Costume Research

Here is some screen shots from the films Scream 4 and Final Destination 5. These films have typical young characters, and are very modern, so these are ideal films to look at costumes. Researching professional texts is very useful as we want our products to look as professional and as marketable as possible, so this process is very important. We want the characters in our trailer to be wearing average everyday casual clothes, so that our target audience of young men and women can relate to them.

The male characters in these shots tend to be wearing clothes like shirts, T-shirts, hoodies, leather jackets, and jeans. The female characters are wearing similar clothes, jumpers, cardigans, leather jackets, jeans and skirts. This is suitable as these are the type of clothes that could realistically be worn when camping, which is what is happening in our trailer, or could be worn to college or when with friends. This type of clothing is easily accessible, as they are all the type of things that we will have at home, so it won't be necessary to purchase them. 

It may be necessary to rip or stain some of this clothing for some of the scenes where the character are being chased or attacked, but this shouldn't be a problem. 

Location Research

The location in the pictures are woods known as 'The Burn' in Newton Aycliffe, these woods back up onto my house-making the location easy to access and if our we encounter problems with our plans we have somewhere to go in case of emergency. It also means if we need lighting etc, this could be sourced from electricity in mine and extended over the fence. The locations are pretty quiet meaning there is no risk or scare to the general public and the scenes are exactly the type of location we looked for, being eerie and grungey at night.

Make up Research

After re watching several horror film trailers, I paid particular attention to the make up used. For the normal everyday make up of the characters, very natural and understated make up tends to be used in most films. This will probably involve only using a bit of foundation and mascara, without much need for anything else for these shots which involve the characters going about their every day lives. 

However, when it comes to the shots of characters crying, bleeding or running away, we will need to use a lot more make up. In each of these example shots from professional texts, the characters tend to look a bit sweaty faced, which is something that we can very easily duplicate simply by using water. One of the most important effects we will need to use in order to make our trailer look very effective is fake blood. With Halloween coming up soon, now is the ideal time to source fake blood very easily from supermarkets. We will buy some fake blood before we begin shooting and test it out in order to ensure it looks as realistic as possible. This will be used on the face, on arms etc for cuts, and also possibly on clothes. We may also need to use mud for the outdoor shots where the characters are running away.

by Rebecca Hart

Animatic

Pitch feedback

This is the post-it notes for the pitch that our group performed to the class. It includes their likes, dislikes and recommendations for our film trailer, magazine and poster. There was a overall feeling that we did good research but some suggested we do some test shots of our clown and test some of the shots that we are thinking of doing. They also liked the idea of modernisation that we thought of putting in our trailer, using such things as Facebook, smart phones etc. Generally the feeling was of good film ideas and research but test shots was a a strong recommendation. Also extra location research was suggested, along with extra prop research. Our tutor made us more aware of public awareness and safety when using knives and also suggested that we look into the "final girl theory" which i did. They also liked the hand held camera idea and recommended that we test different shot angles. 

Overall they felt that we did good research and had good ideas but we needed to look more into props and locations and emphasised the importance of safety when shooting in remote location with a knife. We have all used this information to help us and to develop our products and we all have taken their suggestions and are using them to make our film better. - by charlotte alderson

Music Research of Professional Texts

Story boards

by Clark Warburton, Rebecca Hart and Charlotte Alderson 

Flat Plans

This is a flat plan for our magazine front cover. I decided to go with a bold sans serif masthead as we wanted to make it similar to other big film magazines like 'empire' and 'total film' I used a mid two shot for the cover, to emphasise both people featured but more so the female who will be shown as the films 'Big Star' . We chose to make it more of a 'Behind the scenes/ with the cast of' than just focusing on the film. This way the audience will feel like they are getting a exclusive look at a new high budget film and want to buy the product more. Using the 'stars' will also have a bigger audience draw. Although we will use the actors as a draw, the image will most likely be character driven to give the effect of the film and the feature on it.

After looking at the posters for things such as scream and I know what you did last summer. We decided to make the posters character driven, following professional practices and making a series of posters that in our case have one featuring the "clown" killer. Another featuring the female lead, the films biggest 'star'. Then a poster of the 4 main characters in the film. It has all the features of professional movie posters such as the tag lines etc. For the background we chose to have the woods where some of the film takes place as this is a eerie location and fits in with the film genre. We chose to use dark red as it had connotations of blood.

