(shamaan) No.5: How did you attract/address your target audience?

Overall I think my group targeted our audience well. We tried to find a character that was young and attractive, yet not to stereotypically vulnerable and 'bimbo" like.

In this clip from scream we can see that both females are attractive vulnerable teenagers that are stereotypically hopeless

we tried to challenge the conventions and have her as a "nerd" we did this through the use of costume; blazer, glasses, scarf and bag and also through the use of props e.g. books.

Although we tried to challenge these conventions, our character remains vulnerable and obviously female so that is isn't to far fetched and our target audience aren't out of their comfort zone. 

The use of music in our film is very conventional. Its eerie and spooky and the use of non diegtic sound makes the audience very aware that something is about to happen in the film, which builds up great suspense. 

as you can see in this clip the use of contrast between non digetic and digetic sound adds a great feeling to the film as you are aware of what is going through the characters mind (when they are screaming or when the car screeches) and the audience is also aware that something bad is going to happen with the non digetic sound building up tension.

in the first 36 seconds of our film you can hear the contrast of what is going on in the characters head and what the character cant hear. we did this to  follow the conventions. even though music in horror films are often ignored and not thought about if it wasn't there then the audience would be confused and feel like their is something missing. therefore we included this sort of music so it would appeal to our target audience. 

This was our first audience feedback form and after this me and my group made changes. 

After this first evaluation my group was happy that we had met out target audience. He said that the shots were all well framed and provided enough head room and this was something we happened to be struggling with. He also said that is conforms to the conventions of a psychological horror film as we have close ups and he thought that the props and costume was convincing and added to the effect of the genre. He also said that he enjoyed the sound and thought it collaborated well with the natural sounds in the film. Some of the critical feed back that he gave was more of a range of shots i.e long shots and high angle shots etc. In our final shooting we looked at this evaluation and included some extreme high angle shots, shot reverse shots long shots etc. So overall this feedback worked really well and helped us improve our film.

This is the final evaluation that we have. Overall my group was happy with this evaluation.

In this final evaluation we were happy as all the critical things that were said in the first piece had been improved and our in our second evaluation most of the feedback was positive. The main negative feedback that the second evaluation said was that he found the fact that the start is non linear confusing. Although my group and I took this into account, as planning we watched a number of psychological horror and most of the ones we watched were non linear.

Overall my group and I were satisfied that we had managed to reach our target audience as both evaluations said that they would watch the rest of the film as they enjoyed it. 

(Shamaan) No.3: Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our horror film is certificate 18 Target Audience: Males Aged 18-29 - Or females over the age of 21 There is a no constraints on the level of language nudity or horror.

	Votes	Average
Males	27,710	6.0
Females	5,313	6.3
Aged under 18	523	7.0
Males under 18	394	7.1
Females under 18	128	6.5
Aged 18-29	21,534	6.2
Males Aged 18-29	17,732	6.2
Females Aged 18-29	3,738	6.4
Aged 30-44	9,370	5.9
Males Aged 30-44	8,167	5.8
Females Aged 30-44	1,150	6.1
Aged 45+	1,539	5.6
Males Aged 45+	1,268	5.6
Females Aged 45+	251	5.8
IMDb staff	6	7.3
Top 1000 voters	375	5.7
US users	13,524	6.2
Non-US users	17,370	5.9
IMDb users	36,587	6.0

Votes	Percentage	Rating
3,942	10.8%	10
2,417	6.6%	9
4,929	13.5%	8
6,947	19.0%	7
6,082	16.6%	6
4,182	11.4%	5
2,660	7.3%	4
1,808	4.9%	3
1,310	3.6%	2
2,310	6.3%	1

The target audience for a psychological horror film is males age 18-29 and Females ages 21+ this may have something to do with the fact that the typical characters in a psychological horror film is young vulnerable females which obviously entices young males to want the watch this genre of film. Maybe the  challenging conventions of a psychological horror film (the fact that its not all guts, blood and gore its more about working the brain) lures the more older men and females into wanting to watch something entertaining yet interesting.

Our main character is a young female which follows the conventions of a psychological horror and also hopefully  makes males want to watch the film due to her looks. However we also wanted to challenge the conventions slightly by having the female (Lexi) playing a ""nerdy", "geeky" young female which then hopefully makes it more interesting and unusual when she gets possessed.

My group all decided that the wanted to do a psychological horror film because its not cheesy or predictable. We all agreed that doing a film in this genre would give us more options on location, characters costume and narrative. Whereas doing a slasher or zombie film limits the amount of choices to have to be original. 

We used the information that we researched to help us with the narrative. If we had an old man playing the main part then we probably wouldn't interest our target audiences. 

(Nassir) Question 8: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full production?

These links below will show you what we filmed in my preliminary task and in our final production.

Preliminary Task- http://bilborough357.blogspot.com/2010/10/recreation-of-40-seconds.html


Final Production- http://bilborough6534.blogspot.com/2011/03/final-production-between-lines.html

POSSESSED GIRL

In the preliminary task we had to shoot a psychological scene about a girl who is possessed in a white room, our task was to produce a 40 seconds horror scene which seemed easy as we were told to recreate a film made by previous AS students. Before we started recording we had to get our story together by creating a storyboard. The storyboard helped us draw out what we should film before filming, this organized our camera movements. We learned how to use the white balance on the camera and how to edit, when we had finished our scenes were not organized so we corrected them by editing.

