Weekly Planning

Final Breif

Brief - Film promotion

Main product – Teaser trailer

Ancillary product 1 – Film poster

Ancillary product 2 – Magazine cover

Genre of main product – Psychological horror

Target audience – Demographic: young female adults, teenagers aged 15-20 years. Psychographic: audience who find the genre horror appealing, and also teenage troubles. Lifestyle: people who are sociable and who like the fear and terror that comes from watching a horror movie.

Similar media products – IT, Mirrors, Hide and Seek, Signs, The Ring and The Blair Witch Project

Justification for choice of brief - The genre horror is becoming popular, due to the development in technology through special effects, gives horror films a more realistic. There have been many successful horror films, such as Saw, Final Destination and The Grudge, Hide and Seek, The Unborn and Scream, were particularly popular with my target audience. A recent horror film, Drag Me to Hell, has been very successful and has had many people talking about it. For my teaser trailer I want the keep the audience engaged by using typical conventions of a horror film, as I want to keep my audience in suspense.

Representational issues – After looking at many trailers, I have decided to use stereotypical representations of the characters in my teaser trailer. Using teenagers will give my trailer a more pragmatic effect. I will be using a girl that has an innocent look, to hide the fact that she is playing a negative role in the trailer. This way my audience will be kept engaged as they will be trying to find out who is playing the “bad person” role, at the end is when they will be surprised to find out who it was.


Narrative – After looking at many trailers I have noticed that they mostly use a non-linear narrative; this may be because it keeps the audience engaged, and questions are running through their minds. This use of portraying the narrative is an effective convention in teaser trailers. I will not be changing this as it keeps the audience in confusion.


Creativity – Throughout my research on teaser trailers they have relied mostly on images to tell the narrative of the film. I would like to portray my narrative in a similar way, as I have found it to be the most effective in teaser trailers. I want my teaser trailer to play with the audiences mind, making them believe in something that could happen to them. I will do this by creating a more realistic trailer, poster and magazine cover. The most effective I feel will be the magazine cover, as the main actor will be photographed and talking about her “sweet dreams”. Therefore I will be using typical conventions to interest my audience.


Challenges anticipated – During filming I have to focus on the composition of the shot, having meaningful objects in the shot to create the narrative. I will also have to make do with the actors, as they are going to have to make it seem realistic. Through the use of editing, I will be able to add transitions to create a more fearful narrative and look for the audience.

Digital technology –For ongoing research I will be using the internet to help with the production work, by looking at existing products. While shooting I will be using a camera and a tripod. When editing I will be using imovieHD on the Mac computers. Later on with research I will be using YouTube, and social networking site like facebook to help complete my evaluation.

Treatment

"Sweet Dreams"

Tina is going back for revenge. Tina was a girl who was not known as one of the "popular girls" in school, she was constantly picked on and bullied by these three people; Amanda White (Sophie), Alisha Wilson (Georgia) and Priya Chopra (Huma). They all would be together at all times nothing could separate them. Tina would so badly wish this was all a terrible dream, and things would be like she imaged them to be just like a fairytale. But everyone knows life isn't like a fairytale.

Being an only child, and being uncared for by her parents, wasn't really helping her, she needed to have someone or something that could help take the pain away. To comfort herself she would burn red roses, as the pain of not being accepted and loved by the people around her would burn away.

She goes back to torture them the same way they did, but in a more painful way. One by one they will be taut a lesson. But she only finds out that it was a dream.

"its just a dream . . . what harm could it do"

Institiutional Research

There are many major distribution companies that I could use for my teaser trailer. I have picked a few that have been popular to distribute the horror genre, these include Warner Bros. Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Dreamworks and Lions gate.

Warner Bros was founded in 1918 by Jewish immigrants from Poland. It is the third oldest American movie studio in continuous operation. Warner Bros is involved in every aspect of the entertainment industry. these include film, TV, home entertainment production, worldwide distribution, DVD, digital distribution, animation, comic books, licensing, international cinemas and broadcasting.

