A Nightmare on Elm Street film poster Analysis

A Nightmare on Elm Street movie poster, a photo by EmilyBall93 on Flickr.

Here is another analysis of a film poster

Total Film cover anaylsis

6d72zvrtozh9trz2, a photo by EmilyBall93 on Flickr.

Here is another analysis of a film magazine cover.

The differences between Teaser and Theatrical trailers.

When a film is being released trailers are produced to advertise the films. There are two types of trailers that are commonly used and these are teaser trailers and theatrical trailers. A teaser trailer is always a much shorter trailer. Often ranging between 1 and 1 1/2 minutes and in some cases they can be as short as 30 seconds. Teaser trailers don't have as much content in them and they act as a way of teasing the audience to make them interested in the film. They do not give much away about the film. This is completely different to the theatrical trailer which can range between 2-3 minutes in length and will give much more information about the film. Teaser trailers are usually the first trailers that are put out and are often released months in advance of the films. For example, there is currently a teaser trailer out for Dispicable Me 2 which isn't out until 2013. More often than not full length theatrical trailers will only be released a few months before the film itself is released in cinemas. On some occasions theatrical trailers are also released a great deal of time ahead of the film. The theatrical trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was released in December 1011 and the film itself won't be released until December 2012. It is also quite common for a teaser trailer to consist of shots from one particular scene or similar scenes whereas a theatrical trailer will be filled with clips from a lot of different parts of the film. The job of both trailers is to tease people about the film and to make them want to see it so they are both very important. In my opinion theatrical trailers tend to cause more excitement and are often eagerly anticipated once teasers are released.

Below you can see the theatrical trailer for The Hunger Games which runs 2:37 in length followed a link to the shorter teaser trailer which runs approximately 1 minute but I couldn't find a version that would allow me to embed it.

Link to Teaser Trailer: http://youtu.be/LvpMPeP1FcM

Magazine cover paper draft

Promotional Poster paper draft

Original Photos for Products

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Once our horror trailer was completed we needed to collect feedback on it from people in our target audience. Seeing as our class is part of our target audience we were able to screen the trailer for them and ask them for feedback. There were a number of points that were made numerous times once the trailer had been shown so this feedback was very useful in determining what would have made a better trailer. There was negative and positive feedback from the group.

A very common piece of feedback that we received was that the soundtrack didn't really fit too well with the trailer. Some people thought that the music at the start of the trailer sounded too childlike and it made them feel that there would be some element to the film that involved a creepy child, which there isn't. Some people also thought that the music at the end didn't work too well and that when the first piece of music changed to the second it didn't sound very good. However even though we did get quite a bit of feedback saying that the soundtrack didn't work very well, we also got some people who said that they thought the soundtrack did work well and built tension nicely.

The inter-titles in our trailer split the class roughly down the middle. Some people thought that the effect we had on the inter-titles worked really well and made them look much more interesting but others thought that the effect was used too much and this made it quite difficult to read. A number of people also voiced there opinion that they thought there wasn't enough narrative given away in the trailer and perhaps voice overs would have helped it along. I feel that maybe these people were ones who couldn't read the inter-titles very well because the inter-titles do in fact introduce the narrative of the film.

The fact that most of our trailer was using handheld camera work also split the class. Some people really liked the use of a handheld camera and others thought we overused it. We got a number of people commenting on how they thought the camera work when the characters were entering the attic was very good and interesting. However we also got a lot of people commenting on how the handheld camera work during the second half of the trailer, when the characters were in the graveyard, was a bit rough and too jumpy. They felt it made it hard to tell what was going on.

We also got some other negative feedback. A couple of people mentioned that they felt the stabbing scene at the end of the trailer was too repetitive and that it should perhaps be cut down so it is shorter and there are less stabs. Another person said that they didn't like the 'Bad TV' effect that we used on the house shot at the beginning of the trailer. Someone also pointed out that on the shot of Emma's character getting dragged down the stairs you can hear Emma's laugh slightly at the end of her scream.

People seemed to like the shot of Emma's character getting dragged down the stairs as it fitted to the horror genre. We also got feedback from a few people who liked the idea of finding an old book. However I now realise that it is unclear that it is meant to be a diary in the trailer. As a whole people did like the use of hand held camera work and felt that it fits with the genre and the style of the film.