BETWEEN THE LINES

At the start of this production we had to establish the presentation to our psychological introduction, as a group we brainstormed what should be included in the presentation. Furthermore we were given a folder to complete and created a new blog and published everything we had achieved.
The different effects available in IMovie allowed for a great deal of experimentation when editing our film with effects such as 'Black and White' and 'Shifting Contrast'. We also changed the speed of a few clips to create the feeling of paranormalality and insight the feeling of anxiety in the viewer. 


In our preliminary task we used variety of shots to emphasis each shot. In order for us to create fear and build up tension, close ups (CU) were great at showing the characters feelings as CU invades the victims personal space.
As you can see in this image the possessed girl seems vulnerable and feared of what she or someone else is capable of. By getting a CU of her eyes makes the atmosphere tense.









This image is from the final production, again CU is used but this time there are affects added on such as black & white, costume and make up, diegetic/ non diegetic sound etc. 










The preliminary task helped me practice different camera shots/angles and it also helped me improve on how the characters should appear on the scene, the preliminary task helped me with this production as I was more aware of the rules such as the 180 degree rule. Overall the preliminary task increased my skills for media and helped me contribute my ideas to the group for this production.








This is a low angle CU of the possessed girl, low angles tents to put the audience as weak as they are persuaded to look up as the character looks down on to them making them feel small and useless.












Furthermore the preliminary task made me aware of how much head room there should be in any shot types. As this example shows there is a huge amount of head room left above the actors head.









In our final production i was aware of the gaps and tried to get the character in the 'golden mean' as this was eye catching and many films follow this rule.











In this part of the preliminary task the possessed girl sees herself dead on the floor, this is a 'flash forward' as the audience and the girl is aware of what her destiny is. However the down side to this is that sometimes it gives away the best part as the audience is not aware of her death and they see it before the film starts.








therefore in our final production we did not want to give away too much information to the audience, in this scene the possessed girl is laughing at one point then crying in the next, this confuses the audience, this way the audience is not aware of what the actual thing is capable of.








the finishing of every horror film should be shocking before it ends, in my preliminary task, the possessed girl screams as we leave her with mid shot and still a huge gap above her head.










it is more effective if there is a CU when the character screams than a mid shot, this is because you can see the fear in their eyes as with mid shot some audiences cannot see peoples face expression from fare.











  If my group were to do the production again, we would differ many things, for starters we would finish the filming as soon as possible than leaving it too late, also improve on the music at the same time so that it doesn't pile up. As a group we would definitely improve on the organization and location. However our final production is great and as a group we are happy with the progress and the outcome.

Final Production-'Between The Lines'

Q7(Billy Edwards) Foundation Portfolio Evaluation

7. ( Billy Edwards)What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

•    Throughout the production of our film we used a variety of technologies such as Blogger,Garage Band,IMovie and resouces on the internet to achieve our resulting movie. At first when we imported the movie into garage band in order to match our audio to the onscreen visuals, the crop tool in made it possible for us to cut out the unwanted sounds the camera had picked up when filming. The image above shows how we only had the audio we wanted playing was achieved.

We also recorded sounds into GarageBand using the microphones built into the iMacs which was then compressed and uploaded the file into IMovie, the compatability of this software allowed us to divide our labour so that we could be editing the film on one pc suite and mastering sound simultaneously on another. 

Blogger enabled us to record and track our progress throughout each editing seesion,giving us a clear indication of what we needed to do the following lesson.IMovie had many useful features which enabled us to add subtitles and slide transitions. When composing our shots which we found the programme very useful although frustrating at times when the software crashed and we lost unsaved work.

            

   When initially planning our film we used story boards to set out our ideas. After filming we found that our plans were followed vaugely but not exactly. Using the editing tools available to us in IMovie we were able to piece together our shots to create smooth film with continual continuity editing. 

The different effects available in IMovie allowed for a great deal of experimentation when editing our film with effects such as 'Black and White' and 'Shifting Contrast'. We also changed the speed of a few clips to create the feeling of paranormalality and insight the feeling of anxiety in the viewer. 

GarageBand enabled us to be more creative when creating our whispering sounds. This image below shows how we added different effects such as 'Deeper Vocals' and 'Ambient Vocals' to create an eeriness and suspense.

When choosing our instruments we decided to use something that sounded spooky and out of the ordinary in order to create fear and unease in the audience.

The useful interface of garageband made it possible for those of us with no musical experience to create professional music and sounds, with the use of instrument emulators and effective controls such as 'Musical Typing' and 'Keyboard'.

   The technologies directly enabled me to exhibit my film to its full potential with the use easy to use editing tools and friendly userface. Garage Band's multi-layered track feature allowed us to improve the structure of our sounds with some overlapping. The way IMovie allowes the user to quickly change the positioin of the clips meant that we could try many different variations of shot orders which meant we could structure it the way we preferred and if we later decided to go back and change something it was very simple to do so.

In order to create to a dramatic ending we gradually increased the pace of the shots and music simultaneously to build suspense throughout which then cuts off  instantly at the end when we hear a frightening scream.