-Clark Warburton

Sound effects research

I made this video of some of the sound effects that we could use in our trailer.
by Charlotte Alderson


After finding the website incompetech.com, which has royalty free music for all genres, we looked for music that we could use in our trailer. Here is one song called Bump in the Night, which I think would be ideal for the trailer.

This music is fairly quiet, and gives more of an eerie and spooky feel, rather than a loud shocking effect. The music has certain points which build up quite suddenly, with a range of different noises, from thumping noises to sudden high pitched screeching noises. I think this is really effective as these noises suprise the audience, and sound really scary. The music would fit in ideally with each of the different planned points of our trailer which are going to be the most scary and fast paced, however in between these points the music still plays along quietly in the background, constantly making the audience aware of the film genre. The section of the song which goes into a regular pounding noise would be perfect for the fast paced chase sequence of our trailer as it is really unnerving, and builds the music up to a high point.
by Rebecca Hart

this is a music track that i thought could be suitable for our trailer. it builds suspense and has quite an eerie, unnerving feel
- by charlotte alderson

Clark's Music Research

This is the music I chose. I chose this because the timing of the music fits in with the editing pace of our trailer. I was also drawn to this music as it has similar elements to the music featured in Halloween, which is considered one of the biggest horror/slasher movies of all time. I liked the eerie tones in the music and I think it would work well as it is slow and creepy with fast shocking slashes of music at times. I think it helps build suspense and gets more detailed and scary as the trailer goes on which would be perfect for what we need. It is also royalty free, which means it would help cut expenses.

Flat plans

This is the flat plan that i made for my version of the poster. Mine features the clown and i have also put the location into the background. i am going to have the main background colour of the poster as black and the clowns face coming from the darkness. i will create this by making the backdrop black of the studio and using lighting to create the effect of shadows and connoting mystery. i will have the title along the bottom and have the tag line above. i have included the credit block along the bottom with a film rating. looking at professional practice i noticed that the film logos often appeared at the bottom so i have included the ones i made in the corner.

by charlotte alderson

Idea Development- Shot Ideas

Whilst mapping out ideas for our plot and characters, I thought it would be a good idea to do some extensive research into Horror movies and iconic shots we could replicate. I found a book in the college library called 'Horror Cinema' full of sections on types of horror films with a 'behind the scenes look at The movies and iconic shots, I think studying these.

-Clark Warburton

This is the trailer for the film, Scream 4. Whilst thinking about our trailer storyboard, we watched this trailer a few times as we thought it was very effective and we liked a lot of the shots in it. In particular, we like the first 30 second of the trailer, during which the quick fade in/fade out shots introduce the viewer to all of the characters. From each quick shot the audience gets a good view of the character and what they are like as a person; for example, we get a shot of the typical pretty popular girl in her bra, and the clip then moves on to a shot of the nerdy looking boy in the school corridor. I personally think this is really effective as it draws you in to the film as the characters all seem realistic and have their own personality, and due to the slasher nature of the film, you immediately begin to wonder which characters are going to die first and which one is going to survive, as the character types tend to fit with the typical character types usually featured in these types of films. We want to do a similar thing in our film trailer, and introduce the audience to each of the character, as if we simply include shot after shot of fast paced chases and fights etc, the audience doesn't really get a good view of the characters and it just seems uninteresting as no connection is made to the different characters. Also the briefness of the shots and the fading to black in between each one keeps the short sequence very quick, keeping the audience informed of who the different characters are, but not getting tedious. - Rebecca Hart