We got a variety of feedback when we did the screening to the class which pointed out a number of things that could have been improved to make the trailer better. We also got some positive feedback which allowed us to know what parts of the trailer people thought worked well. 

How did you used new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The above image is compiled of pictures of equipment, programmes and websites that I used throughout the process of completing the coursework. The right side of the image consists of all the websites that I used throughout the different stages of the planning, research and construction stages. 

During the research for my products I created a survey on surveymonkey.com which consisted of a variety of questions with relevance to the horror trailer that my group would be producing. This website was good for the job that we needed to do. As well as handing out questionnaires for people to answer. I also placed links to the survey monkey questionnaire on my twitter and tumblr pages. This helped us to get responses from a greater number of people. Getting people from tumblr and twitter increased the number of people who filled out the questionnaire which increased the information that we would take from the questionnaire. However using twitter and tumblr did result in some people who were not in our target audience age range filling in the questionnaire. I feel that twitter and tumblr was a very effective way of gathering audience research.

All of the work that was produced during this course was placed onto Blogger so that it could all be seen in one place and could easily be accessed. I personally do however not like using Blogger as I feel that the layout is restricted and it is very hard to get the posts to look good. When working with pictures in Blogger posts it was also very hard to get them to go where you want them to be. Due to this I had to often use the html text editor to ensure that they were where I wanted them to be. Blogger is very simple to use, which is a good thing, but I feel that it doesn't allow me to maximise the potential of a blog unlike other sites. I also used the website Flickr to produce analyses of certain existent products. This was an effective way of doing this and it allowed me to put text on to what I was talking about so that it was clear. However I personally would have preferred to do written analyses in a more traditional format than using Flickr. Another website that I used was Issuu. This was a very useful website as it allowed me to put my questionnaire result charts all into one place in a simple and easy way. This was then easily embedded on my blog and the research results are now easily readable. I also used Issuu to put my storyboards on my blog because it looks much cleaner than if I had uploaded an image of each page separately. The other two websites that can be seen on the image above are youtube and freeplaymusic. I used youtube to upload my finished trailer to and to also research other existing trailers. Youtube is a very easy way to put a video that you have made on to the worldwide web for anyone to see. It was also a very useful source for research. Freeplaymusic was the website that my group used to get copyright free music to use in our trailers. This website was a very good website however I feel that the way it is organised makes it very hard to find music that will match what you want it for. I feel that it is not categorized very well.

Click the image to be taken to a Flickr page explaining some of the different tools of Final Cut Pro.

The other images on the picture are the technologies that were used to produce the final products. The programme that was used most was Final Cut Pro which is the programme that me and my group used to produce are trailer. It allowed us to do a lot of different things to our clips. As we had not used the programme before to the extent of what we needed it for it took a bit of getting used to using. I feel that by the end of producing the trailer we had a grasp on the programme but there was still a lot that we could no do on it. My group had a lot of difficulty working on Final Cut Pro due to the college upgrading to the use of HD video recorders. The MAC could not handle this footage very well which resulted in Final Cut Pro being very slow to use. We had to render after making even the smallest of changes to our product, and the rendering took a number of minutes. This made it very annoying to use and effected our ability to produce a really good trailer. We also faced difficulties working on Final Cut Pro because the way the video file played in the programme was not how it would look once exported so it didn't really turn out how we had planned. It is a very complex programme that is used in professional industry. Many editors use it to produce films and episodes of TV. For example the TV show Leverage is edited in Final Cut Pro. Seeing as this was the first time that we used the programme properly the finished product is not exactly perfect because it is quite a complicated programme to use. The top left of the image above is a screen-cap of Photoshop CS5. I used this programme to produce my final magazine cover and film poster. I have had a lot of experience with Photoshop over the past year so I felt pretty comfortable producing these two products. I feel that my skills in the programme have developed a lot since using it at AS. Photoshop is a very useful programme as it allows you freedom to edit in a number of different and effective ways.

The final three images on the imageboard above are all pieces of equipment that were used throughout the course. We used a Apple Mac to produce our trailer. Seeing as I have always used Windows it took some time to get a hang of using a Mac as it is so different. To shoot the footage for our trailer my group used a video camera and occasionally a tripod. Seeing as a lot of our footage was handheld the tripod was only used occasionally. The video camera that we used was very simple and easy to work. It also fit easily in your hand and allowed for the handheld footage to be shot with ease. We also used the video camera to take photographs for our magazine covers. We also used studio lighting to produce these photos.

