Target Audience

We had to decide what target audience we wanted to aim our horror trailer towards. After researching the conventions in modern horror films. It is important to understand the target audience for you film so you know the type of content you want to include and also in the case of a horror film the tone or graphic levels of the content. We recognised that the target audience for most modern horror films is roughly 18 - 24 as you can see form the graph below sourced from the 'national metro'.

This graph shows that 48% of the people who go to see horror movies are 18 - 24.

We were then left with the decision of wether to go for a specific target or a more broad spectrum. One of the advantages of having a more specific target is that you can gear your film towards that audience you do not have to worry about appealing to a wider group of tastes. However one of the disadvantages of having a smaller target audience is that you may not make as much money because you will have a smaller audience which means that less people will come to see the film. An example of a film that primarily appealed to a small audience was tormented which was aimed at teens and only grossed according to 'the numbers' $ 452,479. This is a small amount compared to some horrors which went for a wider audience such as 'The Amityville Horror' which grossed overall $ 108,047,131 this is considerably more than than 'Tormented' this could be attributed to the fact that 'The Amityville Horror' appealed to a much larger audience and so grossed more at box office. However there is a large difference between audiences in america and in the UK. A better comparison for tormented would be 28 days later which has the same type of audience. This film grossed $ 82,719,885 which is a much larger amount than tormented. There may be a difference though because $15,000,000 was put into production however tormented only used $1,500,000.

In the end we decided to a smaller audience from 15-24 and appeal to a mainly an E class audience this consists of students in higher education and A level students. This means that we will be aiming to get a 15 certificate so we can have some more mature themes in our film.

Demon Face

One of group members produced this video of changing a face to a 'demon face' which will be one of the integral parts of our Trailer.

Second pitch

we did our second pitch to Miss Mcluckie for our new trailer idea called 'vacancy on violet hill'. We showed her our plot synopsis and explained howe we would film and edit it.

She gave us very positive feedback and said it was essential that we analyse as many trailers as possible to understand the kind of conventions and techniques involved in trailers.

Second Ideas

Today we discussed what type of horror trailer we would be producing. Horror was one of the first genres of film to be produced the first horror being Le Manoir du diable translated into the house of the the devil.

We chose to follow to normal conventions of a film trailer in order to promote it successfully. Charles Derry argues that there are three sub-genres witinh horror these are

1. Horror-of-the-personality: Threats in this story are normally stemming from human beings

2. Horror-of-Armageddon: A me

nace which usually comes from nature going mad threatens human’s existence

3. Horror-of-the-Demonic: Horror stems from the idea that evil otherworldly entities exist

We created a mind map of the main ideas we had as a group they are numbered showing which sub genre they are related to.

After creating the mind map we decided on three different stories that we could into more detail about and create a plot story. The three stories we decided on is.

1. A man has recently been released from a hospital with head injuries. When returning to his given address he walks through the front door and his house starts to reveal itself as a labyrinth of bizarre and dark events. When he walks through a door the setting completely changes. He always watches people being hunted by a crazed masked killer from a removed perspective like a fly on the wall. Eventually he realises that the killer was himself before he suffered from amnesia.

2. A boy and a father move into a new house in the country and begin to hallucinate occasionally seeing each other as demonic figures. Strange occurrences take place in the house; bizarre reflections in mirrors, sinister shadows creeping across the walls etc. Both the father and son find themselves being haunted by each other. The father tries to discover if his house is haunted and why, but he eventually starts to suspect his son of being possessed by an evil entity.

3. A farmer begins to suspect that the scarecrows on his farm are moving independently of their own whilst he is asleep. All his possessions start to go missing and turn up in strange places. His anxiety is heightened when the animals on his farm get slaughtered over night. Locals then tell him that they’ve seen men walking around outside his house at night suspiciously. His objective is to uncover the mystery.

We decided upon the second story this was because.