Further Research Development

I was doing some extra research into our film and the type of shots and ideas we could look into. I came across the trailer for an upcoming film called “The Room-mate” It is a story based upon a stalker and someone who has formed an obsession with someone. It is an idea we could develop. Obsessions can be very dangerous and have been the theme of some very effective and very good films, such as “Fatal Attraction” and has also been an underlining theme in many horrors. It is something we could think about incorporating. Also looking at this trailer in detail, I noticed the way you actually can’t automatically tell the genre from the first few scenes and I think this is very effective, due to the fact that it settles you into a relaxed mood and then rapidly changes the tone of the film, making you unsettled and lured into a false sense of security. I paid close attention to some of the scenes and thought about some scenes that we could potentially shoot ourselves. In this trailer the scene at the end where she appears from the dark could be really good for our trailer and not really difficult to shoot, so I will look into doing this scene and possibly do some test shots of it. another scene in the trailer which is of significance is when she enters the room and the girl sits up screaming. I also think we could do this as it would be good for our trailer. We discussed scenes such as being dragged from underneath the bed which I originally saw whilst watching an episode of one tree hill (link of scene below)

http://youtu.be/pOXrMC8-dbQ



I also remembered one of the first horrors I ever watched called “Drive thru”. It was thee first horror I watched with a clown and it tells the story of a boy who comes back from the dead and comes in the form of clown. He seeks some revenge on some orange county teenagers. It has the typical character types that you would expect to find from a horror within the victims, (the jock, cheerleader etc). He kills them off one by one with his meat cleaver and leaves only a few to fight for their life. It has many similarities to our theme and story. The trailer has some simple scenes in which we could develop for our trailer. There is one particular scene in the school in which the clown walks quickly behind the girl, this is something that is not technically difficult to do but is very effective and something that would look professional and make the suspense within the trailer even better. Also there are some scenes including the prop of a clowns head with a simple voice over used.

This is also the film poster for "Drivethru" which is also something that resembles something we might attempt to produce. Looking at this poster we notice that it also has a large emphasis on the eyes of the clown. This is the case with the other posters for horrors so i think that eye contact and strong eyes is something that i will try to include in the film poster. This poster also has the location in the background as did the poster for insidious. I think the thing about using a clown in a horror is effective due to the fact you cant read the expression of the clown so no matter what the clown is doing, you cant tell how he is feeling, he just constantly has a smile on his face- which can be very unsettling. The letter spacing in the sell line also is larger for the third line, giving a definate pause. It then also has a credit block placed at the bottom of the image. These small details will make my poster development look more professional. Like many films it also released a second movie poster;

This has many similarities to the first poster like the location in the background. But this one includes more detail about the film. This one includes the meat cleaver in which he murders people but instead of the clown looking straight on, his reflection is showing which makes the idea of him hiding everywhere. This poster has a different tag line to the last, unlike the insidious poster i saw, whivh had the same line at the bottom on both posters. The use of the burger is very useful and the way the tomato ketchup splashes gives the connotation of blood.

Both of these posters, the trailer for "Drivethru" and the trailer for "The Room mate" have given me a better idea on what to develop for our products, due to the fact that they both involve different themes and characters to the previous films i have researched. They challenge the issues of stalking, obsession, revenge and a clown character.

The final girl theory 

"The final girl theory occurs in thriller and horror films (particularly slasher films). It specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and its remake, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hellraiser, Alien, The Strangers, and Terror Train. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film."


I looked at this theory in response to our media tutors suggestion in our pitch and after looking into it, it reflects the forms and conventions that we want to create and mirror in our film.


by charlotte alderson

Locations

Before we go look for possible trailer locations and do some test shots, we are going to consider the types of locations that would be useful in our trailer, so we have a better idea of what locations we will need to find.

This type of forest location is typical of horror films, and would be ideal for our products. This type of location would be used for the shots of the teenagers camping, and would be perfect for the shots giving us brief glimpses of the antagonist, and also for the chase scenes we plan on including. The characters (victims and antagonist) darting through the trees would look really effective. These forest locations also have a feel of isolation, as there is no houses or buildings to be seen anywhere, and this is ideal. In our products we really want to give off the feel of being isolated, and this type of location would do just that.

This is the trailer for Eden Lake, which is almost entirely set in a remote forest type location, similar to these pictures. This gives us a good idea of the types of shots that can be carried out in these locations, and how effective and scary they look.

