Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted the ‘horror’ audience with the use of violence in the opening scene; the blood instantly attracts attention and is often used to really get the audience involved due to it being quite shocking and often unusual in opening sequences. The horror audience usually enjoy visceral pleasures due to the hand (1:58) ‘making them jump’ being a reason in our feedback for why they enjoyed it which is why other films such as ‘Alien’ (1979, Scott) are successful. Another reason for the bloody hand on the door was because it creates a lot of enigma codes that makes the audience (as shown by our research) interested in what is likely to happen next, asking questions like ‘why was it there?’ or ‘who was that?’, this was the type of response we were looking for so we were very pleased. This adds more of an intellectual pleasure to the sequence which a lot of the thriller/horror audience seem to enjoy such as in films like ‘Goodfellas’ (1990, Scorsese) and ‘Severance’ (2006, Smith) where the audience is left wondering about certain aspects of the film for a long while. In ‘Goodfellas’ the opening scene is the main characters killing someone (the video below 0:00 to 2:06), a scene we see again later in the film. ‘Severance’ has an opening scene where someone is running away from something in a forest. This type of opening really keeps the audience’s attention and makes them continue watching to find out the reasons for these scenes.
We also had characters that are around the same age as our core audience (18-30) as well as being of aspirational ages to our outer audience of younger teenagers. By using similar colour effects to recent films popular in this age group like ‘Saw’, we made our audience recognise the film to be fairly similar but not obviously copying. Another way we addressed our audience was through the use of pace in the sequence. The sequence goes from initially slow paced, then speeds up, slows down etc. I feel this really keeps the audience gripped and makes it unexpected as to what is likely to happen next which is another of the horror/thriller audience pleasures, enjoying the emotional aspect of films. This audience, although fairly aware of current social trends, do not always follow them, this is a reason why I don’t think it was overly important to have a ‘star’ apparent in our film to attract the audience. I don’t feel that their particular taste in film is really dictated by having a star in the film. The ‘Saw’ films don’t have stars in and are extremely popular in this market.

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We always saw our initial audience as being aged between 18 and 30 and/or liking the horror genre. This is because we saw the film as being quite gory so would achieve an ‘18’ rating. We put the 30 year ceiling as it may seem a bit unnecessarily gory or ‘childish’ like ‘Saw’ which people above this age don’t seem to like and tend to appreciate the ‘Slasher’ sub-genre due to the slasher craze in the 1980’s with films like ‘Halloween’ and ‘Friday the 13th’ (1980, Cunningham) which were popular as they were growing up. Our secondary audience would be the boyfriends/girlfriends/significant others of our main audience as these are the people who are likely to be going to be watching the film with them. Another secondary market would be the under 18 age group. Many of this age group will see it as a bit of a thrill to see something they aren’t supposed to and so are likely to be even more attracted to it because of its 18 rating. Due to question 3 and deciding to release the film locally, the audience would have to live in or around London to get access to a local cinema where the film would be showing.
After looking back at the research we conducted at our audience screening, the majority of people guessed that the film was aimed at an audience between 18 and 30 with a few saying that it would be people who liked horror or violent video games.

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Looking at the responses from our audience feedback, most said that it would be at home in a regular cinema or multiplex. We didn’t aim for this, due to our restraints with equipment, location and actors but this response was really good. We were expecting to get responses suggesting ‘indie cinema’ or ‘arts cinema’ and we did get a couple that suggested ‘student film festival’ but to have the majority saying it looked very filmic was pleasing. I think that due to the lighting effects we were able to create and the location we used, regular cinemas may see this as more professional than we initially expected. Although, many multiplex cinemas often show films with ‘stars’ in. Having no way of having a celebrity to endorse the film, it would be difficult to get a good reputation with this type of cinema with unknown actors. Our production company is called ‘Live Wire’ (above) which we felt should make modern horror/thriller films. We saw it as being similar to ‘Twisted Pictures’ (left) the company that produces the ‘Saw’ films. The distributor that would best satisfy our needs would be ‘Verve Pictures’ (below), they have a particular emphasis on the distribution of UK-based independent films. This would be ideal for the first run of our film to get it off the ground in local independent London cinemas and then, with the help of good reviews, could spread further North to cities such as Manchester, Birmingham etc. This would only give us the potential of reaching a fairly small audience but due to it being a low-budget film, I don’t feel it would be wise to attempt to reach a national scale and display the film in multiplex cinemas even though our audience feedback seemed to suggest it might.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Neither of the characters shown in our sequence are particular stereotypes. The killer is seemingly very friendly at times but then has a quick temper and seems somewhat deluded. The friendliness is not typical of a horror villain as they are usually very sadistic and sinister. This character was inspired by ‘Norman Bates’ from ‘Psycho’ (Hitchcock, 1960) with the switching personalities but ours weren’t quite as dramatic. The delusionary way our killer has about him though is often apparent in other villains. This delusional aspect he has about him makes him think partially like a hotel host, making his victims as ‘comfortable as possible’. Our victim isn’t a stereotypical victim, he is trying to show how he isn’t scared and not giving his captor the upper hand. When the killer rips the tape from the victim’s mouth, the victim tries not to react to show the killer he isn’t afraid. This is reflective of how a lot of young males would like to think they would react in such a situation and not be scared.

