Star Image

Many movies like to choose famous or well-known actors to star in their films in order to increase the star appeal and therefore power of the film. For instance, Richard Dyer's Star theory (1998) suggests, 'that the viewers perception of a film is heavily influenced by the perception of its stars, and that publicity material and reviews determine the way that audiences experience the film'. An example of this is that a film is more likely to gain more viewers simply by having a famous actor in it, for example the likes of Zac Efron or Channing Tatum are surely going to instantly attract the attention of young or teenage girls even if they are not so keen on the storyline of the film.

Not only this but if the public know a certain actor has only starred in really good, blockbuster movies then the new film will instantly increase its popularity and the audience will assume that this movie will yet again be a good watch.

If I was actually creating a real film I would definitely take this into account when choosing actors, a good choice for my particular film would be Chloe Grace Moretz as she is currently a very well-known young actress who is adored by many film-loving people. Mostly known for her role in the ‘Kick-ass’ franchise, ‘Carrie’, ‘If I stay’ and’ Hugo’.

She would be perfect for the part of Cassandra in our film as she has had many roles in horror films, one in which being ‘Carrie’ which as I talked about in my last post is very similar to our idea. 

Also she is a very pretty young girl who would attract teenage boys to watch the movie and they perhaps would prefer to watch her in our film over something else she is in for instance, 'If I Stay' because ours is a horror and therefore they would be seen as 'manly' for coming to watch it. 

Representation Issues

There are many forms of representations and stereotypes within the media and I have looked at two types in particular in which are represented in our film.

Children

‘Convincingly representing childhood experience in any creative medium is notoriously difficult. In film, quite apart from the well-documented problems of directing child actors, there is the question of approach to consider, since representations of children vary greatly, from nostalgic portraits of innocence, through to dark, disturbing, and nightmarish visions. Once these challenges are met, there still remains the challenge of finding an appropriate visual style to convey the child's world.’ – BFI Screen online.

I shall take into account both the innocence of the child and the evil child, these are both representations which will be seen within our trailer. To begin with our main character will demonstrate a young, vulnerable girl. Through this she will gain sympathy from the audience.

‘We love children for all the things we are no longer and often wish we we...we admire their innocence’ (Pg 3 of ‘the cute and the cool: Wondrous innocence and modern American Children’s culture’ written by Gary Cross). This quote serves as an example of why child representations are so popular in the media.

The audience admires the child character and thus they feel a connection with them as this child is a representation of ‘things we are no longer’ the child hasn’t yet lived through the corruptions of life such as education, work, stress, relationships and so on and perhaps we are jealous of this.

However on the other hand, there is always something extremely scary and unnerving about a child controlling all the power within a movie, perhaps this is because in real life children rarely have power over adults and perhaps this shift in normality causes fear.

Examples of children obtaining power are:

 Damien in The Omen 

Regan in The Exorcist 

and Chucky in Childs Play

These examples are noticeably all horror films in which the child is the antagonist causing fear and panic to others.

The ‘evil’ child is a play on the children’s innocence, for example the child’s laughter usually serves as an essential part within certain scenes and this is a reminder of the innocence of the child. Not only this but perhaps with the children becoming evil it implies that they know more about their surrounding than they let on.

Overall it appears that whilst we might admire the innocence of the child within film when this innocence turns evil the child then strikes fear within the viewer.

Women

Women are the gender that are usually victimised within any film whether that be a fantasy where they play the weak feline who needs saving or the victim of a killer in a horror movie. Through this they gain sympathy from the audience who begin to feel sorry for them and therefore develop a connection.

Sometimes however there is a transition of this stereotype where the female becomes strong, this is usually in the form of Clovers ‘final girl’. The final girl challenges the usual representation of women like the ‘princess’ character type and acts with bravery and intelligence.

Within our film our main character begins as the stereotypical Proppian damsel in distress however she then acts with vengeance  to become the antagonist who uses her new found power to victimise other females. 

Job roles in film

In order to create a film there are many people with many different roles involved, each job comes together to create the film;

Actor: Actors interpret others' words in order to bring a script to life

Camera Operators: Camera Operators prepare and operate the camera and all its equipment, working with the Director and Director of Photography.

Casting Directors: Casting Directors organise the casting (selecting) of Actors for all roles in a film

Director: Directors are the driving creative force in a film's production - visualising and defining the style and structure of the film, then bringing it to life.

Director of Photography: Directors of Photography work with the Director, camera crew and lighting department to create the visual identity, or look, of a film

Editor: Film Editors work closely with the Director to craft the finished film.