Overall we used quite a variety of technologies during the coursework. Some of them I had experience with and others I did not. I feel that I have learnt a lot about using Final Cut Pro and this is the information that I will take out of producing these products.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

During this course I produced a trailer for a horror movie and then a film poster and magazine cover to go along with this. These 3 products work together to help promote the film 'Awakened'. 
In the world of distributors there are a number of ways in which they try to maximise intake from a film. However there are three main ways in with distributors go about doing this. These ways are, advertising, publicity and promotion. My three products are examples of advertising and promotion but they work together in a way that also acts as publicity. The poster acts as the central marketing image for the campaign and this will be used in a variety of locations all around the country whilst promoting the film. The poster would also no doubt be present at any publicity events that are held for the film. A film distributor will need to generate favourable publicity which means the products will need to have a good image, promote the film well and not have anything inappropriate on them. For a more detailed look at the role of the distributor see my previous post here.
All of the products are linked in some way so that it is clear that they are all promoting the same thing. There is a colour scheme of red that is continuous throughout all 3 products, however it is less prominent in the trailer. The title of the movie in the trailer is in red, and the film poster and magazine cover are also mainly red. I used the colour red because it is often associated with blood and danger, two things which horror films are filled with. The poster also links closely to the trailer as the image on the poster is an actual still from the trailer. The tagline on the poster is also relevant to the inter-titles that are in the trailer and the story of the film. I also worked to make the film poster to look as much like a horror poster as I could. The person is engulfed by darkness which is also very prominent in the trailer when the monster is shown.

All 3 of the products that I have produced would be an important part in the marketing campaign of the film. However, the trailer would be the most important one of them all. I feel that the trailer does overall work effectively as a trailer for a film in the horror genre but I feel that the overall quality of the trailer is lacking. I feel this is compensated for by the film poster which I also feel work effectively for a film in the horror genre but I also feel that the quality of it is much higher than that of the trailer. One thing I feel that I should have done to connect the two products more would be to use the same font on the film title in the trailer and the title on the poster. I feel that the sense of the film that the trailer creates is also created by the poster, which is good because you don't want them creating conflicting senses. The magazine cover that I produced would also be an important way of promoting the film. Getting coverage on a magazine cover would allow film buffs to learn about your film and also any occasional buyers of the magazine would also learn of it. Including the title of the film in a large font makes it stand out and it would be easily readable from a distance. Having promotion across a number of media formats allows for much more publicity and for a greater number of people to learn of the film.

The job of a marketing campaign for a film is to maximise intake by ensuring lots of people know about the film and ensuring that it targets the films desired target audience. The trailer we produced is available on youtube, much like trailers for actual films. Our target audience is made up of people who use the internet a great deal so a perfect way to target this audience would be to have the trailer online. Another way a marketing campaign promotes a film is through promotional posters. These need to be clear about the genre of the film as they are usually very simple. They also usually include a tagline, which acts as a hook to make people want to see the film. I feel that the poster I produced makes the genre of our film very clear and the tagline works well with the film. 


I do feel that the trailer and poster work very well together and the combination of the two of them is very effective. The magazine cover also works as a source of promoting the film but I feel that it would be less effective because not everybody looks at film magazines. It would help to promote the film amongst avid film watchers who read film magazines though. The overall combined colour scheme helps link the three products and they all fit together as a pack well.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challange forms and conventions of real media products?

Throughout the stages of producing the horror trailer my group tried to incorporate as many horror conventions as possible so that it would have the desired effect and would fit well with the genre and work well as a trailer.

The above image shows a screenshot from my trailer (right) and a screenshot from a trailer for The Ring (left). Both shots show the "monster" of the films that they belong too. A classic horror convention would be to hide the monsters face slightly so that the audience cannot see it properly. Both the shot from my trailer and the one from The Ring do this. Another horror convention is to have close ups of the monster. The two shots above are not exactly close ups but I feel that they give a similar effect. The shot from trailer is at a low angle. Obscure and unusual angles are very often used in horror films so this shot fits with conventions. 