Another key location in our trailer we plan to have is inside the victims houses. We have already thought of some shots that we want to carry out. In the bathroom we plan to have a shot of one of the characters getting out of the bath, and looking in the steamed up bathroom mirror, catching a glimpse of a shadow moving behind her, but when she turns around nothing is there. In a bedroom, we could have a character recieving a message from the antagonist, or even a shot of a character scared and hiding under their bed, and being dragged away into the dark screaming. The idea of a killer getting into your own home to terrorise you is something that we found really appeals to our audience, and is a really scary thought.
This is a clip from Prom Night of what we were thinking about being hid under a bed.



This is an image of a dark alley way in a type of town or city location. This is a possible type of location that could be very useful when producing our work, as it looks very dangerous and ominous. It is the ideal location for a victim/killer chase, or for an attack to take place, particularly as it is in quite a public place but out of the way of any passerbys.

Research Development

Whilst researching horror/slasher movies with teenage stars I come across a cult film from the 90's. 'I know what you did last summer' was seen as a stereotypical view at a accident out of control that changes the group of teenagers lives forever, forcing an urban legend come true to track down the teenagers who left him for dead and take a vendetta. I chose to post about this film as I felt it was very similar to our storyline and there are elements that could help us when producing our trailers, posters and magazine covers. There are use of stereotypical male and female characters such as The Jock, The Beauty Queen, The Timid Nerd etc. The poster is character driven which is why I chose to look at it as we decided that we would make our posters character driven and analysing this poster could help ours represent a professional one. -Clark Warburton

As a group we also discussed the idea of featuring handheld/home video style shots throughout our trailer, in that of the style of films like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project. We liked the idea of how this technique really adds a sense of realism to a film, and makes you feel more connected to the characters. This causes the audience to feel a much larger sense of fear and upset when the characters are captured or killed, which is ideal when trying to create effective products. We initially considered creating the full trailer using this handheld camera technique, however we then considered the fact that this would mean not creating some of the shots we have already briefly discussed, for example a shot of a character looking in a bathroom mirror, with a brief glimpse of the antagonist moving past behind her, or a shot of the antagonist moving through some trees, watching the group of teenagers camping. We are also aware that the use of this technique throughout the full trailer could possibly simply make our full product look unprofessional, which is something we don't want to happen. However, now that we have a better idea of the storyline of our film, it is possible to compromise with our plans on camera technique, and we could possibly use a combination of home video style shots and average film shots. If, like we plan to, we begin our trailer with shots of a group of teenagers camping in some woods, where something creepy happens and they are chased by some kind of masked man, it could look really effective if we created some of these shots in the home video style, then inserting some intertitles, and then using normal shots throughout the rest of the trailer, to ensure we can involve some of our planned shots and illustrate our camera skills. We will create some test shots of this type of camera technique before coming to any firm decisions.

If we do decide to feature this camera technique in our trailer, this would have an impact on our film poster image. We could still create a posed shot of the film characters, or we could however create a shot of a character as if it is caught from a video someone is filming of themself, similar to The Blair Witch Project film poster. This communicated to the audience what they can expect from the film, and this is something which really appeals to a considerable amount of people, as demonstrated by the enthusiasm for films like the recently released Paranormal Activity. - Rebecca Hart

Group Summary of our Interview Findings

Proposal of Ideas

Our film opens with a group of teenagers at school/ college, this allows there to be an brief introduction to the characters before the film really kicks in. In school they discuss taking a camping trip this weekend to get away and have fun-to do what typical teenagers do get drunk. One of them suggests they go to some abandoned place/woods to camp as they've heard its haunted.Then the film would move on to preparing for the trip and then eventually taking it. We would see the characters being typical teenagers and having fun in the location, which would be some abandoned woods or grounds. It's there the complicating action happens, the killer makes his first appearance, at this point in the movie nobody dies but there are the stereotypical innocent victim/ killer chases. After the teenagers escape the whole incident they return to their normal lives and decide to forget the incident as a twisted and bad experience. However none of them can seem to forget the incident and when they start to see visions of the killer being around they begin to doubt whether he is still after them. The killer re emerges and begins to stalk and kill the teenagers one by one, leading down to leave a main character who the killer is to pursue. Like many horror films the tension will be built up into one big cat/mouse scene of the killer and final victim battling it out. Eventually the victim will manage to kill the antagonist. Or so they think. Like many horror movies ours end's with a possible opening for a sequel, just as the supposed 'dead' killers mask is about to be peeled away, his eyes open and the credits will roll, leaving the audience shocked, scared and unaware what happens next, with a possible opening for a sequel.