As a group we have decided that we shall bring all our skills together to edit the trailer, this is best as we can all have a say in how the finished product will turn out like.

Producer: Producers are responsible for all aspects of a film's production, putting together a creative and talented cast and crew, and turning story ideas into profitable films.

Production Runner: Production Runners help out wherever they are needed on productions

Screenwriter: Screenwriters research and develop story ideas and write screenplays


Our roles within the production:


Sam - Director of Photography; This role is most suited  towards our teammate Sam. Although we will all have a turn with the camera Sam feels more suited towards this particular role.


Hannah - Director; The role of the Director will be taken upon by Hannah, she is best suited for this job as she has had experience acting and knows how to deal with the actors but she also has a good visualisation of how the outcome of the trailer will look like.


Myself - Producer; I personally feel that the producer fits me very well as I am a very organised person so I can be trusted to ensure everyone and everything is where it should be by the day of the shoot. I also participate in drama classes and therefore I have the vital contacts with other actors.

Further Target Audience Research

I have looked into a Case Study which was conducted by the BFI to gain more insight into who are audience is and what they like to see. Within this case study there is a section specifically dedicated to genre preferences of an audience and this has been developed into a table.

I have highlighted the horror genre as this is the genre we are looking into. On this graph it is made evident that both Male and Females enjoy the horror genre generally of equal amounts however it is also apparent that out of these more people below the age of 35 enjoy horror films whereas an older audience are less interested. This further backs the research that we conducted ourselves as we came up with an age range of 16-25.

This table looks at the audience across different ethnicities and it shows that for a horror it is quite consistent, however I have also noticed that under the 'Older Women' category only 16% enjoy watching horror films and this proves that an older audience are not as keen on the horror genre.

I have also looked into audience Psychographics which is a way to categorise audiences based on their personality, like and consuming activity. Young and Rubican created the 'Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation' (4Cs for short). These are split up into 8 categories;

• Resigned - Tend to be strict and ridged and of an older age
• Struggler - The struggler is alienated and disorganised. Brand choices involves impact and sensation
• Mainstreamer - Favouring big and well-known value for money 'family' brands. The largest of the 4Cs groups
• Aspirer - Find attractive packaging more important than quality of contents. Tend to be younger, clerical/sales type occupation.
• Succeeder - Strong goal orientation and brand choice based on reward and prestige
• Explorer - Enjoy experience and challenge. Brand choice hightlights difference and adventure. Usually the first to try new brands. Younger and/or student.
• Reformer - Freedom from restriction, they select brands for intrinsic quality, favouring natural simplicity.

Through looking at these 8 categories I believe that a horror film would be most enjoyed by the Explorer as they are attracted to new things and adventures. As new frontiers they would be the first to try and experience new things and they would enjoy the many plots and twists within a horror film. 

Research into a similar film

I have found the movie ‘Carrie’ which is similar to the idea that my group and I have for our trailer, they are both about a young girl who feels like an outcast and sieves to cause terror upon others through an act of revenge:

Due to ‘Carrie’ also being a horror movie it would be quite useful for us to use the trailer for ‘Carrie’ as inspiration for our own work, for the following reasons that I have found whilst analysing the trailer;

• The use of chiaroscuro; low key and high contrast lighting, to create a dark, ominous effect

• Tracking shot towards the cupboard suggests something sinister to do with the cupboard

• Having the characters head down connotes insecurity and in the first few clips introducing her she seems very shy and lonely, a lot of the time people are laughing around her and sometimes even at her but she never joins in. Even the teacher picks on her and we can tell she feels anxious all the time

• 3 second long blackout after significant moment where the disruption is shown

• Various blackouts and bright flashes during fast paced edits to give a sense of disorientation

• A good use of editing technique is how one of the shots starts fast paced and then as it tracks down the shot slows down. I personally feel this is a very creative technique to use and also would give out trailer an added sense of professionalism.

• Lighting tends to be used in a way that casts shadows on the walls and on the floor

• End section shows a sequence of shots not in chronological order; however it is enough for you to get an idea of the major event within the movie but still leaves mystery and enigmas.

• Titles appear every so often breaking up the clips but also giving the viewer a little more detail about the film that perhaps are not obvious by just watching the clips, for example one sentence that appears in small sections is, ‘In every neighbourhood there is one family with a secret no one talks about’.