This image shows a screenshot from my groups trailer and a screenshot from an actual horror movie with a girl entering an attic. The shots show the reverse of each other though as the shot from our trailer shows a girl entering the attic from below outside the attic and the shot from the actual horror movie trailer shows it from inside the attic. This shot fits with horror conventions as it is taken from a low angle, which is very common in horror films. Also, attics are often considered to be quite creepy which fits with the genre of horror. In a number of horror films people venture into the attic.

Here are screenshots from my groups trailer and the trailer for the 1978 film Halloween. Both show the outside of a house and both occur at night. One very common horror convention is that the films mostly take place at night when everything is dark. This makes them much more creepy than if they were set in the day time as you never know what could be hiding in the dark. It is also quite common for horror films to be set in a large house. The house in our picture isn't all on show and is not as big as the one in Halloween. Another common convention in horror trailers is Point of View shots from the monster. The shot from our horror trailer could be considered to be a POV shot of the monster looking into the house.

These two shots both involve a staircase. The one on the left is from groups trailer and the one on the right is from an actual horror film trailer. There aren't obvious horror conventions in these shots but they are similar to one another. Also in a number of horror films that I have there are chases up and down stairs. In both of these shots the staircases are not straight down but they go round corners which is usually the case in horror films because having to turn corners on the stairs whilst running is much more difficult than running down straight stairs. Also the shot from our trailer is an interesting shot because it was taken with the camera placed on the floor. This is an interesting angle and allows a different view of the scene than if it were shot from higher up.

These two shots are similar to each other but it is also quite hard to distinguish what they are showing. Each shot is one that is after a camera has been dropped on the floor. The one on the right is from The Blair Witch Project trailer. This is an entirely handheld film and a lot of our footage is also hand held. Both shots show a camera lying on its side. These fit with horror conventions because there is sometimes handheld footage in horror movies and quite often when footage is shot for a movie in handheld the camera will get dropped at some point and we will see this still from the point of view of the camera. Also, once again it is a unique angle which is very common thing in horror films.

The shot on the right is from the horror film Paranormal Activity 3. Both the shot from my groups trailer and this one show the monster of the film surrounded by darkness. The dark is obviously a very common horror convention. The shot of the person standing there alone is also quite creepy. They are also both standing in a similar position which perhaps enhances the lifeless elements of them. A trailer convention is too not give too much away. Both of these shots show the monster in little light so we are unable to see them clearly which makes them look more eerie and also helps to not show the monster too much in just the trailer.

The similarities and conventions shown in these two shots are not very apparent when seeing just the shots themselves. Both shots are showing something that has been found in the attic of an house. An attic is often symbolic of the unconscious which fits very well with the storyline of our film. In the shot from Paranormal Activity it is a picture of one of the main characters when she was younger and in the shot from our trailer it is a book that has been found. Both of the objects have been burnt but you cannot clearly see this in the shot from our trailer. These fit with the horror convention of something hidden being uncovered. Both shots were also captured using handheld camera work.

Both of these shots show three figures in the dark. The shot from my trailer has two people facing the camera with a third figure in the background and the shot from an actual horror film shows a figure in the background and then two people facing this figure. You cannot tell it simply from these shots but in the trailer you see that both the shots are taken from a scene in a graveyard. A graveyard is a common setting in the horror genre because of the creepy factor of graveyards, and the dead that occupy them. Both shots being in the dark also fit with the common horror convention of being at night.

As well as fitting horror conventions into the trailer we also worked to fit conventions of trailers in general. A trailer is usually something which teases a film without giving too much away. We did not give too much away in our trailer so this fits with the horror convention. Trailers also tend to pick up speed towards the end to increase excitement or build tension. The speed towards the end of our trailer does speed up but not to a very fast speed. We could have made the pace at the end faster to fit more with this convention, however it does fit slightly. Inter-titles and voice-overs are also a convention in trailers for films. We opted to use inter-titles in our trailer as we felt this resulted in a voice-over not taking away from the sound of the trailer. The job of inter-titles in trailers is to give some information about what the film is about and to tease the film. I feel that the  inter-titles we used do this quite well. In trailers you also tend to not see clips all from a certain scene. You get a variety of extracts from a number of different parts of the film. In our trailer you see a lot of different parts that would not be from the same section of the film. Some trailers for actual films are not necessarily in chronological order. The trailer that my group produced is in chronological order as this makes the trailer make more sense and it easier to follow.

Final Product: Awakened Trailer

Here is my groups final trailer for our made up horror film "Awakened."

