Graphs for Questionnaire

How old are you?

This graph shows that the best audience to aim our product at are older teens and young adults, which is good because our opening is a teen horror so we have a good audience waiting.

Are you male or female?

Because this graph shows more males watch horror films compared to females we decided to include a female protagonist to appeal more to a male audience.

Which genre horror film do you prefer?

Due to the public preferring to watch slasher films rather than other genres of horror films we decided to fit the slasher theme into our teen horror opening to appeal to a wider audience.

Question 5 - How did you attract/ address your audience?

The audience of my media product would be teenagers the reason for this is because the protagonists in the film are all teenagers which the younger audience would be able to relate themselves too. As the film is set in a school every teenager watching it will be able to relate themselves too it especially for the hatred of a teacher which many students experience in their adolescence. The characters are also stereotypically youthful teenage characters which many teenagers try and relate themselves too.
In our opening we used intertextual references such as the names of the characters and the weapon of choice. We decided like the killer in scream our villain would use the same weapon for every death this was so people who enjoyed scream may be attracted to our film too. Other intertextual references we had included the names of our characters we decided to use names of other characters from different horror films such as Sydney from scream and Dr.Karloff the actor who plays Frankenstein.
We didn't really have any contemporary issues in our production however we did include the theme of power and anger, when Dr.Karloff see's the note ' I hate Dr.Karloff' his anger floods out and he kills Laura.
After a small group of people watched our opening we were able to receive feedback on it filled with both strengths and weaknesses however we couldnt do alot with the feedback as our film had not been finished and finally edited so we decided to focus on the weaknesses and tweak our film to make it more appealing to the audience, many of the strenths were similar for example 'shots are kept steady and clear' and 'it should be a good film once it's finished' the encouraged us to complete our work to a good quality to entice the audience with our opening.

We knew that our opening had to be interesting and capture the viewers attention this was so we could hook our target audience, we managed to do this by engaging with the audience with the conventions, and interesting characters such as Dr. Karloff.

Preliminary Task

Psych 1 Opening

Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our media product we aimed to represent teenagers throughout the whole of it as we created a teen horror. As we are representing teens in our opening we decided to almost copy similar aspects from other horror films for example we had the blonde girl Laura die first in the opening just like Casey from Scream. We also kept the darker haired girl named Jessica alive at the end as the final girl, as brown haired girls are stereotypically seen as smarter than blondes, strong, less ditzy and able to survive alone. We also had the only boy dressed in smart office wear to connote that he is more geeky than a strong jock which are usually stereotyped in teen horrors.
We also represented the only adult in our teen horror as a villain, the reason we chose to do this is because he is a teacher, we wanted him to be represented as a bit of a crazy man who students thought was weird, creepy and abnormal. A teacher who was unpopular with most students which is evident within the first few scenes when you see Laura writing 'I hate Dr. Karloff' on the sheet of paper she is supposed to be writing lines on. We decided to represent the adult as the villain to portray a negative image of adults to appeal more to the younger audience.

Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the process of creating my product i have come across many different technologies the main one being blogger, at first i didn't know how to use the site until i realized it was simple and organized my work clearly so it was easy to find and edit, i also learnt how to add and embed items into essays to give examples too, this gave me a chance to explain the mise-en-scene better as well as make my work my interesting. As well as blogger i also learnt how to use the editing software as i did not do this on my preliminary task so i learnt what to do from scratch. I learnt how to add transitions to shots such as fade in and out which i added to the first scene of our opening. As my main role in the production was filming i learnt how to use the HD cameras along with the tripod and keeping my hand steady on handheld shots and sticking to the 180 degree rule which is where the characters in the scene should have the same relationship to each other when it comes to left and right, we also used the rule of thirds in shooting making sure the characters stayed in the correct places for the viewer t notice first.. During this project i also became more equipped with the internet learning how to use the blog, presentation websites such as prezi, youtube and google.

Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

 In our audience research we found that most teenagers watch horror films between the ages of 16-18 this is most likely because of the age restriction of the film. We also found that the majority of people who watched horror films were male with most of the participants preferring a female protagonist this is due to the history of the slasher film with its long running criticism of exploitation of women in danger so the obvious response to this was to show a female protagonist (creating the male gaze) who could overcome all the events of the film and vanquish the killer. This is why we decided to include this in our opening. We also found that slasher films were more popular than werewolves and vampires for the main reason that they are more realistic and believable because of this we decided that our film would be a slasher horror, to appeal to a wider audience.
As well as this i found that there is also a large amount of people who enjoy watching horror films for the scare factor and shock value this is why films such as hostel and the human centipede are successful, also this success and hype around the shocking images you can expect to see in this film gather and even larger audience who just want to see what people are talking about.
A stereotypical model of my audience would be a male viewer who is a teenager and who has a keen interest in horror/ slasher movies, the reason for this is because the protagonist in the movie is a female, attracting the male audience more than the female audience. We also have a few intertextual references such as the names Freddie from The Nightmare On Elm Street and Sydney from Scream, two popular mainstream movies which were highly successful.