• Another example is ‘this fall everyone will know her name’ the next title shown is ‘Chloe Grace Moretz’ which is obviously there for the film to show off its ‘star’ appeal. Chloe is currently a very well-known actor with many fans and this would entice her fan base into watching the film, but also increase the films ranking because of the use of a famous actor

• The last title shown is the name ‘Carrie’ this is different to the other titles are has blood dripping down the letters. This associates the name Carrie with connotations such as danger and death.  

• Further analysis on the titles shows that the white font on a black background creates binary oppositions such as good vs evil and religious vs sinful which are themes made apparent within the trailer. Not only this but the Serif font suggests that the movie will not be easy-going and the viewer will have to concentrate.

• The trailer starts with quite a strange and sinister song sung by a woman, who we assume is the mother. In the background of this we can here screams and this opens the trailer on quite an ominous note.

• A deep bass not can be heard whenever a title is shown which further adds tension to the trailer

• There are a couple of J and L cuts where you can hear the diegetic voice of someone talking but you cannot see the clip in which they are speaking until later. This is quite a good technique to use in a trailer as it makes it seems less like the actual movie.

• To end the trailer there is a title page showing ways to get in touch with the movie etc and also the production logos which were also shown at the beginning of the trailer.

Costume Drama Conventions

As we have now decided to base a section of our trailer in the past I have decided that it would be useful to look up some costume drama conventions.

Most importantly with a costume drama, they use very elaborate costumes and settings to portray the particular time period and to achieve this it can prove to be quite costly. For example the BBC's 2005 adaptation of 'Bleak House'is reported to have cost £8 million which in actual fact was seen as a worthwhile investment due to the popularity of the series.

Set Design

• The interiors are usually of a very lavish production design with built sets to ensure that modern day items particularly smaller and unnoticeable things such as plug sockets or wires are not present as this would take away the realism of the piece. Obviously we do not have the money or time to build a set and therefore cinematography will become extremely important aspect to make sure no modern day technologies can be seen in shot.

• Period dramas often shoot on location using the advantage of existing heritage sites. An example is the use of a small village Bampton which is used for filming within the popular TV show 'Downton Abbey' because the village has not been modified to suit modern day life and therefore looks very authentic.

Costume

• Costume is a very important issue with period dramas because it must be factually and historically correct and also it must match the fashion of the time period the film is set in. Therefore I must make sure to conduct detailed research into children's outfits of the war time and perhaps buy particular necessities to make the trailer look realistic. 

• An example of a TV series which was complemented on it's use of costume is the ITV production of 'Mr Selfridge' set in 1908 London, the men wore beautifully tailored suits and the females dressed in fur, extravagant hats and big jewels. Not only this but to whole show revolves around womens fashion and how it changes throughout the years.

The picture here shows two characters meeting for lunch, a whole entirely different experience to what we envisage in the 21st century. 

The Narrative

• Period dramas stereotypically contain a 'feminised' narrative about aspirational female characters, fighting for respect and individualism, commonly The Suffragettes but yet still hegemonic, conventional representation of gender including dominant masculinity and women being framed as objects of desire for the 'male gaze'. 

• The Narrative also tends to be multi-stranded meaning that each character has a story of their own, these usually include themes of love, affairs, death and family life.  

• The Narrative also appeals to an audience of nostalgia who perhaps lived through the set time period and find it comforting to be brought back or even simply a curious audience keen to find out how people used to live.

Common camera techniques

• Within costume drama's many high angles are used to connote aristocracy and dominance

• Through the use of high key lighting usually a saturated colour palette is achieved connoting wealth and status.

Creating Ideas

To begin out initial planning session we developed our ideas using a technique adopted from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg from when they created ‘Hot Fuzz’ This technique was using flipcharts to write down any ideas we came up with initially.

After we had decided on a genre we wrote down a couple of horror conventions and typical settings or characters you would find, initially we struggled coming up with a basic storyline for our film trailer however we then remembered the story in which we had looked at in one of our lessons which was, ‘A man called story’ (Mason: 2009) in which the moral was, that within every story, truth can be found hiding under its tailcoat’ and this encouraged us to think about our own and real life experiences.

This was when we thought about the recent news about a local girl who had committed suicide and after we had come up with this the ideas just kept coming and coming.

We then came up with a couple of main scenes that would be shown in the trailer and setting of the film etc. Here is when we thought that the young girl should commit suicide due to bullying and the reason she gets bullied is because she is an evacuee from London during the war.

After further brainstorming we came up with the idea that when the girl comes back as a ghost it is actually transferred to the modern day where someone, somehow, unlocks her spirit and the girl ghost wants revenge on the modern day bully.

