Questionnaire Analysis

These graphs are based on the number or people who selected particular answers opposed to the percentages of people, there were 25 questionnaires completed in total.

I wanted to know the gender of the people filling out the questionnaire as if the results differed through males and females this shows a how males think differently about horrors to female however this was not the case and there was no link between the answers given and the gender of the persons filling it out.

This question gave me an idea of what teens would like as I was focusing my research mainly on their age range. Although it was also important to get a general overview of people’s opinions and to see whether age had any correlation to what types of horrors they preferred. There was no direct link between age and the opinions expressed however this could be due to the fact that I only surveyed 25 people and these 25 people may be very differing in opinion.

The results of this question enabled me to gain a general opinion of the conventional victim or what people believe the conventional victim to be. As the majority of opinions were that a female victim is better I am going to use a female as the main victim in my horror opening. I did wonder whether the reason that female victims were popular was because of ‘male gaze’ however many females also wanted the victim to be female.

I felt this was an important question as if we were marketing our film the internet is a prime tool which we could use for advertising as all the people I surveyed used the internet.

This again helps us to understand what methods of advertising could be effective, as the majority of people use facebook this would be a great place to advertise. Internet advertising is far more cost effective as you don’t have any hard materials to purchase.

This gave me an insight into what people really enjoyed whilst watching a film, although most people did choose psychological some also picked more than one genre this suggest that although on the whole people do enjoy psychological other factors such as the films composition and acting can influence the opinions of audience members.

Non- linear films are popular with a lot of people however I do feel that as the majority of people I asked were media students they enjoy a more in depth challenging film than people who go to the cinema for something to do although films such as the hangover have a non-linear composition and are mainstream. I personally enjoy non-linear films but linear is also popular, I think other factors also come into play as such as how the film is composed simply having a non-linear film isn’t going to attract an audience. Non-linear and linear opening are important in establishing the rest of the film, if a non-linear opening is produced it brands the film as a challenging film which usually has a bit plot twist whereas a linear opening is much more conventional. We are going to use a linear opening as we want our film to be as generic and mainstream as possible as it will attract the largest audience of mainstreamers.
It is important to establish the tone of the film through the opening, in the opening there needs to be either conflict or a dramatic event which hooks the audience into wanting it watch the rest of the film. If the opening is boring an audience member won’t want to watch the whole film this is why it is vital for the opening to be engaging for the audience.
When asked to draw an image of what the ideal horror victim and villain would be, almost all people drew a large figure over a small figure suggesting dominance through height and also many drew masked or disfigured face which I am going to take on board and use a cloak or mask for our villain.
The main convention of a horror film listed was death this is because in almost every conventional horror there is at least one death even if this is imaginary for the character an image of a killing is in almost every horror movie an audience member has seen. This makes me think that a death must be included in our opening to draw the audience in.
The question which involved predicting the outcome of the female in the picture 100% of people wrote that she would die by some turn of fate, this shows how people are influenced by conventional horrors as they are used to the victims who die being female not male so they automatically think the female in the image will die.
This questionnaire has helped me to understand the opinions of a general section of the public. Some of the ideas expressed have shown me what to include in my horror for example death and the fact that psychological films are most popular leads me to head in this direction of sub genre. The overwhelming response was that a female should be the victim in a horror and this I will defiantly take on board and use as I personally have this opinion too.

Questionnaire

Are you male or female?

How old are you?

Do you watch horror films regularly?

What is your favourite genre of film for example action, horror etc?

Do you have a favourite horror film (please state below)?


Do you own any of the following items? - (please tick next to the items you own)
Mobile
Laptop
I phone
Blackberry
Please state and list here if you have any other technology which is capable of video playback
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Are you an internet user?
Do you visit any of these websites on a daily basis?
Facebook
Bebo
IMBD
Youtube
MSN hotmail
Myspace
Any other websites please list here: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Where do you consume films? (Please circle below)
Internet
Blockbuster
Cinemas like Odeon
Television
Love film
Illegal download (piracy)
Others Please list ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Do you prefer the victim of a horror to be male or female?
Which of these images suggest the genre of horror the best? (Please circle 1)


Which sub-genre of horror do you prefer? (Please circle)
Apocalyptic(zombie) , psychological, supernatural, slasher, monster,
Other please specify …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….........
Do you enjoy films to be linear or non linear?

Identify the main conventions of horror films e.g. blood, death etc

the deluge

Question 6

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

While constructing my media product, I learnt how to use a variety of things that benefitted my research and media product.

