EVALUATION QUESTION 3 - Production Skills

"How did your production skills develop throughout this project?"

For this Evaluation Question I decided to do 2 different things. First of all I created a Prezi, which contains all the preliminary tasks in it and what we learned from them, the theories we had learned and audience research. It is embedded below this text.

Furthermore, Bronwen and I decided to work together to create a TV Show in the style of Ellen DeGeneres. Therefore, I took on the role as Ellen Degeneres and Bronwen took the role of James Wan, who has directed "The Conjuring" and "The Cabin in the Woods", which we were inspired by. 

Then we asked each other questions in order to answer the evaluation question. We talked about the process that we went through to produce our films and the skills we had developed at the same time. 

Since we didn't include the preliminary tasks in the Talk Show I created the Prezi.  

Since Bronwen and I live quite far away from each other we decided to do the interview over Skype. We created it so that it looked as if I was in the studio and she was over skype. I created the studio by having a big comfortable chair in the middle, with a great view out of the big window, a sign which I drew saying "The Ellen Show", a table with a glass of water and candles. All of this I used to create a good mise-en-scene of a studio. 
It was really fun to create and we had a good time while doing so. 



This is the Talk Show:

Audience Feedback 5: Feedback on our Final Cut

This is some audience feedback, which we got from the Year 10 class again. It was very interesting to show it to them, since we had screened the rough cut 1 to them and then this time we screened them the final cut. They really enjoyed it and said that there isn't anything they would change on it. It was very nice to get this final feedback, since it assured us that we had done a good job.

Audience Feedback 3 - Titles

After having created a title sequence, we screened it for some students and our media teacher in class. This post is going to contain the videos of the feedback and the title sequence.

Here is the title sequence:




This is some audience feedback we got from our teacher and from students who gave us their opinion on the fonts we should use and the transitions we should use when introducing the titles:



Our teacher commented a lot on the font, where we were told that it would be good to use "The Friday the 13th" font, since it denoted that we were inspired from that film for our titles.

We didn't really agree with the audience feedback that we got from the students, since they really disliked the "Friday the 13th" font. However, they gave us useful feedback for the transitions.

BV: Our Target Audience 2

I did an updated and more developed post on the target audience for our slasher film, following on from Sophie's post on target audience. 

For our film, we knew that we had to stick to a very specific and typical target audience. This is because the slasher genre has often been called an example of 'genre purism' essentially, this means that the conventions of the genre have been in place so long, and are so specific, that attempting to deviate too far from tradition or changing these conventions can result in a films financial failure. This leads onto how our film opening engaged with our audience/audiences, which I will be covering later on.




Typically, the target audience 
for horror/slasher films is 15-25 years old. Although quite a few of these films have an age rating of 18, 15 year olds still have access to films online or on DVD, making it difficult to enforce these age ratings. 


Here is the BBFC page for Saw, which shows the rating and explains why it was given.

So, deciding the age of our target was very straightforward, as we have the same target audience of the majority of slasher films that exist. 



I found some statistics based around the ages and genders of horror movies. 
As can be seen, the majority of horror film viewers are between the ages of 18 and 24. 

To finish, the target audience of our film would be 15-24, and the secondary audience being 26-35.

Primary and secondary target audience

The primary audience is the audience that the film is primarily target at, so the main people who will watch the film, for example. When creating a film, the target audience is something extremely important to consider as failing to appeal to the target audience could result in the failure of the film. 

The secondary audience are people who wouldn't go and watch a film by choice, but would perhaps be influenced by the primary audience. To explain, a young teenager who really wants to see a film (and would be the primary audience) could bring someone with them, a parent or a friend for example to watch it with them, making them the secondary audience. 

So for our film, due to the fact that the second largest percentage of viewers of horror is 25-34, we decided that this would be our secondary audience.

Audience Gender

As seen in the pie chart, more men than women watch horror films. 

This is because they can interact or relate better to the characters on screen, and the main killer is normally a man.

Women are less attracted to horror, for reasons such as the negative portrayal of women in such films. 

Character types such as the final girl are stereotypical and very negative. 

However, including romance or aspects of romance in horror/slasher films also attracts women to the film, and making horror films good 'date films'; the romance aspects appeal to the women and the gory/horror aspects to the men. 

Therefore, our primary target audience is men as they view horror more than women.

On the other hand, we actually wanted our film to appeal more to women than the average slasher movie, by representing our main character differently and ensuring that it would pass the Bechdel test. (I expanded further on this on another blog post.)

Audience Feedback 4: On Rough Cut 4

This is some audience feedback that we got from our Year 13 Media group on what they thought of our rough cut 4. We had told them in advance that there wasn't any non-diegetic sound on yet so they focused more on commenting on the shot variation, editing and idea rather than the music.

We thought it was very useful to hear what they thought since they came with quite good input to what they liked and what they disliked. We discovered that there wasn't much that they didn't like and therefore we knew that this rough cut 4 would be one of the last rough cuts that we would probably be doing before finalising our final cut.

Audience Feedback 2 - On Rough Cut 1

After finally completing a rough cut of our movie, Bronwen and I got some audience feedback from the Year 10 in our school. Most of the comments were how we could and should improve it in terms of sound effects, so that it would be more creepy and there would be more tension.
Others suggested that the girl should speak a bit louder, because you could barely hear the dialogue. Besides this criticism, the students liked our idea and thought that it definitely has potential.

BV: Audience Feedback 1

After collecting back the questionnaires that we handed out, I have collected the results:

We tried to ask mainly people from our target audience, however, we also asked people outside the target audience because they are also relevant as they fit into our secondary audience.

For question 4, I gave a very brief plot description and asked whether or not the film interested them and why/why not.

Overall, 9 out of 16 people liked our idea.

Positive points said about our film opening idea:

• An interesting idea, especially with the flash forwards.
• Goes with the convention of horror movies with the mask
• The anticipation to know who is under the mask
• Sounds like it could be fun
• Mysterious 
• Interesting 

Negative points:

• The bones hanging from the ceiling, no bones would be more effective as it leaves it more mysterious
• "Sounds a bit stereotypical and therefore doesn't really stand out from the others. I would see it but I wouldn't really promote it with other people because it sounds a bit generic."
• Too much is revealed in the first scene.
• Too gory for those who aren't that into horror.

Question 5 asked people to suggest a name for our movie. These are the titles that people came up with:

• Listen To Me
• The Killer's Room
• Lights Out
• The Kidnapper
• Creepy Hollow
• The Man in the Mask
• Trapped
• That Night
• Him 
• Torture
• Creepy Basement
• Masked
• Locked in with Death
• Trapped by Death
• The Cellar 
• The Butcher
• The Reflection
• Not My Face
• Mirrored Mask
• Trapped

We also found that 8 out of 13 people in our primary target audience (15-35) enjoy horror films. 

BV: Audience Feedback 1: Creating Questionnaire

I created a questionnaire that we handed out to 20 different people, to establish if our target audience liked our idea and to get some good ideas for a title.

Audience feedback questionnaire from Sophie2401