Evaluation Q4: Emily Bland

From the IMDB research I did for the film 'The Ring' and 5 other films including 'Ghost Ship', we are aiming our horror film at a male audience between the ages of 18 and 29. From the research of the other horror films watched, the ages of the audience were either the same or very similar.

We plan to challenge the common representation of the lead victim as we are going to use a male actor instead of female so the male audience are able to relate much more easily to how the character reacts and how he might be feeling.

The film Ghost Ship portrays the male characters as fairly week people as they are soon killed or injured as they often put actions into motion without thinking about the consequences and this is what happened to some of the men in ghost ship. So our male character will be a very vulnerable character to reinforce the idea that men are weak in ghost films.

How did you attract/address your audience? Question 2

 For all of these films are : What lies beneath, The Grudge, The Ring,

Discrimination

None.

Drugs

Can be shown but not glamourised

Horror

Allowed unless sadistic or sexualised.

Imitable behaviour

Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) allowed but not in great detail. Weapons should not be glamorised.

Language

Strong language like ‘fuck’ is allowed . 'Cunt’ is allowed but only if relevent. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable.

Nudity

Nudity allowed but without strong detail. No constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context

Sex

Sexual activity is allowed but without strong detail. Allowed if it is relevent ot the plot. Porn is unlikely to be acceptable.

Theme

All themes are allowed if it is accepted for a 15 year old audience

Violence

Violence may be shown but not show detail of injury. Strong gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic or sexualised violence is not acceptable.May be acceptable if it is subtle.


The Others is a 12 and the BBFC.co.uk website said that to have in a 12 there must be :

Discrimination

No allowed

Drugs

Allowed but inferequent. Not glamourised

Horror

Physical and psychological threat may be permitted if it is moderate and  not frequently shown

Imitable behaviour

Dangerous behaviour such as hanging, suicide and self-harming should be shown in detail which could be copied, or appear pain or harm free.  Weapons should not be glamorised.

Language

Moderate language is allowed. The use of strong language (for example, ‘fuck’) must be infrequent.

Nudity

Allowed
Sexual context must be brief and discreet.

Sex

Sexual activity must be shown briefly and discreetly portrayed. Sex references should only be allowed to show what is acceptable for young teenagers. .If it is frequent then it should not be accepted.

Theme

Acceptable - if suitable for young teenagers.

Violence

Allowed but not in detail on injuries or blood
Sexual violence may only be implied or briefly and discreetly indicated but they must be relevent to the plot.



After reading what the bbfc says about what should be in a film, i think our film is a 12 as it doesn't include strong horror, sex, violence, etc which is in a 15.

Evaluation

Isabel has finished her evaluation
Laurie and Emily have got questions 3 and 5 to do.

Q5 - Reflective Evaluation Isabel Wong

The 5 films I've picked out are : Sixth Sense, The Grudge, The Ring, Poltergeist, The Innocents

This is the user ratings report of Sixth Sense, it shows the males and females under 18 as majority of users. It is a certificate 15, in the film, there is no use of strong language and violence or durg taking scen in Sixth Sense so it matches the requirement of being listed as a certificate 15 film.

This is the user rating report of The Grudge, the distribution of users is quite even, where age group under 18 and age group around 30-45+ are both the majority of users. It is a certificate 15 film, same as Sixth Sense, there is no presence of any drug taking or abuse scenes or use of strong language.

This is the user rating report of The Ring, same as Sixth Sense the group which contains the largest amount of users is Aged under 18, in which female under 18 is rated the highest. It is also a certificate 15 film.

This is the user rating report of Poltergeist, same as the films above, the age group under 18 has the highest rate of users. But there's a slight difference here, as males under 18 rated the most here. It is a certificate 15 film.

This is the user ratings report of The Innocents, different from the films above, its highest rated age group is groupd aged 18-29. It is a 12A certificate film.

Certificate 15 means films only suitable for 15 years old or above, subsequently anyone aged below 15 is not allowed to watched a '15' film in a cinema or rent or buy a '15' rated video work.
The use of discrimination-related language or words is prohibited. For sexual, drug taking and violent scenes, they must not be demonstrated in details and never make them imitable. Especially for drug related scenes, the use of easily accessed drugs and high;y dangerous substences as props is not allowed. Some common strong language like 'fuck' is allowed to use but there is a limited standard on using strong words, for instance 'cunt' is the strongest term that could be accepted in this case. Too many repetition of strong language is not allowed as well.

Certificate 18 means no one younger than 18 is allowed to watch an '18' labelled film or renting or buying it.  There is not much limitations on '18' rated films since adults should have their own choice

of entertainment. But any events in the film that would encourage illegal activities is not allowed.

There shouldn't be any encouragement of drug use or violence in the films.

Too explicit sexual works which might stimulate or arouse sex is classified as 'R18' while educational sexual scenes are not problem to show in an '18'

We've watched a lot of horror films with children and teenagers as victims, this has given us a very important idea that to appeal our target audience who are teenagers, we need to create a mutual threat for them. We need to make the story to be more similar to their daily life so as to engage our film with their daily routine. So mutual threat will be the major thing they are going to enjoy.