• We decided not to use the first idea because although we all thought that the first idea was the best it does not evoke the horror and fear that we were looking to evoke within our audience.
• We chose not to use the third idea because it would be hard to organise the trailer as we do not have access to a farm whereas we can easily get access to a house.

Our initial pitch

On wednesday the 4th of december we pitched our idea to Mrs Mcluckie our tutor. The feedback she gave us was.

• It was dangerous to take guns into public where you can be arrested under anti terror laws.
• Using copyright music was not allowed and so the soundtrack will be very difficult to produce.

Based upon these criticism we decided to change our idea for a film trailer to a horror trailer. This is because we feel that it will be easier to produce a soundtrack using programs such as garage band. Also filming a horror trailer involves less risk because we are not using guns also. The conventions of horror film trailers also mean that it will be easier to produce a good quality trailer and capitalize on the skills of the group.

Initial Meetings

During our initial meetings we decided to produce a thriller film trailer feeling that this would help us to capitalise on our likes and skills. Some of the thriller ideas we came up with were; a murder, a chase, hostage situation, terrorist attack and a robbery.

We decided to produce a crime thriller based around the concept of a chase between two characters using character development to develop the plot to a decent standard. We decided to make ac rime thriller with this premise because we all have an interest in crime thrillers and we all had a lot of ideas about how to make the trailer. We decided that we all the same taste in films some of our favorite crime thriller films being The Departed, Pulp Fiction and collateral.

In our next meeting we decided to mind some ideas for names for our protagonist. Some of the names we came up with were:

• Myles
• Jason
• John
• Chris

Some of the names we produced for the antagonist were:

• Vincent
• Alfie
• Frankie
• Jason
• Eddie
• Marcus
• Desmond
• Jack

Some of the titles we mind mapped for the film:

• The slip
• Runners High
• Loose Fortune
• Mile a Minute
• Dead Venture
• Live Wire
• Blind Alley

After some discussion within the group and feedback from our peers we decided upon miles for the protagonist, Alfie for the antagonist and Mile a Minute for the title.

Our initial plot idea was : Young hacker Myles Harvard finds an Internet forum request to hack a database online for a phenomenal fee. Myles hacks the data from the database after being told to not look at the data he stole. Myles looks at the data anyway. After retrieving the data he is told to meet the Antagonist in town so that he can make the exchange for money. Myles waits for him on a street corner when a car shows up and the Antagonist invites him in. In the car the Antagonist is ready to give him the money when Myles is tricked into revealing that he read the data. The Antagonist is about to shoot Myles when the car crashes by chance. Myles jumps out of the car taking both the disk of information and the money while the Antagonist is disoriented. Myles returns to his house to find that the police are inside investigating his room after his IP address is tracked from the hacking job. Myles now has no one to turn to knowing he’s a convict and chooses to run with the money he took from the Antagonist.

We are going to pitch our idea to our tutor within the next few days and hope to receive feedback on our idea.

Our brief

After meeting as a group we decided we would make a film trailer this is the brief given by the OCR board.

A promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the film;
• a film magazine front cover, featuring the film;
• a poster for the film.

The two ancillary tasks we chose to do were:

A film magazine front cover, featuring the film.

A poster for the film.

We decide to do these two ancillary tasks because they are well suited to the strengths of the group as all of the group members have lots of experience using photoshop and indesign.

Shooting schedule

This is a shooting schedule that josh made whilst me and jacob were doing other things.
VACANCY ON VIOLET HILL: Shooting Schedule

Key:
NO. I have given each shot that we are going to capture a number so we can write it on our clapper board. (This will make organizing clips in the editing process easier)
S.L. NO. This stands for Shot List Number. This means we can reference the shot with the shot list we wrote earlier. (This can help us when setting shots up because the shot list details the shots with greater depth)
SB. NO. This stands for StoryBoard Number. This means we can reference the shot with the storyboard that Jacob drew earlier. (This can help us when setting shots up because the storyboard will remind us how Jacob visualized the shot)