Our villain character portrayed a psychotic hotelier. This is the kind of character, in a normal situation, that would keep offering help to his ‘guests’ and make sure they were as comfortable as possible. We reflected that in the way he spoke. He speaks with a very calming tone of voice for most of the scene, one you would expect to hear form this type of person. He has a sudden change in tone of voice from very calming to screaming at his victim showing his unstable state of mind. The mise-en-scene reflects this. The way he is dressed is similar to how a stereotypical bellboy (left) would dress in an upper-class traditional hotel, although his outfit is black instead of red, connoting his sinister nature and evil intentions. The location is also of relevance. He is clearly ambitious about his situation and may have wanted to be a hotelier but failed so the best he can conjure up is a basement to keep his ‘guests’.

If we were able to cast stars in our film, I think someone like Matt Damon (right) would be appropriate for the victim character as he is appealing to the female audience as well as looking fairly young as to relate to our audience of 18-30 year olds. Due to his recent history, audiences will feel he is not likely to be caught easily so makes our killer look much more threatening. I feel our killer would be better as an unknown actor due to being able to get a well-built, young, unnervingly quiet person; however, I don’t think anyone currently well known fits this description.

Evaluation Question 1

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

To establish what we what conventions we wanted to use/develop/challenge in our sequence we first had to be aware of what the original conventions were. The genre we decided to put our sequence in was horror, we researched the typical conventions of horror and found that they are violent, bloody, involve death, have chase sequences, some kind of iconic killer/monster such as ‘Predator’ from ‘Predator’ (1987, McTiernan) or ‘Michael Myers’ from ‘Halloween’ (1978, Carpenter), numerous victims and are usually set in very dark places. We were inspired by the ‘Saw’ (2004, Wan - above) films with the use of a green tint. We opted for blue rather than green as it seemed more appropriate and made the room look darker, colder and overall scarier. We decided that we wanted out sequence to be specifically horror rather than a thriller so we decided to use some blood in our scene as with the hand against the window at the end. This made it seem like a taste of what was to come in the rest of the film. More blood, guts and gore. Our narrative also follows a fairly typical narrative. I saw this scene as being one that comes later in the film and the rest of the film shows how our victim got there and then how he escapes. This is reflected in Todorov’s narrative theory. There is a status quo, the victim is happy where he is and nothing seems to be wrong. The killer then disrupts the status quo by kidnapping him, this then triggers a series of events that have problems which are solved to restore the original status quo where the victim attempts to escape his captor which triggers more obstacles. This can be applied in a large number of films. Such as in ‘House of Wax’ (2005, Collet-Serra) where the group are happily camping in the forest when the killer cuts the fan belt of one of the cars. This then sets into motion the sequence of events that leads the rest of the group to being killed with only 2 of them surviving and both the killers dying, thus restoring the status quo. What made our sequence different was that in most horror films, the killer/villain is not often shown in full until the end, maintaining some enigma. We decided that we would alter this and made the killer apparent in the first scene. This way, later in the film, there’s the possibility of using this to create tension between characters with situations like the killer luring potential victims into a false sense of security where the audience knows what is going to happen but can't prevent it. Because of this, we also decided to change how the killer acted towards his victims. At first, he seems really friendly and treats them well, then suddenly changes and acts very aggressive, this makes him more sinister overall and makes him seem more like a psychopath. More enigma codes are used when the hand hits the door at the end of the sequence. It makes the audience wonder who it is, why they’re there and what has happened to them which they will find our later in the film. A lot of the feedback we received from our audience screenings showed that the audience reacted exactly how we wanted them to.

Evaluation - Introduction

Our opening sequence was called ‘Reservation’. It is based around a tall, kidnapper that treats his victims somewhat like guests in a torture chamber. The main victim you see is quite young looking and looks quite frightened. He is the ‘final’ character and is the one that lasts until the end of the film. For the shoot, we used The Latymer School’s basement on the 2^nd of December 2008 and the 11^th December 2008. The equipment we used on the shoot were:

• Canon HD MiniDV Camcorder
• Tripod
• Camera Microphone
• Small studio lighting kit with blue gel filters

After the shoot, back in the edit suite, the software we used included:

• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Adobe After Effects
• Final Cut Pro

Finished!

We've had another test screening and had only a few slight problems which didn't take long at all to fix!

We've finished!