Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

We have used two main strategies for addressing and attracting an audience. The first is using actors who are similar to our target audience, which allows the audience to associate with the characters. 

Our film was primarily targeted at people aged between 16 and 24. We also knew that many other slasher films, such as the Scream franchise, have successfully used teenage actors to make the audience associate with the characters. We therefore only used actors in this age range. Through research we also discovered that it was mainly males who watched slasher films, so we used only male actors.

Will in Underground

We then thought about what the stereotypical person who fits this description would wear. The character has just been out with his mates, so jeans, a black hoodie and trainers seemed like the best choice of clothing to go for.

All of this made our target audience connect with the characters and feel as though it could be them in that situation.

Our Twitter Page

The other strategy we used for attracting our audience is by promoting the film and addressing the audience through Twitter and by regularly updating our blogs to keep them interesting for people to look at.

Twitter allows millions of people worldwide to follow us and we can show anyone who is interested our final cut as well as the work that went on prior to that. It also allows us to follow people/groups of interest, such as Wes Craven and House of Hammar.

We have also shown people we know our work and asked for feedback. This has allowed us to improve our film opening to further appeal to our target audience.

Evaluation Question 6

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

Before we began constructing our film I didn't have much knowledge of the technologies used for it. I now know a lot more about what's used and how. Here's a list of the technologies that I've learnt about:

Blogger - Blogger is a website that allows you to create a blog for free. We used this for writing about everything to do with the production of our film opening and for sharing videos and audio related to the film. This is good as it allows us to have all of our coursework in one place and organised, and it also allows other people to see what we have been doing and read what we have written about things related to the slasher genre. Blogger has also allowed me to put up a poll about the slasher genre as well as letting me receive feedback on my work quickly and easily.

Blogger New Post

iMovie - iMovie was what we first used to edit out footage. Although we were limited to what we could do, it did allow us to focus on the basics of editing so we learnt to get things such as the continuity of footage right before moving onto adding blue filters, for example, to our work.

Final Cut Express - After a short while iMovie became annoying to use because it was so limited, so using Final Cut Express gave us a lot more options for editing. This was important to us in editing our final cut as we needed to give some shots a CCTV style look, and we needed to make outside in the daytime look as though it was during the night. We were able to do this through the video filters available in Final Cut. We also used multiple layering which was not available in iMovie, but was an important part in creating anchorage that the victim was drunk when he was out.

Camcorders - No one in our group had much experience with camcorders so we learned how to use these to film our footage. The cameras we used were not very expensive compared to the cameras used by a lot of filmmakers, however they were good for what we needed them for.

A camcorder similar to the one we filmed with

DivShare - DivShare can be used to upload audio files, so we used this free online resource to upload our podcasts. We then used the embed code to put the podcasts onto our blogs. This was useful as Blogger doesn't allow you to directly upload audio files to your blog.

Scribd - I used Scribd to upload our treatment and post it to my blog. Scribd allows you to upload documents for other people to read, so was very useful for our treatment.

We used Scribd to upload our treatment

LiveType - I used LiveType to create my company ident. I was surprised at how many options there were for creating my ident on LiveType, and I think that people's idents that were made using it were all quite good.

GarageBand - I used GarageBand to write and record our soundtrack. I was surprised that you could use the computer's keyboard as an instrument along with the different instrument sounds that were on GarageBand. I think that it can be quite slow and difficult using the computer's keyboard to play the soundtrack, however I think the end result sounds good.

YouTube - We created an account on YouTube which allows us to upload our videos and post them onto our blog using the embed code. YouTube also has a comments feature so people have the option to give us feedback for our work through that.

We were able to upload our music video and rough cuts to YouTube

Twitter - I already have Twitter but for creating this account we read Twitter's advice for businesses, as we thought that this would be relevant for our account. Twitter has allowed us to interact with people on a global scale and lets people follow us to see the latest news about our film opening.