To display the information for my media product I used a blog. Blogs are very useful in which information can be categorised and others can give feedback on my work to help improve my research. They are also useful for sharing links to internet and uploading videos from sites like YouTube. You can also add decorative items to help demonstrate you work. I learnt how to embed videos, personalise my workspace and organise work. This helped towards reviewing my work and making it more convenient for others to read.

YouTube is a website in which anyone, worldwide, can upload videos and share them among everyone. This was a useful piece of technology in which I was able to upload my prelim task and final piece. It was also very helpful in my research because I was able to gain clips from horror films and analyse them as well as show them in my research on my blog. During the construction of my product I learnt how to use YouTube to help improve my work and use the videos I obtained to create examples, emphasising any point I made during my research and planning.

IMDb is a popular site used by a lot of movie fans and people who are interest in sharing their opinion of films. I used this site to research films and gain statistics on how people rated films of the horror genre. I learnt how to find information on the website and use it in my research while using user ratings to confirm the evidence I attained. This was a very helpful thing to learn because it improved my research.

During the construction of my product, it was essential to use cameras and to do this I had to learn different techniques and learn how to properly utilize them. Cameras are portable, which makes them adequate for manoeuvrability and easier to make a variety of shots, such as shaky cam, 180 degree pan and a first person view shot. Learning to use these techniques helped improve the performance of my final piece.

Adobe Premiere Elements was a new piece of technological software that I learnt to use when editing my media product. Although I only helped on the editing I learnt how to apply a variety of effects that made our media product successful. I learnt how to dim the light to make it seem dark, to fade in and out between shots and how apply titles and credits.



Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

To attract our target audience we used a variety of different ways to relate to the audience. We did this by researching what teenagers (our target audience) did in their own time and we categorised them into social groups. The social group we particularly aimed for was the ‘stereotypical’ teenager that lives a mundane life of hanging around with friends and doing school work.

In our production we used a teenage cast, which would relate to the audience and attract them. We shot in a teenager’s house to give the audience a sense of familiarity and, using our research to find out of the audiences fear of technologies, we used props to relate to our audience. We chose to use a Blackberry phone because this was a popular and commonly used phone that people between the ages of 18 – 25 used very often. This prop, with a pink cover, was used to attract many females that, shown in my research, are very popular thus attracting them successfully.

The costume of our character was typical teenage clothing and was also used to attract a female audience who could relate to it and a male audience who could admire the female cast. The props, such as the handbag and mascara, were shown clearly to relate to an audience that goes out regularly and uses these props when getting ready to go out. This attracts them because they can feel a connection with the character and is much more effective when the character is killed.

Another way we attracted the audience was to refer to other horror movies. Two movies in particular we used were Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) and Scream (Wes Craven, 1996). These both used similar techniques, in which they challenged conventions by killing the most popular actor first. We related to Psycho by using a bathroom scene as the place of the murder. This attracted an older audience that remember the famous death of Marion Crane. A younger audience can also relate because Psycho is portrayed in many of today’s T.V shows.

We also attracted a teenage audience by referring to Scream. We did this by using a caped villain, which was also done in Scream as the famed villain known as ‘Ghostface’. From IMDb I learnt that this film was very popular among teenagers of the age 15 – 29 years old:

So by relating to a very popular villain we were certain to be successful in attracting our target audience.

Our media product was shown to our fellow student, who filled out a questionnaire rating our camera work, lighting, etc. They also commented on our overall product and what we could have done better and a lot of people commented on the lighting. Another highly commented problem was the sound effects and how the timing was not synced with the actor’s lips. We read these comments and tried our hardest to fix and perfect them.

I think we were successful in ‘hooking’ the audience with our horror opening because the feedback we attained was very positive and one question asking “Would you watch the rest of the film?” was answered ‘Yes’ by almost everyone. This shows that we were able to attract our audience by using aspects they could relate to such as other films of the horror genre, popular props and a close relationship to the characters.

Question 4

Who would be the audience of you media product?

Initially our aim was to create a teen horror, meaning that the audience need to be the age range of 15-20 years old.

In my research I studied how films target their audience and how successful they are in achieving this. One film I studied was Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and using IMDb, I found out what audience they appealed to and studied from looking at this graph:

From the graph it shows that Males, of any age range, enjoyed this film more than Females. I think they did this by introducing a young, popular female cast. It also shows that a lot of people, who are in my targeted age-range, enjoyed it; I think they did this by following conventions and appealing to the audience.

Another film I researched was Scream (1996) which mocked conventions, as well as following them. This graph shows the ratings given by IMDb users:



This graph also shows that a male audience preferred the film to a female audience.