Magazine Cover featuring Awakened

Promotional Poster for Awakened

Total Film Cover analysis

Total Film Cover analysis, a photo by EmilyBall93 on Flickr.

Click through to see my analysis of a Total Film magazine cover.

Empire magazine cover analysis

Empire cover analysis, a photo by EmilyBall93 on Flickr.

Click through to see my analysis of an Empire magazine cover.

Movie Poster Analysis

onemissecall, a photo by EmilyBall93 on Flickr.

Cick through to see my flickr analysis of this movie poster.

Horror movie poster Analysis

Horror movie poster Analysis, a photo by EmilyBall93 on Flickr.

Click through to see my flickr analysis of this movie poster.

Gender representation in Horror.

Carol Clover in Men Woman and Chainsaws argues that Horror's representation of gender is very interesting because it frequently offers it's core target audience of males an identification with a female character, unlike any other mainstream genre. To what extent do you think Horror's representation of gender challenges dominant representation?

In most mainstream film genres woman are represented in one of four common ways. They're either represented as a sex object, a consumer, as domestic or marital. This conclusion was drawn from looking at a number of existing research pieces which all came to this common conclusion. In 1992 research was carried out and the results showed that men outnumbered women by two to one onscreen but later research demonstrated that this had changed and both genders were now shown almost equally.  Even though the number of men and woman were said to be similar the roles each gender played didn't seem to have changed.  Men were still much more likely to be shown having a job, being away from home and as authority figures. The females are still mostly being placed into the four categories mentioned above. It could also be said that female roles have digressed slightly in movies. In earlier films like the Alien series the female protagonist played by Sigourney Weaver is a lot different to female protagonists in more recent films. The female protagonist is a strong woman who isn't portrayed in a sexual way. This is different to more common protagonists like Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series who is portrayed in a sexual way via the clothes she wears and the content of the movies. 

The Male Gaze is another popular theory on the ways females are represented in the media. Famous essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' by Laura Mulvey includes a lot about the male gaze. The male gaze theory suggests that viewers of commercial cinema are put into the position of a male because of the use of camera work which presents women as objects and men as subjects. In many media texts there are often shots of females which start at the legs and slowly move up at a tilt to show her body. Shots like this are also often Point of View shots from males. Long shots are also often used when showing females so that their whole body fits on the screen. It is argued by Mulvey and other that mainsteam film has sexist viewing on females because of the way the male gaze and other ways that women are portrayed makes the audience look at them as objects instead of subjects. This is called Sadistic objectification. 

In the horror genre it could be said that there is a very different representation of females. Carol Clover presents the idea of the "final girl" in her book Men, Woman and Chainsaws. The final girl is usually a female with some male characteristics, often with a gender neutral name, who has been victimized throughout the film. Clover also says that by the end of the film this final girl will become somehow monstrous herself. This final girl will be the sole person to come out victorious in many horror movies, which means the males are asked to identify with this female character instead of the strong and macho males that they would usually identify with in most mainstream genres. This raises the question of why horror movies ask males to identify with these female roles, and why they are willing to do it. Carol Clover suggests that it is because the majority of males can relate to the experience of feeling weak and dominated by a male force at some point in their life, even if it is only in childhood. The final girl definitely challenges the representation of females in most mainstream genres. However other female roles in horror films do reinforce the stereotype. In most slasher horror movies there will be women who are portrayed as sex objects, but more often than not these characters will be killed.

I have studied three horror movies which all both reinforce and challenge the idea that females in the horror genre are represented differently to other mainstream genres. The first movie that I will discuss is the 1978 slasher Halloween. This film has equal visibility of both male and female genders but the main protagonist of the movie is Laurie, a female who fits Carol Clover's final girl role and whom the target audience of young males are asked to relate to. Laurie is presented in a domestic way as she is babysitting throughout most of the film and the majority of the other females in the film, Linda, Annie and Judith, are all presented as sex objects. These roles that the females are placed in fit with the roles that  females would be placed in in most mainsteam film genres. Throughout the film there are also a couple of times where the male gaze idea is used. At the start of the film when we are put into the point of view of Michael Myers we see his sister in a state of undress before he kills her. There is also use of the male gaze when Annie is in the laundry room and when Linda is dying. However for all these males gazes the audience is put into the shoes of Michael Myers, the monster of the movie, which is different to the type of male gaze used in other genres. Sixty percent of the deaths that occur in this film are female which is a negative thing for the representation of females in the horror genre. The fact that we are asked to identify with Laurie throughout the film does however challenge the idea of dominant representation. At the end of this film Laurie is the one who is fighting Michael off. In other mainstream genres it would be a strong male character depicted as a saviour. This however is slightly undermined when Dr. Loomis saves Laurie and supposedly defeats Michael.
male 

