we had to make an opening to a Horror film. This was to assess our ability to construct a media product and our ability to undertake, apply and present appropriate research. In our research we looked at other horror films to see what they had in common and what techniques they used which scared the audience and made the audience interested in watching the rest of the film because without that those elements it wouldn’t be a horror. We therefore used some of those techniques for our film opening as we wanted our film to be as interesting and scary as possible. To get our idea, me and the person I worked with sat and talked and brainstormed ideas with each other and we tried to come up with an idea which would enable us to use lots of the elements which horror films use to be as scary as possible. We came up with a lot of interesting ideas but of course, we couldn’t use all of them so we just added elements of the ideas into one idea which would then be the storyline for our film opening. We decided to make a vampire themed horror film opening and used films such as “Let the right one in” for inspiration as we found that opening very intriguing and scary and we felt like we wanted to watch the rest of the film  which is exactly what we wanted our audience to feel. We therefore studied and analysed that film opening to see what elements of that film worked. I worked with a friend so our production worked out quite smoothly as we really got on throughout the process and were open to each other’s ideas and had an equal involvement in the production of our film. This also helped when coming across problems we had to solve which we solved quite effectively and quickly.  

Question 2- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Most of the forms and conventions used in the Horror genre consist and rely hugely on costume, make up and setting. Due to the research we did in watching some horror film openings, we realised that some horrors create the villain as being someone you wouldn’t expect (a little child for example) therefore shocking the audience and making it lots more scary and creepy for the audience to watch to see a perfectly innocent figure becoming so evil. Some film opening we watched were “Halloween”, “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “28 days later”. We decided to develop forms and conventions used as we really wanted to create a film opening that was typical and appropriate to our sub genre (vampire) but was also modern because we thought it would make it loads more scary to make it modern day as the audience would feel like it could happen to them. We therefore used white make up for the faces of the vampires in our film and put red around their eyes. We didn’t use capes or coffins however which made it more modern. We developed the forms and conventions of a horror by finding a very scary and creepy setting which was an underpass near my partner’s house and we filmed when it started to get dark in the late afternoon. We didn’t want to challenge the forms and conventions of the horror genre as we felt like if we did, it wouldn’t be a typical horror film opening and wouldn’t scare and interest the audience which isn’t what we wanted our film to do.

Question 7- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The technology we used to make our film helped us immensely to make our film because without it our film wouldn’t have effects that are crucial to a horror film. For example, we used garage band to make the music for our film and we were able to create the perfect music for the mood we wanted to set for our film and using that music, we were able to manipulate the audience’s reaction to the film and the music makes the film more interesting for the audience to watch. Especially a horror film as when we did our research we found that horror films use music a lot to create and evoke feelings in the audience. Personally I have learned a lot about different technologies such as garage band and Imovie and so on making this film whereas before I wouldn’t have known how to use them at all. The different technologies definitely helped to be more creative as we were able to put effects onto our film during the editing process of the film making and be creative by using and making our own sounds for our film. The technologies helped to structure our film as effects were available to make our film flow and make our edits tidy.

Question 8- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The difference from our finished product from our preliminary task is that we had learnt a lot more by the time we shot our finished product therefore we were able to improve our film because we had learned and acquired skills to make our film look more professional. In our preliminary task we learned to make our shots and angles a lot neater and steadier and how to put the different shots and angles together. We were able to apply this knowledge to our finished film and made our finished film look better and gave us more confidence when we came to make our finished film as we then knew what to do. If we were to do the production again we would definitely give ourselves more time to re shoot some scenes to perfect them even more and develop our knowledge even more.

Question 9- What was your contribution to the process during the planning, production and post production stages?

During the planning, I watched some horror film openings and looked at what effects and techniques they used and told my partner my findings to see if we could add some of those effects and techniques into our film. I also organised what equipment we needed for the production such as camera, tripod and so on and also created the shot list we needed for the film so on the day of shooting we knew exactly what we were doing. During the production stage me and my partner directed the production and she would ask me to look back at the camera shots to see how they looked and to see if we needed to re shoot it. I was also cast as the victim in the production. During the post production stage it was my job to create the music for the film and I also gave advice on the editing process as it was my partners job to edit the film. I have also done evaluation questions 1,2,7,8,9

part 2 of foundation portfolio questions 5, 6 & 9 Sophie

How did you attract your audience?