As Warner Bros. pictures is a mainstream production company. The company does not have a specific genre of film which is chooses to produce. these genres range from family films, children films, sci-fi and horror. Films that have been produced range from Harry potter, Looney Tunes: back in action, Exorcist: The beginning, Jeepers Creepers, House of Wax and Orphan.

I have decided to research a mainstream company, Warner.Bro. due to the fact that my teaser trailer has aspects of a mainstream production, within the genre horror.

20th Century Fox is one of the six major American Film Studios. It is located in Century City, area of Los Anegles, just west of Beverly Hills. The studio is a subsidiary of news corporation, the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch. The company was founded on December 28th 1934, as the results of merger of two entities, Fox film corporation founded by William Fox in 1915, and Twentieth Century Pictures begun in 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph Schenck, Raymond Griffith and William Goetz. distributed films that I have looked at by 20th century fox are hide and seek and mirrors.

DreamWorks, also known as DreamWorks Pictures, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks Studio or DW Studios, LLC is an American film studio.DreamWorks was founded in 1994, by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen. the headquarters are places in Universal City, California, United States. It develops, produces, and distributes films, video games, and television programming. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses totalling more than $100 million each. one of DreamWorks successful and remembered film if Sherk 2, which is a family film targeting a wide audience.

DreamWorks is also known for there animation distributions. a few of these successful films include, Antz, Shrek (1,2,3) Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Bee Movie and Kung Fu Panda.

Even though DreamWork may be successful in its animation distribution, they also distribute many other films of different genres from horror to thrillers, family films, romance and comedy.

I feel that dreamworks may be the best company to distribute my film. This due to the fact they have distributed a wide range of film from different genres, making it a well known distributor. I believe that it will be one of the best ways to help promote the film. On the other hand dreamworks is well-known for its animation films. Therefore this would be an example of a company that is not suitable to distribute my film, as it is a horror film.

Lions gate is an independent film and television distribution company in North America. since 2007 it has been the most commercially successful independent distributor. Lions gate is an American entertainment company that originated in Vancouver, British Columbia and later based in Los Angeles, and is now headquartered in Santa Monica, California, USA. I have looked at Lions gate as part of my institutional research due to the fact that my teaser trailer has aspects of an independent production within the genre horror.

A few of there best selling films include, Open water, Hotel Rwanda, Saw (all), Hostel, The Descent, Good Luck Chuck, Rambo, The Lucky Ones.

Overall I feel that Lions gate and 20th Century Fox will the two from which I will make a decision on which one will be best to distribute my film.

Audience Research Results

Questionnaire

The questionnaire that I had put together have resulted as a random sample, meaning there is not an equal amount of representation of gender and age. Here is a sample of my questionnaire.

I have opened my questionnaire by introducing the participants of what I wish to gather from them. It also gives them the type of questions they could expect from this questionnaire. This is as I have named the genre of the teaser trailer that wish to produce as my production work.

Question one and two, give personal details about the participants. I am able to find out their age, which will help me create a potential target audience.

Looking at question three, I have gone into finding out the characteristics of my audience. What type of media printout they tend to look at. This question particularly focuses on the printout for my production work, the magazine front cover and the poster, both of which are promotional techniques that will used to advertise my film.


Question four will help me focus on the techniques and conventions of a psychological horror, as it will help me to keep my audience engaged. I have also left space for them to explain themselves.

Question five, gives the participants the chance to explain themselves further. It also allows me to know what my potential target audience will be looking for when watching a horror trailer.




Question six expands on knowing more about the characteristics of my audience. I am then able to understand what habits they have, and to see if they are similar to other participants. this allows me to have a more clear potential audience.

Question seven allows me to calculate what source of technology is the most popular out the ones that have been mentioned. If cinema, or t.v, or Internet are the most selected, it means that the participants are surrounded by promotional materials to advertise other films.



In question eight i have asked what are the top three horror films that they have particularly enjoyed. this will help towards my research on teaser trailers, and analysing material. it will also show if there any similarities in the participants chosen film.

