Saturday, 4 October 2014

4.2: The Storylines

The Story Line

Opening the story with a female damsel in distress which explores the depths of the cellar. Her death leads to many murder mysteries and what is actually happening in this cellar. A group of archaeologists uncover the secrets of the catacombs that lay beneath the cellar. 

Who
At the start we decided on a young female role to show the damsel in distress side of the horror conventions. This sort of character would be played by Emily Perkins who features in films such as Insomnia (2002) and Ginger Snaps (2000).
For one of the archaeologists we was thinking of an actress such as Jodie Foster as she appears in physiological horrors such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Panic Room (2002).
Where
We chose a cellar as many horrors such as The Conjuring and The Hole. This features many horror conventions such as dark places, cobwebs and white bed sheets. 

When
It doesn't specifically have to be dark as in the night time as the cellar/basement usually is a dark gloomy place anyway so the filming can be done whenever we need. The room should be dark with low lighting to set the dramatic horror mood. 


Our New Storyline

During editing our first movie, we decided to change the plot as it didn't work and didn't look like a horror movie. We changed all of our old work and started from scratch with a new plot and setting. The plot is as follows;

A new family have moved into a regular house. Little do they know that they have moved into a nightmare. When the mother starts to notice strange happenings in the house, she begins to investigate finding out her son is causing all the problems. The family begins to fall apart, but is it really the son or someone else?... 

In the opening scene, we will show the mother and son as the father isn't a protagonist in this film. We decided this because it narrows the actors down so the audience can become more attached to two protagonists rather than a lot creating a more emotional bond. By portraying a female protagonist, this brings the females which we researched to be the main viewers of horror movies like our new movie, creating a bigger chance for a bigger audience. By casting a female as the main person, this gives chance for the female audiences to relate to the character as many viewers were between 14 years - 24 years which may be the age for young mothers or having siblings of the same age as the boy cast with the horrible curse. The audiences will see glimpses of the 'doppelganger' type ghost which haunts the house in the wardrobe and the stairway which isn't obvious but when seen will create a jump scare, a main convention of present horror movies. This will create tension and make the audience want to know the history of the house or what the doppelganger is, or what it is. This will make them want to watch the hidden boy again meaning more views for our movie and also the jump scares will make audiences want to share it with friends for the nervous laughter which horror movies bring when scared in a group.

Instead of the original actors we would cast someone like Ty Simpkins who stared as the possessed boy in Incidious (2010) making him 4 years older in our movie.

For the mother, we would cast Lili Taylor who stars as the mother in The Conjuring, a horror movie a lot like our new plot. She looks like a mature normal mother which is why we chose her.



Thursday, 2 October 2014

4.0: Presenting to a Class


This was our original ideas for our first movie. We changed these to a more easier approach when coming to filming. We changed the plot to fewer actors so production was more efficient and a different setting for the film went from a cellar to a house due to lighting difficulties.

Old Movie - The Cellar

Friday, 26 September 2014

3.3: Box Office

Box Office and the Horror Genre

Box Office refers to the commercial value and success of a film in terms of audience size and takings from cinema tickets. 

The Conjuring, Orphan and Sinister is a lot like our movie we want to create. The Box Offices are;


  • The Conjuring - Est. $20,000,000, Gross. $137,387,272. 
  • Orphan - Gross. $41,573,740
  • Sinister - Est. $3,000,000, Gross. $48, 056, 940
The most Box Office ever was The Sixth Sense $293.5 gross. We decided to base our horror movie on The Conjuring and The Sixth Sense. These movies feature children and haunted houses, the main formula for a successful horror movie. This means we have to make an original story in a conventional setting with conventional characters. 

Thursday, 25 September 2014

3.2: Target Audience Research

Audience Age for the Horror Genre

Due to horror movies nature, many audiences of this a genre are aged over 14 years of age due to the mature themes and gruesome stories. The main age range is between 18 and 24 however the younger ages from 14-17 also can be included in this due to a rising on lower aged viewers. Horror movies appeal to this younger age range due to being far too scary and mature for younger viewers than 13 years of age as these viewers aren't developed enough to understand the films aren't real and easily scared at this age. Older viewers from around 25-50 years may find horror movies boring as they have grown up with a different style of horror movie and may find the new horror movies not as good. Older than 51 years of age appeal more to mystery and documentary type movies as this what was popular before the 60's and being mainstream for this age range as it was what this age range was inspired by and grew up being the main genre of movies.




Audience Gender of the Horror Genre

By using the profiler, I studied three main horror movies of our time and looking at which genders prefer horror movies. This is for The Conjuring.



This shows more 66% of females prefer this horror movie than the 33% males. As a stereotype, we think males watch horror movies more than females due to bravery and social tendencies of wanting to appear more masculine. This goes against natural stereotypes by females watching this horror movie more than males. This may be due to females wanting to go against the stereotype. 


Another movie I studied was Sinister. Again, more females than males watched this horror movie.

Audience Social Grade for the Horror Genre

Again, studying a horror movie like our own such as Orphan, The Conjuring and Sinister, we looked at the main social grade. 

A - Upper Middle Class - High managerial, administrator or professional. 

B - Middle Class - Intermediate managerial, administrator or professional.

C1 - Lower Middle Class - Supervisor, junior managerial, administrator or professional.

C2 - Skilled Working Class - Skilled manual workers.

D - Working Class - Semi or unskilled manual workers. 

E - Lowest Level of Subsistence - Pensioners, widows, unemployed. 



This shows those of a lower class (C2DE) prefer to watch Orphan. The stereotype for horror movies and social classes is that lower classes will watch horrors more than higher class. Lower classes prefer horror movies as it is an escape from realism such as stress from work or money issues. Lower class people go to the cinema more often than higher class due to more money value prices. More higher classes would prefer to play golf, attend clubs and more logical or skillful leisure's due to the price and stereotypes. 


Again, C2DE class is more of a popular audience for The Conjuring. 


















Tuesday, 23 September 2014

Feedback - Miss Spencer

      You have made a good start Cara - using lots of media language and often discussing the meaning of the elements you have picked out. However I would like to see a few changes to bring this up to a level 3/4:
       
       
  •   Think about the questions below, why did the director choose certain shots? what effect did these have on the audience?
  •   Avoid simply listing what happens, make sure you are always explaining the effect
  •   Embed JPEG images and a video of the opening in order to illustrate your analysis
  •   Ensure you use the same font/size of font for all written work



  Study the opening sequences of any film from the Thriller, Horror, and Romantic comedy genre. E.g. Seven, The Dark Knight Rises, Halloween, Notting Hill, Love Actually etc. Analyse how the sequence has been constructed through its use of: Camera angles, shots, movement, Editing, Sound, Special effects and Mise-en-scene etc.
· In terms of editing how have the separate images been put together - Think in terms of frequency of cuts, fades in/out, jump cuts, dissolves etc.
  • · What visual images appear on screen throughout the sequence? And what do they mean?
  • · Describe what narrative (story) is being displayed in the sequence from start to finish.
  • · Describe what kind of music; diegetic/non-diegetic/incidental/ambient etc. is being played over the sequence.
  • · How and what titles are being displayed during the sequence and in what order.
  • · What kind of characterisation is evident? - Age, gender, relationships etc.