The second movie that I will discuss the ways in which the horror genre challenges the dominant idea of female representation is the 1982 film The Shining, which is about a family who move to a hotel to take care of it whilst it is closed for the winter. In this movie that number of males outnumbers the females by quite a lot which supports the 1992 research on the visibility of females onscreen. The females in this film do fit into the four categories that females usually have in mainstream genres. Wendy fits into both the domestic and marital categories as she takes care of the hotel, even though this is meant to be her husband Jacks job, and she takes care of thier son, Danny. The use of woman as sex objects is not as prominant in this film as it is in Halloween. The woman in the bathtub of room 237 is portrayed in a sexual way and the male gaze is used on her. However the transormation of the woman from young to old undermines this. Wendy eventually becomes a protagonist in the film so this fits with the way horror genres ask males to identify with females, which follows the idea that the horror genre represents females in a different way to other mainstream genres. The death count in this movie is equal in both genders and the females in this film do not seem to be punished for transgression like they are in Halloween. I feel that this movie both supports and challenges the idea that females are represented differently in the horror genre compared to other mainstream genres.

The final movie that I will compare to the idea of female represenation being different in horror movies is the 2008 film Eden Lake. This film is about a couple who go on a camping trip and then get tormented by a group of local youths. The visibility in this film is that men outnumber the women eight to five which reinforces the 1992 research of there being more men onscreen than there are women. I personally feel that the female roles in this film steer away from the four categories compared to The Shining and Halloween. Both of the members of the couple in this film work, so this goes against the idea that mostly men are depicted working. Although Jenny is a primary school teacher which could fit into one of the categories as her job is teaching children. We also see a woman who is working as a waitress in this film. Paige, the teenage girl in this film definitely stands away from the four roles that females are usually put into. Her attitude and behaviour could be considered quite masculine which makes up for the fact that the female protagonist that the males audience is asked to identify with is quite feminine. There is one use of the idea of the male gaze in this film, which is when the teens look at Jenny through a pair of binoculars and the camera follows along Jenny's body. This shot however is undermined when the next shot puts Jenny as the subject and not the boys. Throughout this movie four males are killed and two females are killed which shows that this film does not punish women more than men. Like the previous two films I have spoken about, the target audience of young males are asked to identity with a seemingly weak female character. This film however  doesn't have a "final girl" in the strictest sense as we are led to believe that Jenny herself is killed after becoming monstrous herself and causing two of the deaths in this film. I feel that this movie does represent females mostly in ways which challenge other mainstream genres.

Overall, in the genre of horror males are asked to identify with female characters in a masochistic way which is different to the sadistic objectification that occurs in other mainstream genres. I personally feel that horror movies do challenge the dominant representation of female characters in a number of ways but I also feel that they fall guilty of representing females in the often sexist view that mainstream movies do aswell.

Locations, props and story adjustment.

After carrying out research and producing a storyboard for our trailer we decided that we needed to adjust the idea for our horror movie as we felt there were flaws with our original idea and that it wouldn't work well as a complete movie. We decided to add a number of plot points. Our movie will not just have the majority of it the graveyard anymore but they group of girls will go back to the house where they are at the start of the movie. In the house at the start they will find a diary that belonged to Isabel, a girl who lived in the house some years previous. They read details of her horrendous life and how she planned to kill herself in the local graveyard. This then causes the group of girls to go to the graveyard, the diary with them. They accidentally awaken the spirit of Isabelle who then torments them in the graveyard and they flee back to the house. Isabel follows them back.