Our trailer will include shots that establish the basic plot without giving too much away, establishing locations and main characters and focusing on replicating stereotypical and iconic

kind of scenes such as jumping up out of bed from a nightmare, or looking in the mirror and seeing somebody behind them, as well as showing fast paced chase scenes to build tension and play to the iconography of the genre. The trailer will most likely be cut with inter titles to build tension a little bit more.

I think our posters will be character driven, as with most movies we will produce numerous posters as forms of promotion. These posters could focus on the main characters, both separately or together, or one purely of the murder with the location in the background. I think doing these will be more effective than sticking to one poster as it will appeal to more than one audience range.

For our magazine cover I think we should either have a shot of the film's main star, or a cast photograph together. I think it should be a 'behind the scenes' feature, because people are more likely to buy the magazine for this and interviews with the cast as appose to for just finding out about the film plot. The aim is to have the magazine something similar to Empire/ Total Film so it will have to look professional and the photo's will have to be well planned out in relation with the film.

Group Summary of our Primary Research

Audience Research - Primary

Above is Clark's Interview of Nicola (age 27).

Summary of Interview:
My interview with Nicola went really well. I found out a lot of information as to what my audience expect and what my audience would like to see, which will be information we will

take forward when we plan and make our own products. When talking about her expectations

for horror movies it was features which I expected to hear such as the typical killer wearing a mask, using a knife etc. Her expectations for setting's were things such as isolated woods, abandoned houses which are the types of settings we had already decided to use in our trailer. Nicola's thoughts on the trailer were very similar to mine, whilst she felt that the trailer worked really well at building tension and having the scare factor, she felt there were too many shots which were very similar to each other and gave the plot away a little too much. She said to improve this she would use less shots, we also agreed that the voice over and inter titles helped create an element of creepiness. Nicola really liked the poster, she thought the idea was really original-using a collage of images of scenes from the movie to make up the antagonists face/mask. I agreed as I think it's really original and effective, she also picked up on the location in the poster showing a row of creepy houses on one side and iscolated woods on the other side- something I myself hadn't noticed but was helpful in making decisions for our locations. Nicola felt that the poster was the weakest item, stating that although it was good for it's purpose she would like to see a more general magazine covering the horror movie genre. She said she likes to see straight lines and equal curning and leading, she did feel the masthead was well planned out though and that the image was very effective for the audience. My interview with Nicola has re inforced our idea as far as sets, costume and shots. She stated that she likes the element of mystery with a masked killer-something we're going to use, she agreed that isolated woods are a scary and effective setting and she also thought that you need to see 'classic' pieces of iconography such as the mirror shots, jumping out of bed scared shots etc. Overall my interview with Nicola was really helpful and has helped us develop our idea further.

This is Rebecca's interview of Aidan Robson (age 18)

Summary of interview:
Aidan's interview was very useful in gaining more knowledge on what our target audience expects to see from horror films, and we will take this information on board when planning our products. In terms of the SAW trailer, poster and magazine cover which I analysed in my textual analysis, Aidan generally agreed with my own analysis; the trailer is very effective as a teaser trailer as it is enigmatic and mysterious, making you want to see more, and the end section is very fast paced and shocking. There is continuity between the film trailer and poster, and Aidan also agreed with my thoughts that the image on the poster brings about ideas of isolation, which is very good at striking fear. He then said, when it came to the magazine cover, that this was the weakest element, as he thought the image was not as good as it could have been. This very much reflected my own opinions, so was very useful in supporting the ideas we have already developed. Aidan gave the type of responses we initially expected to recieve from our target audience when it came to what he expected to see from a horror film, what types of iconography he expected to see, and the films he initially associates with the horror genre. The theme of isolation and mystery works well, particularly isolation as this is a feeling and emotion that any one person in the audience can immediately relate to, and the audience expects to see blood, knives and killers in these films. Blood, knives and other gorey weapons tend to strike fear in audiences, simply due to the connotations and possibilities of the harm they can cause.When asked about what he thought about the idea of a masked killer, which is an idea we are hoping to take into our own work, Aidan said he likes this idea as it reinforces this theme of mystery and fear. We will take all of these opinions and thoughts into consideration throughout the rest of our planning and production.