Using these rating, it shows that the audience for my media product is likely to be a male audience aged between 15 and 29. I think this because from my research I learnt that teenage males watch teen horrors more often and, from the ratings of Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, I feel that my media product has aspects of both these films, such as a young female cast and conventions of horror.

Question 3

What kind of media institute might distribute your product and why?
My product appeals to both mainstream and independent audiences. The low-budget and unknown actors contribute to an independent audience such as ‘Hellbride (Pat Higgins, 2007)’, which also has unrecognisable actors and is a highly unknown film among the mainstream audience.
My media product also contributes to a mainstream audience because the plot is very in-depth and conventional such as many of the popular mainstream films that are shown in renowned cinemas. For example, ‘Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)’ has a psychological and slasher villain, which my media product can relate to because my plot revolves around an insane character that uses a knife to wound it’s victims then drowns them. This film appeals to a mainstream audience and closely relates to my media product, although my product doesn’t contain any famous actors, its plot is well developed and would be highly popular among a mainstream audience.
Using my research of mainstream and independent films, I am positive that my film would be a mainstream film and would benefit by being shown in popular cinemas such as Odeon and Vue.
I would contact Working Title and consider working with them in distributing my media product because they are a highly successful production company and have produced many popular films.

To market my product I would use a viral marketing campaign, in which I would spread little clues and bits of information among the internet and would release a trailer that creates a lot of hype among the mainstream audience. This was most effect with Cloverfield in which the used viral marketing to create a ‘buzz’ resulting in the film being cheaply and successfully publicised.

Prelim Task

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When researching teen horrors a majority of mainstream horrors focused on typical teenagers, teenagers that live mundane lives and relate to most British teens. We decided to follow this tradition because we felt that if the audience could relate to the victim, it would have a bigger impact on them, resulting in the production being more scary and entertaining.

 We related to the audience by following the character, Marie, while she was getting ready for a party and doing typical routine things. These appeal to all classes of people who often attend social events, which is why our production is able to represent any class of people, making it relatable when the victim is killed.

From my research I learnt that most women are represented as weak and vulnerable, such as Tina Gray (Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984) who is stalked and toyed with by Freddy Krueger at the beginning of the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn_DjzN8410

We decided to follow this tradition by using a female character at the start and using a tilt shot to emphasize the danger she was in, this then led to her death. These representations wasn’t used to mock women and call them weak but to show how vulnerable any person from a social group could be on their own, thus making it relative and more scary.

In conclusion I feel that our media production represents social groups in a negative way, in which it shows them as vulnerable and in constant danger anywhere. Although it may be a negative representation it emphasizes fear and danger, which is highly required in any horror production.

Actors

We chose to use ourselves as actors due to the high level of commitment we needed from our actors. It was a perfect solution to our problem as we had both males and females in our group, Holly played the lead female character and Elliot played the masked villian. They are both teenagers, which was required to help relate to the audience.

Storyboards

Schedual 3/2/2011

The Deluge, Group 2
Date 3/2/2011	Weather Partly Cloudy	Shots Storyboard * of * (Varies)	Time 16:00 Duration 1 hour 30 mins
Equipment Camera Steady Camera Tripod Batteries Tapes/ SD card Props + Costumes Laptop Causual clothing	Contacts Holly Gowler- 078******** Elliot Wright- 078******** Jonjo Sharp- 078********	Special Arrangements Transport-  Walk Lunch-  N/A Arrival Time- 16:00 Context- Location- Holly’s House

Propp's Theory

Propps theory explained:

Vladimir Propp was a Russian critic who developed Propps theory which explained that every story has to have the same character types to give it structure this was a belief of Propp that characters provide the structure for text.

These are the characters that Propps theory comments on:

The Hero – This is the character which is set on a quest to gain something

The Villain – An obstacle in the heroes way someone who deliberately blocks the heroes                     path

The Donor – An object that will help the hero is provided by the donor

The Dispatcher – A messenger this is the character who sends the hero on their mission

The False Hero – False claims are made by this character

The Helper – Helps the hero

The Princess – A reward for the hero

The Father – will reward the hero for their effort

This research was inspired by:

 (http://www.adamranson.plus.com/Propp.htm)

Propps theory is effective however it has flaws and is not a theory that can be relevant to every film, the theory was introduced fairytales were known by all as modern media did not exist because of this Propps theory fits almost every older folk tale but modern films drift slightly out of the norm. An example of a film which has the majority of the characters which Propps theory explores is Scream (DIR.Wes Craven).

The hero in scream if Sidney

The villain- There are two villains in scream Stu and Billy

The donor- Gail weathers gives Sidney the drive to combat her killers and defend her mother’s name.