Locations we will be using:

• Graveyard in Gorleston
• Graveyard in Great Yarmouth (possibly)
• My house as the house in the film
• My attic (possibly)

Props List:

• Torches x4
• Rope
• old looking diary
• Camera
• Long white dress/shirt
• prop knife

Trailer Storyboards

Audience Research

These are the graphs that we produced from our audience research questionnaire. We asked 10 questions to a variety of people in our media group and also in the form of an online questionnaire. Overall we collected responses from 32 people. 22 of these people filled out the questionnaire and the other 10 were filled out by hand. The first question we asked was whether the person was male or female and the results that we got back were that 15% were male and 85% were female. This is a problem with our research because we were targetting our audience to both males and females so to get more accurate results we should have gotten more males to fill out the questionnaire. The next question that we asked was which age group the person belonged to. 73% of the people who filled out the questionnair were 15 - 18 year olds, 9% were 19-21 year olds, 12% were 22-24 year olds and lastly 6% were 25+. These results fit with our target audience as the age group we decided to aim at was 15-24 year olds and 94% of the people who filled the questionnair out fit into this age range. This helps because we can tell that the results we got from the questionnaire are relevant to the target audiences age range. Next we asked if the people liked horror films. 82% of the people answered yes and 18% of them answered no. We then asked whether they liked horror films with gore. The results that we got from this question were 61% for yes and 39% for no. These results made us consider putting elements of gore into the trailer that we're going to produce because it is clear that gore is quite popular. The next question that we asked was whether they preferred torture porn or paranormal horror movies. 70% of the responses were for Paranormal leaving the other 30% for torture porn. Seeing as we were planning to have our horror movie in the sub genre of paranormal this insight is good to have as we know that it is a popular sub-genre amongst are core target audience. Next we asked who people watch horror films we out of on your own, with family, with a partner, with friends of the same sex or with friends of a different sex. The most popular answer was with friends of mixed sexes which 28% of the people chose. The second most popular answer was with same sex friends which 26% of people chose. The least popular answer was with a partner as only 10% of people chose this answer. After completing the audience research I came to the conclusion that this question is quite irrelevant and doesn't really provide any information that is useful. We then asked if people prefer horror movies about someone driven mad, something bad returning from the past or something hidden being uncovered. The most answer response was 'something hidden  being uncovered' which 40% of people chose and the least popular answer was 'something bad returning from the past' which 23% of people chose. This made us think about the concept of our horror move as our synopisis fit with the least popular answer. We decided that we would add an element of the most popular answer to our horror film idea. The next question was about settings of horror films and which ones people preferred. The most popular horror setting was an abandoned building, with 36% of the people we asked choosing this. The second most popular answer was a house, with 29% choosing this answer. A forest received 24% of the vote and a graveyard received 11%. This effected our idea for our film because our initial idea was to have have our film mostly set in a graveyard. Seeing as this was the least popular answer we decided to change it and have more of it based in a house. We then asked whether people prefer horror films set at night or day. Night received 73% of the vote which is when we had chosen to set our film. The last question we asked was if people liked horror trailers to give away the killers identity. 88% of the people we asked answered 'no' they didn't like the identity to be given away.

Our audience research could be improved by seperating the male answers from female answers so that we could gather information on what each gender prefers. Seeing as we are targetting an audience that includes both males and females it would have been an advanage to know what both genders liked so that we could cater to both genders when thinking about our trailer. It could have also been improved by getting more answers from males. There is a much larger percentage of answers from females than there is males. It would have been fairer to ask a similar amount of each gender.

Groups Initial Idea for Horror Movie

In the year 1990 a teenage girl named Isabella was living a life of hell. She had been abused by her Father for as long as she could remember, and now she'd had enough. Her mental state compromised by the years of abuse she'd sufferered, one night she took revenge and killed her Father and fled from the house she'd grown up in. Her body was found strung up in a tree in a cemetary. She'd hung herself to escape the pain. 21 years later a group of teenage girls were having a girly night at one of their houses. The house were the events between Isabella and her Father had occured in 1990. The girls were having a great time, recording video footage and playing truth or dare. One girl dares the girls to walk through the cemetary in the dead of night and out of the gate at the opposite end. Video camera in hand the girls set out to follow through with the dare. They enter the cemetary and walk through to the opposite end, getting an eerie feeling they're being watched. Once at the other end they find the gate locked, so the girls must reverse their steps and exit the way they came. Upon reaching the gate at that enterance to cemetary the gates close and trap them in the cemetary. They are not alone. The ghost of Isabella has come to play... the torment of her past having driven her mad. Will the girls survive?