We then decided to dedicate a page specific to the two main characters shown and here are the thoughts we came up with:

Whilst doing this research we decided to take a look at a couple of other student trailers on youtube and we actually decided that these were not that good, we definitely didn’t want to make the same mistakes that they had so we wrote down a couple of criticisms and things that we need to be careful to avoid:

An example is that we need to ensure that our trailer doesn’t turn out to look like a movie opening, clips need to be shown in random orders and not chronological.  

Advertising the film

A film makes most of its money during the opening weekend, and this is due the successful advertising used before the release date. Trailers are proven to be the most successful way of advertising the production however there are other ways of raising the films profile such as posters, websites and magazine covers.

Trailer advertisement  

A good place to show the trailer would be within the cinemas, showing the trailer before another horror genre movie comes on is a good way to market directly to a horror-loving audience. For example, when I recently went to see the new horror film ‘Annabelle’ there were adverts for other horror/thriller movies such as, ‘Horns’ or ‘Ouija’ and as a horror fan such as myself I felt enticed by these movies and I wish to see these films when they come out in cinema.  

However there are other places to advertise the trailer, for example in the adverts between programmes or even now-a-days in the adverts between songs on music players such as ‘Spotify’.  This is a really good way to market to a boarder audience of all ages and not just those who like horror movies; this is a good way to reel in audiences who simply like the look of the trailer. Especially if the trailer is shown in the adverts of a well-known programmes such as ‘The X Factor’ or ‘Coronation Street’ for example.

On the other hand, having done audience research and found that we should market more to a younger demographic we should really find ways to advertise directly to the younger generation. A perfect way to do this would be via social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, displaying a link to the trailer on someone’s personal timeline might interest them enough to want to watch the video and hopefully then go to watch the film in the cinema.

Take for example when ‘The Purge: Anarchy’ came out, I saw the trailer for this on many occasions before the film was released on adverts on the TV, iPlayer and even adverts before Youtube videos. Not only this but they also created a Facebook page which I ‘liked’ and then found posts like this whilst scrolling down my timeline, reminding me to watch the movie. 

In addition to this, on the page there is a section dedicated to the trailer where the viewer can find out information such as the genre and starring actors etc. And also watch the trailer.

I definitely think that social networking will be an aspect of advertising that my production team and I will use. It seems very effective and a great way to connect with our audience. We can also promote all of our ancillary tasks in one place and perhaps excite the audience by posting countdowns to reveal dates. 

Film Posters

Poster are a great way the capture the interest of an audience because they are intrigued by one or two snippets of the film edited to make one poster with a couple of catchy heading and vital information to help sell the film for example actors used or ratings by well-known critics.

Looking at ‘The Purge: Anarchy’ as an example again;

We can see that the title of the movie is the item that stands out the most, there is then a small print where the production companies ‘Universal Pictures’ and ‘Blumhouse Productions’ are established along with various other important figures.

Underneath the small print there are various images of the awards it has won which impresses the viewer of the poster and gives the film a higher rating. There is then a headline of ‘Welcome to America where one night a year all crime is legal’ this describes a little bit about the film so the viewer of the poster can get an idea as to whether or not they will enjoy the storyline.

We can also see ‘#Survivethenight’ which enables the viewer to use that hashtag to join  discussion on social networking sites about the movie and add their thoughts in but also easily find reviews people have written.

This is all written on a background of what could be a screenshot from the movie with some rather creepy looking characters which gives a sinister feel to the poster.

Film posters can be used as advertisement where a video cannot, for example on busses or at the bus stops, in movie theatres or even within a newspaper or magazine. 

Film Websites

Websites are yet again a very successful method of advertisement for various reasons,  not only can all the various methods of advertisement be shown here but also various factors which give the viewer a deeper insight into the movies, for example on-set photographs are screen-shots from the movie. ‘The Purge: Anarchy’ website even contains a ‘GIF’ section where short clips can be seen from the movie.

Some websites from blockbuster movies such as the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise even contain games and virtual worlds too.

However this would probably not be relevant in advertising my film as our filmed is aimed at a more teenage audience who are perhaps not interested in playing a game but more interested in watching related videos, perhaps containing the actors talking about their experiences etc.

Overall, there are endless possibilities as to how we can market our trailer, not only to a specific demographic but to a much wider audience which would perhaps help increase the awareness of the film. 

Schedule

We have created a schedule that begins next week, within the schedule we have written down all the jobs that need doing and who needs to do them. This will help keep the group organised and if we stick to the schedule closely then hopefully all the planning will be done in time to begin filming and thus all the filming will be done in time to edit

Schedule

As the producer I have adapted this into a neat, typed up version to print and hand out to each member of the crew, this will keep us all organised and hopefully the production will run smoothly and on time.

