Brief Storyboard

Target Audience profile

I made a target audience profile to get a better understanding of what kind of people we want watching our opening.

Props and Costumes

Props: 

• Swing 

• Family Photo's 

• Newspaper 

• Knives 

• Phone 

• Saucepan

• Potatoes 

Costume:

SARAH- Wearing a little white dress with black tights and black shoes.  

Ms Hobbs- Wearing her casual attire, brown sleeveless jumper, black jeans and smart black shoes

Pitch

Feedback

Whilst we were giving our presentation, the other members in the class, were able to ask us questions using a google app feature. 

Response to EOR Media- We are only going to show one or two things that Sarah is doing, so the audience gets an idea that she is possessed. As the films goes on we will show how bad she has got compared to the opening. 

Response to Mia Simpson- We won't need a twin as she dies before the film starts, so we will only need a picture and our idea was to take a photo of our actress and put into Photoshop and duplicate so it looks like they are twins. 

Response to Owen Taylor- The photo being knocked over is an accident but we don't want the audience to know at the start that, the photo is the reason she is possessed, and at the end of the film it will become apparent that the twin has possessed her. 

Main-Brief Recce

These are the photos we took on the recce for our main-brief

Scream Analysis

How is gender represented in this opening?

The protagonist in the opening of blade is in a cream jumper, she has blonde hair and wears minimal make-up the fact that she has a cream jumper on represents that she is innocent, her hair also ads to the look of innocence. The representation of her at first glance is that she is vulnerable. Although she is wearing minimal makeup her lips stick out, as she has lipstick on this sexualises her, as lips are a very sexual part of the face. In addition, when we see the house it's adds to her look of innocence as it is a very big, white house. The fact that her house is white represents the fact that she is innocent, we also see that the house is in the middle of nowhere and this tells the audience that she is isolated from the outside world, and she is vulnerable as she is by herself.

In addition, Drew Barrymore is represented by being very desirous of her security has we often see her locking her doors, however her doors  are glass and so the audience can therefore the audience can take pleasure in her lack of intelligence as if someone was to break in they would simply smash the glass. Once she has locked her back doors, we have a shot of her from outside the doors and in the background is a picture of what looks to be castle, this may represent a damsel in distressed as she needs saving from the unknown. This is also shown again when she looks out of her front door, it looks like she is caged in, like a prison, and she can’t get out, this represents her to be weak and she can’t escape, she is also very emotion at this point and has been crying seconds before.

Furthermore, the first piece of non-diegetic sound we hear after the titles is a scream, it sounds like a women screaming and she seems very distressed. This conveys to the audience that, the main character in the film will most properly be a women. From stereotypes we understand from the scream sound that, she is very emotional women. This scream sound foreshadows what is going to happen in the film, after the scream you hear a sharp knife sound, this also foreshadows what will happen in the film. So the two piece’s of non-diegetic both hint what is going to happen throughout the film.  

Furthermore, dialogue drives the narrative of the opening of scream. At the start of the opening, Drew Barrymore is very flirtatious over the phone with a man she has never met before and she is very talkative, this soon changes as the man over the phone becomes very strange, and starts to scare Drew Barrymore. When he starts getting aggressive, she becomes very weak and starts getting emotional, as a stereotypical women would,she goes from being very confident at the start of the phone call to becoming very pathetic and weak when the man on the phone gets angry with her.

The first shot we see is a tilted angle of the phone ringing it then pans up Drew Barrymore, the camera stop on a tilted shot of Drew Barrymore's face, in the background you can see glass doors, this is conveying to the audience that she is weak, as glass is easy to smash and you can see straight through it, so it makes her weak in the situation. This happens a lot throughout the opening of the film.

Moreover, when Drew Barrymore is talking on the phone with this man, at the starts it tracks her and isn’t zoomed in, but at as soon as he begins to get angry and aggressive it zooms into her face to show her reaction, as her facial expressions change and that's when the opening starts to build tension and it starts with her reaction to what he said to her.

Additionally, the beginning of the film starts with red titles this foreshadows that something bad it going to happen. Dimension is working in synergy with Miramax, and they both start with a black screen. When the title of the film comes onto screen it starts of in white, and the flashes to red, as the viewer you see, this red flash on your screen and then  the films starts, thi is to show that someone will die in the film or something bad is going to happen.

Throughout, the opening of ‘Scream’ they are lots of long- length shots and they are slowed paces, they are edited to be slow and long as that builds tension throughout the opening so the audience is getting more and more agitated watching the tension build and then the tension ends and face paced editing, makes it seem more frantic.  