The Role of the Film Distributor

Distribution is a big part of what makes a film successful and there are many roles which the distributor fulfils to allow this to happen. The main task of a distribution company is to 'identify and deliver the largest possible audience for every film.' This is a very big task, especially because there are so many other entertainment options available outside the home. A film won't have much of an impact unless it's able to connect and catch the attention of it's target audience, therefore the distributor must know the audience extremely well in order to appeal to it. It has been confirmed by research that the majority of people who go to the cinema will know which film they want to see beforehand. This will most likely be due to the film having caught their attention by being vastly promoted. We can tell that the role of a distributor is vital and integral to a films success.

Distribution is a very highly competitive business with the job of launching and also sustaining films in the market. A film doesn't become a hit or becoming a major talking point without a lot of work going into making it happen. Overall there are a number of jobs a distributor will need to fulfil in order for a film to become successful. They will need to identify it's target audience and consider the reasons why this audience would want to see the film, they need to develop plans and partnerships in order to spark interest and awareness of the film, ensure there are cinemas which will be willing to play the film and estimate what the revenue potential of the film is across all forms of its release.

Many entertainment forms nowadays are product driven and entirely reliant on the product itself being what draws people into paying for it. Films are no exception to this. Consumers decide what they want to, or don't want to see. A distributor needs to make their film something that people do want to see so the marketing compaign will need to effectively draw interest from these people. The first steps of a Distributor are to develop a release strategy for a film and take careful consideration of a release date which would optimise success. They must then present the film to distributors and negotiate for arrangements of the  film being shown in cinemas. The last step for Distributors would be the generating of a marketing compaign to create a buzz for the film amongst the target audience and make people want to see it before the film is launched.

Before a marketing plan can be produced the distributors will need to consult with the producers and possibly studio of the film to gauge the audience that they feel would be most appropriate to target the film too. They need to think about who could be convinced to but a ticket to see this particular film and why they would want to, if the film could be positioned within a popular genre and they might also look into recent releases of similar types of films to see the audience that they have attracted. There is however a risk with distribution because audiences tastes are generally unpredictable. This is why extensive research on an audience must be carried out. They must look at the age group and gender, lifestyles, social network use and media consumption patterns. It is a distributors job to not only appeal to the core target audience of a film but to also generate an attraction for the film as wide spread as possible. Research has shown that the most frequent cinemagoers tend to be between 15 years and 25 years of age. This will result in social networking and internet being an important way for distributors to generate buzz for a film.

As well as the target audience there are a number of other factors that distributors must take into consideration when coming up with a release plan. Some other factors are:

• Competition with films with similar release dates (Would an audience choose to see their film over other ones that are showing?)
• If there are any major and well known stars in the film or if the Director/Producer is well known. (Many people will see a film due to certain actors being in them or certain directors or producers being a part of them.)
• Cast members availibility (Will they be available for promotion for the film and attending the premiere?)
• If the film be a candidate for any awards (Scheduling of release will need to take this into account.) 

Not only do distributors have to put a lot of thought into the release of a film they must also market and publicise the film well in order to make people hear about the film and want to see it. There are a number of ways this is done, such as:

• Posters - These will need to stand out amongst a variety of posters for other films so the designers will need to work very hard to make their posters stand out. Most posters will have the stars of the film to help promote and a tagline to tease the audience.
• Trailers - The most cost-effective marketing technique. Trailers are very important when it comes to promoting a film. If a trailer is put together in the right way it should capture the target audiences attention and make them want to see it. They often consist of glimpses of exciting and dramatic moments from the film to draw people in.
• Online/Mobile - Most films will have an official website which will consist of trailers, stills, behind the scenes footage and more. The internet will also help build awareness for a film, even in it's early stages, by keeping fans up to date and providing snippets and teases from when filming is going on. It will also help build awareness by advertising online.
• Social Media - Once a film is released the internet will become home to peoples reactions upon seeing the film. If these reactions are good then this will encourage others to see the film. People will share opinions and converse on sites such as Twitter and hype for a film can build even more.
• Other ways of promotions: Advertisements in magazines, trailers shown on the TV, cast members appearing on talk shows/being interviewed, promotional partnerships, merchandising, previews and the premiere (which for films such as Harry Potter will be streamed online to the world).

Overall the role of a Film Distributor is very vast and extremely important. If the Distributors role isn't done well then a film could easily flop and the opposite can occur also. The production of a film is a major process involving dozens of people, but making sure the film sells and people want to see it is also of great importance.