Evaluation - Q.5

How did you attract/address your audience? 

Do you think you have reached your target audience?

After writing the synopsis of the first two minutes of our film and printing it off we filmed a video questionnaire with numerous individuals asking them questions relating to genre and our film. Through the video questionnaire and our research on the bbfc website we decided that the correct classification for our film would be a 15.

 

What did you include when planning your production that you thought would appeal to your audience?

The main demographic we targeted were teenagers and young adults and therefore the characters we decided to feature in our film would be around 16/17 years of age which would mean our audience would be able to relate with them more as opposed to older characters. We also decided that our characters would wear quite trendy, casual clothes like joggers, polo shirts and trainers which our demographic would associate with.

What has been successful in your production?

Time management was crucial to the success of the production, and we successfully carried out our filming in our planned time period. We created a production plan for each day (three in total) which we stuck by and referred to if we didn't know what else to do. This helped us complete our tasks in time. The three locations we filmed at were: Barnsley college, a lake within Dearne Valley Park and an abandoned industrial estate just outside of Barnsley town centre. The lake near Dearne Valley Park was often fairly busy and a few dogs walkers walked past during our first day of filming. Therefore on the second day of filming at the lake we decided to go at an earlier time which meant that less people walked past and we subsequently had more time to film. Another success we had with the production was how realistic our characters were. In order to increase the sense of realism we used a water bottle which was poured over Chris' head in order to imply he had just come out of the lake, whereas in reality he hadn't. The Desperate Man also had 'blood' placed on his white t-shirt, which was made at home. This relates back to our research, which concluded blood is often used in psychological horror films.


What was less successful? How can it be improved? 

One thing that was less successful was the efficiency of our camera in terms of battery life. For example, sometimes we would take the camera out to our location and thirty minutes later the battery would run out. This would meant the previous filming we did would have to be scrapped as the next day the lighting was completely different and subsequently the shots done on day one when compared with day 2 looked entirely different. This subsequently wasted our time as we had got prepared for the day in advance, and we subsequently had to go back to college. If I were to do the filming again I would make sure the battery life was on 100% meaning we wouldn't have to re-do shots and waste our precious time.

Evaluation - Q.4

Evaluation - Q.3

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

The distributor we chose for our film is the locally based Warp Films (Sheffield). After researching Warp Films we found out they are an independent producer and distributor who have produced critically acclaimed British films such as, Four Lions and Submarine. We believe that our film would be ideal for Warp Films seen as they haven't distributed any psychological horror films and therefore our film would help them break into a new genre. Our film's similarities with Warp's include a young protagonist of similar age to the one in 'Submarine'. We discovered that Warp Film's don't have high budget when compared with some of conglomerates such as Time Warner, however they have a niche market in the UK and distribute 'typically British Films', with their audience being teenagers and young adults which is the audience we are aiming our film at. Warp Films would also be an ideal candidate to distribute our film as they often premiere most of their films at independent film festivals like the Sundance Film Festival. If our film was to be exhibited at such an event we could be able to distribute our film to other countries like America and Australia. 


Warp films have produced the film Submarine which features the protagonist Oliver Tate and follows his life at home and school as he tries to get and maintain his relationship with Jordana. This film, despite not being of the horror genre, does feature a teenage protagonist similar to our main character, Chris. Many of Warps films have been typically British films that aren't Americanised which is exactly what we want our film to be. We also believe our target audience will be from the age of 15 above which is the audience Warp Films often distributes its films to. 

Evaluation - Q.2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Age - In our film we have the social groups of young people in the first two minutes of our film, and throughout the rest of the film we have adults, both male and female. Our film's depiction of young people presents them as vulnerable and in danger. For example Chris throughout the film is shown through high angled shots which create a sense of danger and impending doom, which works well when accompanied by the diegetic sound of his screams and shouting. We also made use of fast paced editing in the running scenes to thrill the audience and present Chris as a very scared individual. The character of the Desperate Man in our film further reinforces the ideology that young people are vulnerable and in need of protection. The Desperate Man is shown lying on the floor covered in blood. 

Gender - Our first two minutes featured two men and the voice of another male characters. Despite, seemingly looking androcentric within the first two minutes, we had planned to add many more female characters throughout the rest of the film. The men in the first two minutes, weren't portrayed as stereotypical male characters (usually brave and masculine), and instead were portrayed as weak and vulnerable. 



Mise en scene - Through the use of clothing and props like blood we were able to make Chris look like a stereotypical teenager who wears comfortable clothing like joggers and trainers. Also the use of blood added to the sense of vulnerability of the Desperate Man as it suggested he had been stabbed and attacked. 