Screenplay

FADE IN:

VHS VIDEOS PLAYED OF TWO GIRLS

FADE TO: LIVING ROOM - DAY

A living room setting with an arrangement of family photos on shelves with a chair beside the shelf with a stack of newspapers and the top one headlined ‘Twin Girl Found Dead’ with more information below and a photo of her and her twin

DISSOLVE TO:

The same picture but in a photo frame held by a young girl, SARAH, who is wearing a dress and tights.

SARAH is looking at the photo in the frame.

MOTHER, a fairly tall woman with medium brown hair in her 30s, walks over to SARAH and rests her colourless hand on her daughters shoulder.

MOTHER

She’s in a better place

Her MOTHER leaves whilst SARAH doesn’t keep her eyes off of the photo

SARAH places the photo frame back on the shelf. She goes to walk away and the photo frame falls unassisted from the shelf onto the floor.

FADES TO BLACK

FADES IN: KITCHEN – DAY

MOTHER is boiling potatoes and it is clear that she has used sharp knives to do this as they are out on the counter.

SARAH is outside in the garden.

CONSERVATORY

MOTHER sits down in the conservatory with her cup of tea leaving the potatoes boiling.

SARAH is facing a swing that is swinging by on its own while SARAH talks to it

The MOTHER then picks up her phone to text her husband STEVE

‘I’m worried about SARAH’

MOTHER looks up from her phone and SARAH has suddenly appeared in front of the window of the conservatory the MOTHER is sat at.

END OF OPENING

Mise-en-scene in Horror Films

Audience Research- Questionaire

To gain knowledge about what people like to see in horror film we created a questionnaire this is the link to show the questionnaire-












We got a total of 28 responses below is the data;

As majority of the people who responding to our questionaire were female we wanted to aim our product at women.   

The age group 16-21 was the popular with the people who answered our questionaire. As a result of this we want to aim our product at people between the ages of 16-21

Out of Paranormal, Slasher, Teen Scream and Psychological most of the people who answered the questionaire liked the sub-genre of Paranormal so that is the type of horror that we would be interested in pursing. 

As the responses to this question were very close together, we were unsure whether to drop hints of the narrative into our piece. We decided to drop hints as to what the narrative is so the narrative was easier to understand but we didn't want to give to much away.

We asked this question to find out what the reason was for people watching horror films, so we could fulfil these ideas in our product. 

As to the location of our product, this questionaire helped choose what location would be scariest for a horror movie. Although the most popular was an asylum, we didn't have any access to one so we went for second scariest which was a garden. 

Using the questionaire, we wanted two characters in our opening.

Due to the majority of people thinking children add to the horror we wanted a child actor or actress to be in our piece 

As possession was found scariest in our questionaire we wanted to have the child actor or actress possessed as these were two things that public thought added to the horror of the film. 

As these responses were very close together we choose to use the static tv sound in our logo for Picka Pictures. 

We asked this question to see what horror films were most popular to the public so we could see what these films include and try to use these ideas, to make our product as successful.

Opening credits in films

The opening credits are shown at the start of the film usually, they list the most important people involved in making/producing/editing or an acting in the film. They are shown in text form, the font and colour of the text usually represents the type of film it is. 

Opening credits of Batman-

The opening titles to the well known Batman film- it uses a dark blue background with yellow font the background colour changes when the word'BATMAN' appears on the screen, it changes to black as Batman wears black, it has moving images in the background and the final shot is of the Batman symbol. The colours stand out and make the film look very exciting

Opening credits of Teen Wolf-

The opening titles to the MTV show Teen Wolf are shown above. Dust is used in the titles to make them look more dramatic. They use a gold colour font to make the credits stand out, and when 'Teen Wolf' appears on the screen it is all scratch as if a wolf has scratched it and has dust flying of it

Opening credits in Horror Films

The Omen opening credits- 

The Omen title sequence sticks with the generic conventions and audience expectation of the horror genre.The background colour is very dark, and the white font really stands out on the dark screen. It also uses shadows when the cross comes into shots, this is another convention of the horror genre. Furthermore, the change it very quick between the cross shot and then it transfers to the road and the bright lights of the car put a shine on the credit. The music in the background of this opening, is like a church choir singing and it sounds very eerie and creepy, when 'The Omen' appears on the screen a sudden bell sound rings, which could frighten some viewers. 