Schedule

Audience viewing

We have decided to rate our film as a 15 for a number of reasons. 

Firstly if we look back at our target audience research we found out that the most suitable age group was between 16 and 21, therefore rating our film as 15 enables 16 and 17 year-olds to view it too which I believe is important because they were the age group most likely to watch our film. 

It also means that people will assume the film will not be as gruesome and horrific as an 18 and therefore those who are less keen on horror films might feel as though they could watch this one. 

More importantly however, we could not rate our film anything below a 15 for reasons we found out whilst looking at audience theory:

Audience can be grouped into too types, a passive audience who believe what they see and are somewhat brainwashed and an active audience who take the time to think about the meaning behind what they see. The Hypodermic Needle Theory suggests that the mass audience are passive and therefore media 'injects' ideas into a passive audience in particular with horror films. 

An example of this theory is the infamous radio dramatisation of the sciene fiction novel, 'The war of the worlds' in 1938 which was performed like a contemporary new broadcast . However the audience listen to this simulation and began to believe that it was in fact a genuine account of an alien invasion and began hiding in homes and preparing weapons as an attempt to defend themselves from the supposed attack. 

In this sense, horror films can be dangerous as the audience receive the information they see, such as violence and crime and make no attempt on their part to process or challenge it thus them becoming vulnerable and easily manipulated by the film. This is especially dangerous with children who are known to be quite gullible and would perhaps watch a movie such as 'Scream' and take it's ideologies as the norm. 

Therefore our film is not suitable for children as it will contain violence in some form and therefore must be rated at least a 15. 

Within a 15 rated film the following features may be shown:

• Strong violence
• Frequent strong language
• Portrayals of sexual activity
• Strong verbal references to sex
• Sexual nudity
• Brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• Discriminatory language or behaviour
• Drug taking

Target Audience Research

For our target audience research we created a questionnaire as seen above and handed it out to 20 people between the ages 16-35.

Doing a questionnaire is proven as one of the best ways to find out about your target audience for a film, so we put together a survey and asked various members of the public to truthfully answer the questions so we can get a better understanding about how we should market our film and who to.

We concentrated the majority of our questions about horror genres as this is our chosen film genre, through which we found out that initially 6 out of 11 females asked would not want to watch a horror movie, this means that only 5 are willing to watch a horror. Whereas, looking at the male statistics we find that exactly half of the males were willing to watch a horror and the other half preferred not to.

This shows evident that in proportion to the people asked, more females preferred not to watch a movie whereas more males did want to watch a movie; however the fact that the results are so close makes the clarity of the survey unequal.

I decided to further this research into the proportions of male vs. females who watch horror movies by looking at statistic on IMDb. However, even though with most of the movies I looked at there are more males watching, The gap between them is still very close and therefore I believe that targeting to a certain gender would not be a good idea.

The fact that there is not much difference between the males and females shows that perhaps a horror movie does not have a distinct gender demographic however, looking at ages we find that the majority of under 21’s preferred to watch a horror movie whereas it was more popular for the 21+’s to say they didn’t want to watch a horror. 

Thus, it becomes evident that a horror movie should be targeted at a younger/teenage audience.

When asked what people prefer to see in a horror movie a clear majority (60%) said that they prefer supernatural happenings over torture or slasher. This bodes well for us as the main body of our trailer is based on supernatural events occurring.

Relating this pie chart to the common horror movies that showed up when asked about favourite horrors, we found that more ghostly movies like, ‘The Woman in black’, ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘Mirrors’ were more popular than the likes of ‘Saw’ and this shows that perhaps analysing movies with supernatural sub-genres and ghostlike events such as ‘Mirrors’ would be a good idea as this is clearly the more popular option whereas Saw and more gory movies do not appeal to a very large audience according to our statistics. Other films mentioned by those questioned are generally of the supernatural theme rather than torture or slasher.

Finally, it is interesting to find that more people would find a little girl creepier than a little boy in a horror film.

Many successful Horror’s use young girls as a ghostly presence and therefore I believe that the use of a young girl would increase the fear felt by our audience and perhaps allow them to sympathise more with the character and make it more relatable.

Overall, the questionnaire proved very usual as I know have an idea that we should aim our film to a teenage audience perhaps 16-21 therefore making our film a 15 rating. I also believe that our film would be more successful if the main villain character was a young girl who haunted people rather than a male who killed people.