Editing - Through the use of editing, more specifically through the changing of colour we were able to make the woods and street scene brighter and more orange in order to make it look dreamy and denote that this happened a while later than the home scene. 

Camera - In order to portray the young character of Chris we frequently made use of high angled shots in order to convey a sense of vulnerability and make the audience empathise with Chris. We also used two dolly shots during our film in order to create a sense of realism and subsequently make the audience feel like they were there with Chris and therefore they would be more likely to be scared and question what was going on. 



Sound - In order to create a sense of suspense and portray the characters as vulnerable in our film we used as little dialogue as we could in order to make our audience question what was happening. We relied on ambient sounds like the wind and the tweeting of birds to create a sense of isolation, especially in the woods scene. We had to edit the sound of the phone call, in order to make it sound like it was a legitimate phone call that would happen if somebody was calling 999.  

Evaluation - Q.1

Click Here For Evaluation - Q.1

Evaluation - Question 5

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Do you think you have reached your target audience?

At the beginning pre-production of our film we had scripted our first 2 minutes of the storyline an researched upon what people thought of it and there ideas around it. We did this through a questionnaire asking a number of teenagers as they were our target audience which was suitable to accumulate as much useful ideas and feedback.

What did you include when planning your production that you thought would appeal to your audience?

Our target audience was mainly aimed at young teenagers and young adults, we decided to make the main character a teenager with symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia so that the audience could feel involved and relate to the character. We thought that it would be suitable for our character to wear clothes that are classed as casual and trendy, we believed that this would allow the audience to feel aware and stereotype what they think of the character.




What has been successful in your production?

I believe that a key part to the success of our production was time management, we had organised our time effectively before hand for every day of shooting. It only took us 3 days to shoot our film, we always referred back to our plan if we had ran out of ideas which helped us stay on track and finish everything on time. We used a total of three different types of locations which were; Barnsley College, Dearne Valley Park and an abandoned industrial estate. These locations were chosen as we thought it would give us the best output and sense of feel for a psychological horror, this relates to our research where we had found out that the film is expected to be filmed near a lake, park, etc. The lake we chose was in Dearne Valley Park and was mostly busy during times we went out for shoot so we had to go during early hours when it's less busy. I also believe that another success in our production was filming and how the characters were shown, the main character in our film, 'Chris', is shown at the beginning climbing out of a lake and to make this realistic we had poured water all over him to output the best effect. Another would be that the injured, desperate man on the floor had blood on his t-shirt which was self-made for our filming. The characters were shown from different perspectives by the way we placed the camcorder, this created a unique effect and relates back to our research of psychological horror films containing shots taken from different angles and views.

What was less successful? How can it be improved?

A minor problem that we had throughout the filming process was that the camcorder's, these weren't efficient enough to remain on standby for long hours, this meant that sometimes we had to leave shooting early. Once we had collected a camcorder and all other relevant equipment  and found out that the camcorder had no charge which meant we had to go back to college and find a replacement. This can be lack of preparation and just the camera's being left without being put on charge.

Evaluation - Question 4

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Gender: 
The audience that we have aimed to be for our film are both; male and female. This is because our genre isn't gender specific to be based on being a psychological horror, the film we researched into such as the shining is also based on the audience of both genders. Although the first two minutes of our film only show two males as leading characters, we have thought about getting a female to play a role for our full film so that it appeals to both genders.

Age:
After researching into similar films that were psychological horrors we found that most films contained disturbing scenes, violence, etc had age ratings of 15 and over. We thought that our film also contained disturbing scenes with slight violence so it would be best to keep the age rating at 15+ because if a younger audience were to watch certain scenes they may find it distressing.

Habits and Lifestyle:
We have decided that it would be best for our film to be screened in the cinema during late viewing times. This is because our audience are mostly best suitable for late screenings having the age rating of 15, our audience are most likely to be busy during the day such as work, school, and other things they have responsibility over. Taking this into consideration we thought that this would be most convenient and suitable for our target audience.

Pre-production Research:
Our pre-production research was to find out what it takes for our target audience to want to watch a psychological horror film. We did this through the use of a questionnaire where we had interviewed three teenagers, we found out that most teenagers watch films on television or computer which came to the discussion around screenings for our short film. Our interviewees also claimed to have understood the storyline clearly and mentioned expecting the film to be set near a lake or park, this was an advantage for us pre-production of the film.