Se7en title sequence- 

The opening credits to the film 'Se7en' kind of go against the generic conventions of a horror film. The scene is set in very light lighting, and usually horror films opening credits are dark colours. The font stands out on the colour of the background lighting. The film starts with a very loud sound of thunder and then a hissing sound is introduced, the sound is very loud. A sound which could be interpreted as a scream really grasps the viewer attention. 

The Effects Theory

The consumption of media texts has an effect or influence on the audience. It is normally considered that this effect is negative. The audience is passive and powerless to prevent influence. The power lies with the message in the text.

Negative implications of this theory are when people do 'copycat murders' i.e. when a teenage boy murdered his best friend in 2004, the game 'Manhunt's banned in the UK because the murder was styled upon a murder within the game.

An audience that tends to see the audience as passive and sees how exposure to particular aspects of media content can influence the behaviour of the reader or viewer.

The Bobo Doll Experiment

The Bobo doll experiment was the collective name of experiments conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961 and 1963 whne he studied children's behvaiour after watching an adult model act aggresively towards Bobo doll, a toy that gets back up by itself into a standing position when its knocked down.

The socail learning theory claims that people learn through observing, imitating, and modelling. It shows that people not only learn by being rewarded or punished, but thye can also learn from watching somebody else being rewareded or punished.

Our reasons for choosing our target audience

In 2014, 15-24 year olds made up the  largest proportion of the UK cinema audience, at 31%. From this piece of data we found it would be more effective to have our target audience aged between 15-24, as this is the key age that people are going to the cinema. It is also supported by this graph:    






















Furthermore, we wanted to aim the opening at both males and females as we found out that 36% males watch horror films compared to the 44% of females. As the percentages were close we wanted to aim the opening at both genders, to widen the target audience.

Also, I researched about the recently released film 'Don't Breathe' I went onto FilmCrave.com and looked at the quick movies reviews. The two reviews I read had similar views on the film. One man thought it was 'pointless, ignorant, awful movie I've seen' he went on to speak about how the narrative was unrealistic, and that the actors really didn't make the film scary. The other critic thought the concept was there 'but the characters were all too dumb to root for'.
After looking at these film reviews I understand that the narrative plays a massive part in what the target audience are interested in, they are also concerned with the characters having a background story.

Reception Theory (Stuart Hall)

The reception theory is an active audience theory which sees the audience as being actively engaged in the interpretations of media texts, rather than passive consumers. The idea is that individuals interpret texts in different ways. It demonstrates that even though one message is sent out the not one understanding is received.

When a producer creates text it is encoded with a meaning or message that they want to convey to a mass audience. This is called preferred reading. Sometimes the producer can encode a message that is not correctly understood by an audience making the message noneffective.

Hall included three different types of audience for decoding texts:

• Dominant- How the producer wants the audience to view the media texts.
• Negotiated- The audience understands and agrees with the text but disagrees with other areas they have their own view on. A mixture between dominant and oppositional. 
• Oppositional- The audience rejects the encoded meaning and creates their own meaning for the text. 

 Numerous factors add to whether we take the dominant, negotiated or oppositional reading. The areas are as follows:

• Life experience
• Mood at time of viewing 
• Age 
• Culture 
• Belief 
• Gender  
  

Hypodermic Needle

The hypodermic needle theory implied mass media had a direct and powerful effect on audiences.

The theory suggests that mass media could influence a very large group of people directly by 'injecting' them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response. The hypodermic needle model suggest that media messages are injected into a passive audience. They express the view that the media is a dangerous means of communicating an idea to the receiver or audience is powerless to resist the impact of the message. There is no escape from the effect of the message in these models. The population is seen as a 'sitting duck' people end up thinking what they are told because there is no other source of information.

 

Star Theory

Richard Dyers star theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are manufactured by institutions for financial gain. He believes that stars are constructed to represent 'real people' experiencing real emotions.
His theory is spilt into three sections:

1. Audience and Institutions 
2. Constitutions 
3. Hegemony 

Audience and Institutions: 

Stars are made for money purposes. Increasing the brand identity benefits the institution as they become a household name increasing the sales in all of the different aspects of media.The institution then models the artist around a target audience they choose. For example Lady Gaga's fashion was seen to be chosen so that the audience can relate to her as a person and also her music.

Constitutions:

This is more or less the same as the audience and institutions part of his theory. 

Hegemony: 

This is also known as 'culture'. It is the idea that the audience relates to the star because they have a feature that they share with the star. Some fans may with to replicate the stars behaviour. However, this could have a negative impact as some stars often break the law. For example, the use of drugs in the 70's increased around the time the Beatles started to use.