 

The dispatcher- In scream the dispatcher is Sidney’s mother her death sends Sidney on a mission to uncover the real killer and to stop her torment.

The false hero- Billy is the false hero but also Cotton Weary as he is in jail for a murder he didn’t commit.

The helper- Randy is the helper he provides Sidney with guidance through describing the conventions of horror films.

Her father- Sidney’s dad

The princess- This is the a thought rather than a person e.g. justice or truth

Using the theory can help towards structuring my production in which, it will help

develop my characters and decide the roles they will play in the plot.

Fonts

Font design for our horror opening

After we settled upon the title of ‘the deluge’ for our horror film, we decided we needed a suitable font to represent the tone our opening was trying to take. Due to the death of a character in a bath, water was a constant theme throughout the film, with many others dying from being drowned as well. We needed a font that would fit well with this constant theme. I decided to use the sites 1001fonts.com and dafont.com to find suitable fonts. After I've found some suitable designs I intend to alter them in Photoshop to tweak them to a design that would be perfect for our project.

Fonts from dafont.com

Font 1: children should not play with dead things
This font is particularly effective at fitting with the theme of our horror opening, as it appears to have some sort of liquid dripping from the words. The rounded edges and uneven shapes can be linked to water itself, making this font a good choice for our project

Font 2: plasma drip
plasma drip would make a good font type to use for our horror opening. Its bubbly edges represent flowing water very well and fits with the theme of our film. Much like the previous font ‘ children should not play with dead things’, this font also has water dripping off of the letters, further tying in with the theme of water.

Font 3: raptor kill
the font of raptor kill is both a good and bad font to use for our film opening. It successfully signifies water by having it drip from the letters. But on the other hand the letters aren’t defined and are quite hard to read. This is a problem due to the title ‘the deluge’ being odd, and it’s essential that people know what it is. This is one of the fonts I would consider choosing for the title of our horror opening.

 

Font 4:DuerTWOo

To achieve the desired effect on this font design I wrote out tHE DeLuGe, instead of ‘the deluge’. I did this because it gave a far better effect, and made the font look far more ominous and chilling. The fonts main style looks a lot like its in the style of watercolour brushstrokes, which fits in very well with the theme of our horror film.

Font 5: dink

While this font doesn’t really represent water in any way, It does signify insanity very well. It achieves this by having larges cracks throughout the E letters. This would be fitting for the general plot of the our film, but would be a bad representation of our opening, which has very little to do with insanity, only water

Questionnaire Draft

From my questionnaire I hope to find out what aspects of a horror are popular and which would be most effective when producing my horror scene.

Questionnaire

What gender are you?

Male [  ]                   Female [  ]

How old are you?

_____________

How often do you watch Horrors?

Very often [  ]     Sometimes [  ]          Rarely [  ]         Never [  ]

Why do you watch them this often?

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

__________________________________________________

What is your favourite sub-genre of horror?

Zombie [  ]       Supernatural [  ]       B-Movie [  ]     Apocalyptic [  ]

Vampire [  ]     Slasher [  ]       Teen [  ]     Monsters/ Aliens [  ]

What types of Devices do you own?

Mobile Phone [  ]    iPod [  ]   Mp3 Player [  ]    iPhone [  ]

Blackberry [  ]   Laptop [  ]  Home PC [  ]

Which websites do you use on a regular basis?

Facebook [  ]    MySpace  [  ]   IMDB [  ]    YouTube [  ]

eBay [  ]    Hotmail [  ]    Yahoo [  ]    iTunes [  ]

If you saw these devices/ websites used throughout a horror movie

would you be more scared?

Yes [  ]    No [  ]

Why?

______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

How do you watch movies?

Online [  ]     LoveFilm [  ]   Cinema [  ]    TV [  ]    Illegal Download [  ]

Borrowed [  ]     Bought [  ]

When do you mostly watch horrors?

On your own [  ]    With Friends [  ]     Both [  ]     Depends [  ]

Where do you hear about new movies?

TV [  ]            Word of Mouth [  ]     Internet [  ]     Radio [  ]

Posters [  ]     Billboard [   ]

If you saw a character at the start of a horror film, what would you expect to happen

to them?

Last 'til the end [  ]     Die at the start [  ]        Be the Hero [  ]      Be the Villain [  ]

Why?

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

Which of the following do you expect to see in a horror? (Pick 1 or more)

Blood [  ]    Weapons [  ]    Disguises/ Masked Villains [  ]    Teenagers [  ]

Gore [  ]    Ghosts [  ]   The 'Final' Girl [  ]     Monsters [  ]    Drugs [  ]

Sex [  ]    Alcohol [  ]     Romance [  ]