Question nine is to help me personally when deciding a story line for my potential audience. I want to produce something that will attract my audience and will engage them.



Questionnaire Results

Here are my results, for a few of the questions. I have used bar graphs and pie charts to show the outcome.

Above is my results for question one. This graph above shows the total number of participants that took part in my questionnaire. The majority of the people were female (12), in total there were 21 participants.

Above is a bar chart to show my results for question two. the majority of my participants were aged 18 and 15. However my target audience will range from 15 - 20 years of age.

Above is a bar chart showing the results for question seven of my questionnaire. They were allowed to pick more than one, however the one with the most votes is cinema, following after DVD, and then the Internet. Looking at this data the most votes go to cinema, which keeps the participants surrounded by advertisement of new releases.

Theses are the reasons to why the participants ticked them as their answer

for question eight i asked the participants to list their top three horror films that they particulary enjoyed. the most listed were Saw, Hide and Seek, The Grudge, The Unborn, Final Destination and finally Scream.

Looking at all of the posters for the film, the colours that are mostly used are black and white. Most of them have extreme close -ups of faces. The name of the film however is in a smaller print and is not at the top of the page, they have been places in the middle and the bottem of the posters.

Psycological Horror - sub genre

The Ring



The trailer begins with two girls talking. This gives suggests to the narrative of the film. The dialogue replicates the images that area being shown, this gives a sense that "it is happening as we speak" which starts to build up the viewers tensions.

There are many close-ups used throughout the trailer, which reduce the amount the viewers see, they are forced to look at what is shown on the screen. This then leads to a rise in tension.

The Blair Witch Project

Product Research - Magazine Covers

Along with my teaser trailer I also have to produce a magazine front cover as promotional material for the film. Here are two magazines that I have looked at, these magazine are well-known film magazines. The two that I have looked at are called Empire and Shivers.

Empire

Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. It is the biggest selling film magazine in Britain, consistently outselling its nearest market rival Total Film.

• There is a colour scheme used on the front cover of the magazine. In this issue it is green, blue and gray. The colour scheme reflects the theme of the image, which is from a film, The Dark Knight.


• The masthead, Empire, has been covered by the image, this is because the readers are able to recognise the magazine. This makes is a well-known magazine by its targeted audience.


• The image of the Joker, heath Ledger, is the main focus of the magazine, which is a way of promoting the film. The image is also of a shot from the film, which gives a more realistic view to the image.


• There are other films mentioned on the front cover. These could be released at the same time as The Dark Knight, and are at competition with each other. But The Dark knight is the main focus of the magazine, making it seem more popular to the target audience.


• The heading under the name of the film "BATMAN vs. THE JOKER - SUMMER JUST GOT SERIOUS", is a way of engaging the target audience. It gives them something to keep in mind when going to the cinema.


• Being a film magazine, the actor has been shown the way they are shown in the film, giving it a more film like magazine.
  

Sight and Sound

Sight and Sound is an example of a magazine that is not as popular as Empire.



Above are two examples of magazines from Sight and Sound. Both of them have a mysterious atmosphere them, which creates a tensed effect. They also have many differences; the one on the right has more text on it with a background image, whereas the one on the left has the masthead and a heading with the background image.

The masthead is in the same print, with a yellow background and bold black text on it. This technique is very effective as it stand out and catches the audience’s attention.
However the one on the right has a black and white image, which suggests that it is an older issue to the one on the left.

The image in the background is the most important content on a magazine cover; this is because the viewers notice the image first.

• The magazine on the right shows a woman with a knife covered in blood, this suggests that it has something to do with murder, and creates a sense of danger. The image is placed more towards the right of the page, with the text around it on the left. The magazine cover also has a colour scheme of red and white, and black. Having red and black creates a curious and discomfort atmosphere to the magazine.
• The magazine on the left shows a man with his back towards you, standing on the street. The main focus is the man, as there is a white bright light that is shining onto him from the left. This magazine cover is all about the image, and how the viewers interpret it.