However, not many horror films use 'Stars' as characters for the film, as using people who are famous and well-known make the film less believable. If there is no 'Stars' in the film it makes it more realistic and makes it seem more real. Imagine seeing Selena Gomez, being killed by chainsaw, all you would see is Wizards of Wavely Place, not very realsitic.

History of Horror

Camera Angles in Horror Films

Main Brief Ideas

When we got given the main brief, as a group we sat down and mind mapped different sub-genres of horror.
From that we chose, to go with the sub-genre Paranormal.

We had two different ideas;

The first one was a 'Ouija Board' idea we wanted to have teenagers in a church using the Ouija Board, trying to connect with the dead. When decided that, the idea was very stereotypical and we didn't have a reason for the teenagers to be in a church and the opening would have been very forced.

Second Idea- It was to have a home recorded video like paranormal activity, we talked about a stalker story but we thought that, the idea had been used a lot. As a group we then, talked about a possessed child and another member of the family recording the weird things that the possessed child is doing. We then thought about how she would become possessed, we had the idea that her twin dies when she was young and that she could smash the pot of ashes and then thought that a picture would be easier to portray that they were twin sisters. When she smashes the picture she gets possessed by her twin sister.
We then furthered our ideas by thinking of the things she could do, whilst she is possessed. We thought she could be drawing pictures on the walls of her house, banging her head against the wall and as the film progresses the things she does get weirder.

Horror Sub-Genres and Hybrid genres

The genres above are linked to the history of the horror genre. As over time new genres and sub-genres have been introduced, the genres and sub-genres have been introduced due to the time period and what exactly is going on during this period in history. In the 1940's/1950's people were scared of technology, as it was just after the war they were frightened about how technology would effect the world, for example the film 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'. Furthermore in the current time period, the public are more scared about the unknown and what we are unknowledgeable about, the Paranormal this is why horror films these days are of the genre paranormal, for example 'The Conjuring'
The type of horror film made is based on what society are scared about at the time the film is made, the horror genre reflects society's feelings.

BBFC and Ratings

For each film produced it must be certified by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) It ensures that children are protected from unsuitable and possibly harmful content. It provides the consumer with information they might need to know about the film. 

The BBFC examines and age rates films and videos before they are released, they reach an age rating by applying the standards and the criteria contained in their Classification Guidelines. 

Two examiners view the film, and then a Senior examiner will confirm their decision. They look for issues like drugs, horror, discrimination,language, sex,nudity and violence. 

From looking at the 5 most popular Horror movies of 2016, 4 of them are rated 15. I think most of them are rated a 15 so they have a larger target audience. If horror films were certified 18, the target auduience wouldn't be as big if they had a 15 as majority of people who watch horror movies are between the age of 15-25.

Furthermore, the top grossing horror movies of 2016 was 'The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist' it earnt $102,470,008, this film was certified a 15.

So based on the information that I have found out, I would have to say that my audience would be people between the ages of 15-25. 

Research

To gain knowledge on the horror film genre I have watch a series of horror film openings. Here is the information I found out;

	Characters	Location	Opening Titles	What do you learn about the story?
Opening 1	The main character is the man, who is driving the car at the start of the clip and he isn’t aware that the women in the car with him isn’t human.	It is set at night, and the location goes from a car to a meat factory, within the meat factory there is a hidden club	All the titles are in bold font and are coloured red	You learn that the boy was persuaded into going to the nightclub as he isn’t aware that the women he is with isn’t human. You also learn that the people in the club are afraid of the man in black, at the end of the opening.
Opening 2	You only see a boy in his bed  at the start of the opening You only see the women waking up right at the end of the opening	The opening is set in a house where a family lives and starts in the young boys bedroom and then shows us the rest of the house	All the titles are in red and the they fade away like a ghost	You learn that there is a ghost/spirit living in their house, as things moving like the picture or you see a dark figure in the window. By the opening starting on the boy, it means that it must have something to do with him
Opening  3	There are two middle aged men. A young boy and a young girl	It is set in the morning and the young children are in the corn field and the two men are both in their houses until they here a scream.		During the opening you learn that something has destroyed a part of the corn field and it wasn’t a human being
Opening 4	A young women A voice on the phone	The location of the opening is the young women’s house  and it is night time		From watching the opening you learn that the am on the phone is out to get the women in her house.
Opening 5	There are three young girls and a person with a black vale over their face	It is set during the day and the three girls are playing with their toys in the play room		You learn that this figure with a black vale over her face has controlled these three young girls to jump out of the window.