above is Clark's interview with Niall (aged 18)

Summary of interview:

This interview with Niall was very useful in helping us develop our ideas on our products. What he expects to see from a typical horror film is to be genuinely scared, with many jumpy and gorey moments. He particularly liked the idea of horror films involving masked murderers, as he said this concept of the unkown is something that is actually genuinely scary. This is fitting with our research and planning so far, as we also really like the idea of giving the antagonist an element of mystery, most likely through the use of masks and costume. One thing very interesting Niall mentioned was when asked about the typical narrative set pieces he expects to see in a horror film; he mentioned the idea of a mysterious code or symbol recurring throughout the film, which the characters are trying to work out - for example in Haunting in Conneticut, he mention that each of the dead victims are left with a code written all over of them, which occurs throughout the film. This is something we hadn't thought of previously, and could work very well with our current idea of mystery. We will take this into considerationg throughout the rest of our planning as this is clearly an idea that appeals to our target audience. The iconography Niall mentioned was very much what we expected, and reinforces the ideas we have currently; he talked about dark locations such as isolated forests working well, and also mentioned how he liked the use of characters homes. He emphasised how he finds horror films which have a sense of realism and plausability the most appealing, and he said how the thought that the antagonist can reach you in your own home is particularly scary and appealing to the audience. This is fitting as we are currently considering these types of locations mainly. Again he said how, when it comes to costumes, he finds the characters wearing casual clothing is most appealing to him as again this adds a sense of realism, as the audience can relate to the characters more. When discussing the trailer, poster and magazine cover previously analysed he mentioned how much he likes the Halloween trailer as the situations involved all look quite realistic and as if it could actually happen in any town. He then said, in terms of the film poster, that there was no continuity between the poster and the trailer due to the fire featuring in the poster which appears no where in the trailer, and he said the poster seems a lot more unrealistic. He then said how he very much liked the image used on the magazine cover as, again, it seemed quite realistic as it could just be any man wearing a mask, it isn't some unrealistic creature sent from space. Overall, Niall put a big emphasis on the important of realism in horror films to him, and I personally agree. I think this would appeal a lot to the audience, rather than some very far fetched storyline based around a monster. We will take this into consideration further, and I believe we should aim to make our product as realistic as possible.

(interview with zoe (aged 18) by charlotte alderson)

I showed zoe the poster, trailer and magazine cover i analysed for my textual analysis and got her feedback. I found Zoe's interview really useful and she raised some interesting points. She immediately said that she expects a murder out of this genre which immediately made me think about how we could show this type of thing in our trailer. She mentions that she associates this film with films like paranormal activity and saw and also says that these films should always be dark and creepy which i think we should emulate in our trailer. She says that props could be things such as fire and weapons which i believe both connote danger and fear which would be useful and i would definately consider the use and effectiveness of these items in the trailer. she like the way the boy has "help" in his pupil of his eye on the poster. she like the way it contrasts the story as you dont know whether the boy was the villian or the victim. she mentions that the trailer and the poster had significant continuity but the magazine cover didnt reflect this, as the colours used were brighter than the others used. she liked the editing pace on the trailer the way it stops and starts very quickly and i do believe, myself, that the editing pace was very effective and i think we should definately do this for our trailer. However, she felt that the trailer should have told more of a story in it.

Charlotte Alderson's interview with Jordan Boyle and Luce White (both age 18) 

I found this interview very useful and I put them both together to see how their answers compared and contrasted. Jordan outlined the use and effect if the eye contact made by the boy and the effect of this, was the striking way it caught the attention of the audience. Jordan mentioned that she felt uneasy looking at the products and she didnt know what was going to happen and i think "the fear of the unknown" is something we really need to capture in our trailer and products. Luce believes that "Chucky" is a similar film as it both keeps you on edge. They like it when you dont know who the "stalker", "killer", "psycho" is, as it gives a bigger element of mystery, this was also a repeated comment when asked about the effects of masks in horror films. They also commented on the fact that children are particularly scary in horror films as many people have children so they it is really creepy to them. Also i believe that children are effective due to the fact that its a harsh contrast from the belief a child represents innocence - so its very creepy when its the opposite to the normal thought. They thought the main image on the poster and the magazine was very effective and the eyes really stood out. The genre was very clear on all products and this is very important to relay to the audience. They repeated zoe's earlier comment about how the magazine was too bright for the genre and the yellow was too much, which emphasises the importance of the three colour palette rule throughout all the products. They also loved the editing pace of the trailer and said that it was really effective.