Evaluation Question 7

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

Preliminary Task:


Final Cut:


One of the first things that I learnt was the importance of continuity editing and how to use it. This involved using the 180° rule, match on action, cross-cutting and shot-reverse-shot to create the impression that everything is happening in sequence.

I have also learnt lots of different technologies that are used in the film making process which I have mentioned in Evaluation Question 6.

In our preliminary task we didn't use a tripod so all of our shots were shaky. This made the video look cheap and unprofessional and it also was distracting, so in our final cut we made sure that none of the shots were shaky.

We also thought a lot more about mise-en-scene in our final cut and what signifiers it was giving. In our preliminary task we had the camera bag on the table for example, so we didn't think about mise-en-scene. In our final cut we considered it a lot more and used what we'd learned about semiotics to improve our mise-en-scene.

Our basement mise-en-scene

Something else that I've learnt during this process has been to take lots of shots when filming so that we have more to edit with and there will be more shot variation in the final product. We not only took shots of the action but got loads of cutaway shots which we could add to our final cut if they were needed.

I also did more directing when we were shooting as the time went on. In our preliminary task I only told Will and Sean what to say and where to walk, but in the final cut shooting I was concentrating on directing the smaller aspects as well such as facial expressions and the characters movement.

We've also learned a lot about the film industry, such as different companies in the film industry and the differences between British and US Cinema.

The majority of what we have learned between making the preliminary task and the final cut comes from our research and planning. Through studying codes and conventions by analysing past film openings, looking at related theories, studying key directors and so on, we were able to obtain a good understanding of how to produce a good film opening by applying what we learned to our final production.

Initial Research and Planning

Final Storyboard

Storyboard Page 1

Storyboard Page 2

Storyboard Page 3

Soundtrack Update

Today I began learning Garage Band which I will be using to record our film's soundtrack. I think that the range of instruments is good, however the limitation of one octave at a time whilst playing could be restrictive, therefore I think it might take a while to get it sounding right. I will begin recording the soundtrack tomorrow.

SB - Key Films in the Horror Genre

1960- Psycho was released. Now known as the first real horror film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock who is now seen as an auteur. Psycho is famous for it's frantic shower scene where it features 78 shots in less than a minute.
It is known the the screeching sound track played on top of the killing. The film is also renowned for killing off it's main star Janet Leigh a third of the way into the film.
"The combination of the close shots with their short duration makes the sequence feel more subjective than it would have been if the images were presented alone or in a wider angle " Wikipedia
The budget for Psycho was an estimated $800,000 and has grossed more than $50,000,000 worldwide.

1978- Halloween was released in this year, or also known as John Carpenter's Halloween. The story of a psychotic child murderer who had been kept in prison since childhood after murdering his sister. The film was a massive hit and one of the most, if not most known horror film ever. It was made on a budget of $320,000 and grossed more than $60,000,000 worldwide. The film is also famous for Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Janet Leigh who was the scream queen in Psycho, being featured as the scream queen in this film. John Carpenter was not only the director for this film but also a editor and sound producer.

1980- Friday the 13th is an American horror franchise that comprises twelve slasher films. The first film directed by Sean S. Cunningham. The film is based around murders which happen at a camp at summertime. It starts as two counselors at Camp Crystal Lake are murdered by an unseen assailant after they sneak away to a cabin to have sex. Set on a budget of $550,000 it grossed just under $40,000,000 in the USA alone.

SB - Our BBFC Film Rating

After researching various other films that are similar to ours after post production and the majority of editing done, we have deciding to find out what our BBFC rating would be if our film was to be released. After I had researched various films were similar to our own such as Wolf Creek and Saw. Wolf Creek and Saw both feature high levels of gore from the beginning of the film, our film opening is the same.

18 Rating Certificate Logo
"where material or treatment appears to the BBFC to risk harm to individuals or, through their behaviour, to society – for example, any detailed portrayal of violent or dangerous acts, or of illegal drug use, which may cause harm to public health or morals. This may include portrayals of sexual or sexualised violence which might, for example, eroticise or endorse sexual assault" Quote from BBFC

This is one guideline set by the BBFC when they last updated the age ratings, which was in 2009. Our film portrays detailed and high levels of violence from the start, an example of this is when the main character is abducted and murdered while being tied to a pole by chains.