As the target audience of most horror films are typically teenagers we decided that we also would use this audience. We did research and decided the film we would take inspiration from would be ‘let the right one in’ we used actors of a similar age to are audience group. We decided that we would use an urban setting with a simple task taking place (walking home from work) making it realistic to something are audience would do on a daily basis. We decided that if our film was to be certified we would class it as a 15. This is a broad certificate making sure that people of the right age category are able to view are film and so it is not over categorised (18) so that the majority of our target audience are unable to view it or under categorised (12) were the content of the film is either not suitable for that rating or the content of the film isn’t scary enough to intrigue a teenage audience.

 It was reviewed by fifteen students within my class. Out of sixty, the film scored an average of 55.4, the lowest score being 40 and the highest being 55. Our feedback from our film was generally quite positive saying ‘good soundtrack, fitted well to the context’ ‘good editing’  ‘location was realistic and a good choice’ however we did too get criticisms of the film being ‘too dark’ and ‘lack of continuity when running’ some people thought we should have had ‘longer titles’ and that the struggle between the girl and vampire was ‘unrealistic’.

When filming we needed to consider how our target audience would view our film, we made it so our film was easily accessible to our target market we did this in a number of ways:

Actors- in our film we used actors that would also be the age group of our target audience, doing this make the audience feel vulnerable and compassionate towards the victim as they have a shared common interest.

Music- in our film we have also used music that is relevant for contemporary teenage audiences. Of course we would make this music and because of the contrast in noise

test shot of how we wanted are victim to look

Mise- en-scene- we set the scene in a rundown estate with a girl walking home this is also relatable to the audience as most of them watching would have also experienced something similar to this in their daily life, antagonist who is also the vampire is also modern in appearance and wears modern clothes suggesting that he blends into the crowd easily.

Coat vampire was wearing to blend in 

what kind of media institution would distribute your film?

Many British horror films such as “28 days later” by Danny Boyle are much like the style of filming we aspire the beginning of our horror film to be like, this is because it is very fast moving and uses a range of camera angles sometimes breaking the 180° rule. The film “28 days later” was produced by The British Film Council and DNA films; it was distributed worldwide by 20^th Century Fox.  Our film relates to “28 days later as we also use an urban setting for our film. There is also a lack of people in the opening which is also similar to our film as the main protagonist thinks she’s alone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H-T7RPvt2k

The jobs I did in my media group were filming, cutting film, editing film and adding titles and transferring the music to put that onto the film. In planning I did storyboarding, make up design, the film pitch the recce sheet and finding the actors to be in our film. I have also done evaluation questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,6 & 9.

Reviews from students

Are horror film was completed and handed in on wednesday because of our week extension. It was reviewed by fifteen students within my class. Out of sixty, the film scored an average of 55.4. The lowest score being 40 and the highest being 55. The film encountered a number of criticisms on the darkness of the film and the short titles but apart from this the film was highly praised.

Foudation portfolio questions one and two Sophie

We are going to make the opening of a horror film for our media coursework; it will be 2 minutes long. We researched the openings of horror films on YouTube, meaning that we had a better idea of what elements were needed when creating the opening scenes of this genre of film. For our initial idea we chose this because it seemed quite simplistic to make compared to the other ideas as vampire films are currently contemporary in the film industry we decided to choose this but make it more true to the original representation of a vampire. We chose inspiration from "Låt den Rätte Komma In" (Let the Right One in) where the vampire is modern in that society yet still displaying characteristics of the classic vampire traits.  Our group had different ideas of what type of film we did  and how we would make it, we ended up choosing an idea that most of our group was uncomfortable with, we also had a suffering relationship with this group member later on as he kept changing dates and ideas about when we were going to shoot. We split the group and because of this we have came back to our original idea.

 Låt den Rätte Komma In (Let the Right One in)

nightmare on elm street

Horror films are used to evoke fear and fascination, the opening of a horror film needs to be gripping in order to achieve these emotions. For this I have chosen the opening of Halloween, as you cannot see the POV character as the child is killing her, creating shock, as the child is only young. We used this research to decide that we wouldn’t have a close up of the predators face as we wanted to create a mystery into who he is, which if continued as a film we would find out. We decided to have the predator stalking the girl as she walked she gets more paranoid and turns round to see there’s nothing they’re making her confused and anxious. This is similar to other horror films where this happens such as the beginning of nightmare on Elm Street where at the beginning of this film someone is following her and she isn’t able to see who it is creating suspense.

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vampire make-up research

We watched videos like this one to try and get some ideas for vampire make-up for our film. We took some elements of this video, such as the red yes and white skin, but didn't make the make-up as dramatic as that on this clip.

A film me and sophie took inspiration from

This trailer is from the film "let the right one in" it inspired me and sophie to do a vampire themed film

Michaela