Secondary Audience Research Conclusion

After coming to a conclusion that our target audience would be both men and women between the ages of 18-30, most likely of social status C1 and DE, we created a video with a montage of images to demonstrate who our audience is. The video shows images of the type of things we expect our audience to generally enjoy doing in their spare time, where they eat, the social networking sites they use, where they work, what they wear etc. The audience between this age is fairly broad, as we aren't aiming it soley at any one stereotypical group of people, therefore the images in the video are all fairly ranging.

By deciding on our audience, and illustrating what they are like as people in this way, we have a much better idea of what they want to see, and how is best to reach them. For example, if our products were to be aimed at upper class people, between the ages of 50-65, we would probably reach them through newspapers like The Times, and through TV channels like BBC. However with our actual target market, it would be much more suitable and realistic to reach them through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and possibly through programmes like MTV or Channel 4. Also, a different target market of an older generation would want to see different themes and emotions portrayed in a film, whilst a younger generation would be more partial to seeing different themes and emotions that they can actually relate to and have experienced, such as feelings of isolation and upset, and issues like sex, alcohol and drugs. One main thing audiences want to see in any film is something that they can relate to in some way, therefore it is important to know what the different target markets want to see, in order to make a product that appeals to them personally. - Rebecca Hart

Audience research - Secondary

This is an audience profile for don't be afraid of the dark, due to be released later this month. Due to the film not yet being released the profile on Pearl and Dean was

This is the reader profile for total film magazine. Alongside Empire it is one of the Britain's biggest selling film magazines. Each issue includes interviews and pieces with big name movie stars or directors etc as well as reviews on up coming films and existing films/ new dvd releases. After looking at the demographics it is obvious that the target audience is wide, but mainly focuses on a younger audience- so this could be a style model for our film magazine as we would like to appeal to a younger primary audience, but having a wide secondary audeince also gives the film more appeal - Clark Warberton

This is the reader profile and information for Empire magazine. Empire magazine, along with Total Film magazine, is the biggest and most popular mainstream movie magazine. Each issue features the most recent and big budget films, such as Inception and The Dark Knight, rather than small independent films which appeal to a more niche audience. This is because their readers are the type of adults that watch and enjoy the biggest mainstream films featuring the biggest stars. As mentioned in the reader profile above, Empire's readers are around the age of 28, the majority being of the ABC1 class status, therefore most likely being sophisticated and modern adults, who are interested in the newest technology and keeping up to date with the newest films. Within this age range in general, this type of character takes up the majority, as most 28 year old adults are in full time employment with the money to spend on these things and the lifestyle to suit it. Due to the age group that we will be aiming our products at, this will obviously affect the contents, storyline, themes etc in our horror film. Adults who are watching a horror film expect to feel real fear, with different themes and feelings than that of a scary film aimed towards a younger audience. The type of themes adults expect to see the characters dealing with from any type of film, including horror films, are themes like sex, alcohol and drugs, and these other type of real issues. Horror films can often take a situation and make it what may seem unrealistic in everyday life, for example someone being haunted and possessed by a demon, and this of course works well in this genre, yet I believe it is important for there to be certain real life issues always involved, which ensures that the audience always has something they can relate to in a film. Not everyone in the target audience has experienced being haunted or possessed by a demon, yet the majority of people can relate to the feeling of isolation, or relate to the issue of sex or alcohol.