The main character is also drinking alcohol which is illegal to anyone under the age of 18 which is another of the requirements for an 18 age rated film.

Final Cut Editing Update

Will edited the very beginning of our film opening last week and this week me and Sean have been editing it. We are nearly finished however some important footage seems to be missing. Tomorrow we will check to see if we can find it, however we might have to re-film the missing footage tomorrow so our cut is finished for Friday.

Treatment

Treatment for Underground

WL - Audience For Slasher Films

The typical audience for most slasher films we have researched has been an audience of 15-24 years old. This is normally the case due to the content of the slasher genre and also to do with the actors that are often teens/young adults cast in these films. However often slasher films will be part of a hybrid genre to bring more people into the film for example 'Jason X' The sci-fi slasher film the 10th in the Friday the 13th series. Female audiences may be also drawn in due to romantic content and the final girl character who is of herioc and ends up defeting the killer at the end of the film. However this is combated my the scream queen character who is often killed of near the start and to some can be seen as misoganistic. Another tactic at drawing in an older audience to slasher films is labelling it as a 'psychological thriller' Which will bring in aa older audience even if the film is really following many of the slasher conventions. In conclusion the slasher genre can spread over a large audience mainly depending on marketing and the characters involved. 

Audience Feedback

We private messaged a few people our latest rough cut on Twitter. Two of these people were kind enough to reply.

This shows us that our audience thinks we are on the right track, and we just need to make the few necessary changes now.

Mise-en-Scene

The main location in our film was Will's basement, however this seemed too clean and 'homely' as it was to be taken seriously. We therefore added broken glass, blood (which we made by mixing golden syrup, water and red food colouring) and showed the exposed piping, to create a feel of grime and help to foretell that the character will be killed. I think that it worked well, although we did have difficulties as there was a curtain next to where we were filming and there wasn't any other suitable position in the room which we could have used to connote the same messages. We got by this difficulty however with the framing of our shots.

Genre: Key Directors

There are many important directors who have worked in the slasher genre. Horror film directors who have a distinguishable style and deal with social issues are known as horror auteurs.


Some key directors include:


Wes Craven:  Wes Craven has played an important role in the development of the horror genre. His works include A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes and the Scream franchise. Like most directors that I mention in this post, his work explores the nature of reality and his style is distinctive to him, so he is considered by many to be a horror auteur. 

Talking about horror movies: "It's like boot camp for the psyche. In real life, human beings are packaged in the flimsiest of packages, threatened by real and sometimes horrifying dangers, events like Columbine. But the narrative form puts these fears into a manageable series of events. It gives us a way of thinking rationally about our fears."

Alfred Hitchcock:  Alfred Hitchcock is said to have started the slasher genre with his film Psycho in 1960. Initially reviews for this film were mixed, however it is now considered a classic and by some, the greatest slasher film of all time. Hitchcock was already a well established director prior to Psycho, with films such as Rear Window and North by Northwest. Many would argue that he is the greatest ever director.

"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."

 John Carpenter:  John Carpenter has worked on many different genre films and has taken different roles in the production process, however his most notable film is Halloween, which he directed. Other horror films he has directed include 'The Fog' and 'The Thing', which were both quite well received. He has become known as the 'Master of Horror', after his Masters of Horror TV series, which ran for two seasons.

"Movies are pieces of film stuck together in a certain rhythm, an absolute beat, like a musical composition. The rhythm you create affects the audience."

Michael Powell:  Michael Powell only ever directed one slasher film, and it was one that was so controversial that it almost ended his career as a successful film director. The film was Peeping Tom and was the first slasher film to ever be released (soon followed by Psycho). The film explored the voyeurism of a killer. At the time this was something that hadn't been done before and was shocking to the audience. I think that this film alone has been one of the most important in establishing expectations of slasher films.

"The great innovators have always been fearless"