We want our product to be the type of film these people would want to watch. We want to reach a mainstream audience, and we would want it to appear in a magazine like Empire magazine. Due to this, we must take the target audience of Empire magazine into consideration when we consider our own audience, and then take this through into creating our products, always ensuring that the work would appeal to this mainstream audience. - Rebecca Hart

After looking at my reader profile, i have a better idea of what who we should target our magazine and film too. We are going to make it a mainstream horror film to be shown at cinemas etc. Film Ink is a large film magazine company in australia showing both national and international films. It has a large following of people, including some celebrity fans. Their media information section gave me some of their reader profile including information such as the typical reader is male, single, around 35 and is in the AB socio-economic group. I now know that to make a film magazine, this is the type of audience to target. I will now look at the reader profile of a horror film and will do primary research of my audience to get a better understanding of my audience and where to target my film - By Charlotte Alderson

This is an audience profile of Paranormal Activity 3, which is soon to be released in cinemas. After looking at the ages of the audiences, I can see that the majority of the audiences are between the ages of 15-24, by quite a large margin. Obviously there are no percentages for audiences under the age of 15 due to the film certification, and the rest of the audiences decrease in percentage as the age increases. This shows me that for this type of horror film, which is likely to be similar to our eventual film idea, it is important to appeal to this 15-24 year old audience, as these are the type of people that take up the majority of the audience. In terms of the male to female ratio, is is a fairly even split, with slightly more males at 53%. This again shows me that for this genre and this type of horror film, it is important to be fairly gender neutral, not targetting one sex more than the other. It is important that it appeals to both genders equally or you risk losing out on a large chunk of the target market, which in this case would have a big effect. In terms of social status percentages, I can see that Paranormal activity generally appeals more to the C1 and DE classes, which is the lower middle class and working class, unemployed and dependents. It doesn't appeal so much to the higher social classes, which may be due to lifestyle choices which involve not going to the cinema regularly, or it could be the case that films of this genre don't generally appeal to these classes. The effects that this may have on the production or marketing of this film is that it would most likely be based around characters of a similar social class to the audience, as this allows them to relate to the film better, and would most likely be marketed via formats that are likely to reach this taget market. These findings effect my work in that my product is likely to be similar to this film, in terms of the ages, the gender ratio, and the class status of the audience, therefore it would be useful to relate back to the production of this film, and also the film poster and which magazine it appeared in, whilst developing my own ideas. - Rebecca Hart

Looking at this film audience profile we notice that no-one went to see the film under the age of 18- obviously due to the fact of the certificate 15 on the film. The largest sector of people that went to see this film were between 15 and 24 with a massive 60% of its audience in that age group. It also had 19% of viewer the age group above, 7% of the audience between 35 and 44 and then 14% over 35. This would give us a good idea of the audience we are targeting and also give us a good idea of a target audience to aim at. The biggest percentage of genre in the audience was female but only slightly with a 53% average compared to the male 47%. You also get a larger proportion of people coming from the DE socio-economic group (32%), with the smallest audience going from an AB backgound (18%). information like this gives is the target audience to our genre. we need to target the right age, gender and background to target our market properly and effectively. the film companies would only waste both money and time to the wrong audience.

Idea development

As part of our idea development we have been discussing possible storyline's for our horror film. One idea we really like is the idea of having the killer/villain wearing a mask or costume. This idea is very suitable and relevant to the horror film genre, as we have done some research into horror films which have already followed this idea. Some of the biggest films like this are IT, Scream, Friday 13th, Saw and My Bloody Valentine. The anonymity of the killer really scares audiences, and we think this could work really well in our own products. - Rebecca Hart

I did a sketch for our idea development, whilst I focused a lot on the mask-paticularly a clown which is something we discussed as being a big idea of our narrative I also placed a lot of focus on location, looking at and sketching big, decollate houses and eerie forests which would be good locations to film 'chase scenes' etc.

-Clark Warburton

I made a timeline to show the entire plot for our film, whilst it shows the entire plot some things are subject to change such as the amount of characters used and small details such as the complicating action. I made the timeline to follow the stereotypical horror/slasher type film, using stereotypical character types and situations. However when developing our ideas some of these things might change to be more original. -Clark Warburton

I created this mood board because i wanted to create a collage of some of the ideas we have had for our film. I put in different elements and included props, costumes, settings, locations and themes in this image to create a visual representation of our thoughts.  by charlotte alderson