We don't target a particular gender since we would like to draw as many audience as we can to our film. Therefore, male and female at the age 15 will be our target audience. In order to make our film more engaged to our target audience, we deliberately selected a boy as the victim of our film. Since we know female audience are the ones easier to be scared while male appear to be more challenging to appeal. So base on this reason, we've made more mutual threat for our male audience in order to draw them more into the film.

In order to engage our target audience, we've picked our filming location in a park where everyone can easily access. As most of our target audience are students, they are the ones who go to park very often as well, so we think we've picked an appropriate location to appeal them. Likewise, the part they will enjoy is going to be the mutual threat we create for them. Since they walk pass or go to parks everyday, whenever they are near a park, they might think of our film then. The thing they will be looking to see should be the horrible backstory behind the park, this might make them feel creepy about parks. Also, we've made the swings and other facilities in the park move on their own, this fits the convention of our sub genre. Mist is also put into the film, the unlikelihood of the appearance of mist in parks could further create the sense of mystery.

In terms of casting, we have chosen actor and actress at the age around 15 in order to fit our target audience. As mentioned, the major strategy to appeal them is mutual threat, so we tend to make everything closer to audience's personal life, then we would be able to leave them an incredible impression by effectively making use of mutual threat. So the resemblance of our actors' age to our target audience's age is really important in putting our film on a successful stage.

In our title sequence, we've put the girl's family footages to tell the backstory of the film. Since family videos are common within our target audience's families, this is another way to create a mutual threat for our audience. As soon as they know about this horrible story related to family videos, they are more likely to be scared or haunted when they look at their family videos again. Also, our target audience are still very young, they might even have been their own family videos, this mgiht make them start thinking if they will be murdered in the way the girl had before. Likewise, the clips we use for the film are quite shaky and jumpy, this makes our film to look more real in our audience's eyes, so this is one of the factors that brings our film to success.

Since our film is named 'The Lullaby'. We tend to make the music to be more lullaby-like. Furthermore, for our yound audience, lullaby should not be a distant memory for them, they might even have some favourite lullaby. So the idea of creating an errie lullaby is just appropriate in haunting our audience's head. This makes lullaby to become something creepy in their mind.

We have received very positive feedback from our classmates and they pointed our that we had a fabulous title sequence with excellent music, various types of shots were also used.  They even gave us very high mark for our film. However, this makes us realize that we were too harsh in the marking of our film, the mark we gave ourselves was just way too low when compare to the marks we received from our audience. So I'm really happy about the comments we've received on our final film.

Q4 - Reflective Evaluation Isabel Wong

It is important to know who the target audience for our film would be because we need to know the content limitation of our film. Since there are different limitation for audience of different age group, so we need to make sure we don't put content which is not appropriate for our target audience. Furthermore, we need to know what elements in the film our target audience will like, so it is easier to do research if we know who our target audience is, so we will be able to appeal them successfully.

The target audience of our media product would be male and female who are 15.
This is because the two characters in our film are both teenagers, the age we designed for our victim is 15 whilst the girl ghost is a young girl as well. So we can take advantage of the age resemblance to appeal the audience around 15.

The film I will discuss about is the Sixth Sense and the protagonist Cole is a very obvious victim.
Since he is a boy who comes from single-parent family, his classmates and teachers even call him a freak, and he is being treated as a sentimental boy. Cole's family background and behaviour make him vulnerable since no one is willing to accompany him and help him in the society he is living. When we put the same case into the actual world, it's not difficult to find the resemblance. In the actual world, people come from single-parent family or from lower class are seen as the ones who can be neglected and no one pays much attention on them. Some people might even look down on them. Same as the situation Cole is in, the birthday boy who is his classmate can be seen as children from richer family as his family can afford holding a birthday party for him. It's not a rare case where the richer people look down on poorer people. So Cole in the Sixth Sense represents the vulnerable group in the society thus he is always abused by his classmates and haunted by ghosts, but this also makes him willing to help the dead people as the dead people we will later realize they are also someone pathetic. Apart from the scary scenes, this might be a film to arouse the audience's awareness of caring the vulnerable people in the society.

The audience for our film would pobrably be female and male at the age 15.
As we have watched quite a lot of horror films with victims are usually teenagers or kids, we decided to appeal audience around 15 because this is less challenging especially for low budget films like ours. We can always make use of simple locations and props to make a horror film for teenagers as long as we make our plot more similar to their daily life which means the strategy we use to appeal them is mutual threat.

Q3 - Reflective Evaluation Isabel Wong

Independent production companies

Fantastic Films: It is an OSCAR winning film production company with a focus on high quality genre and niche films.

Examples of films:

This is the trailer of one of the Fantastic Films' production, Wake Wood. By observing the costumes and locations they use, it looks like the film is a low-budget local film. The locations they've chosen are really simple like a normal family house, a wood, they even don't use much special effects but camera shots to create the atmosphere they want their audience to be given. There is various of camera shots used in the film like canted angle shots. But the sound effect of the film is very well done which heightens the quality of production.

This is the poster of the film Wake Wood. The font type used here is relatively simple but has still done a good job to suit the theme of the film as the font type gives the feeling of woods to us. The poster is also well designed and structured and surely will make an effort to attract audience due to the absence of clear depiction of the story. It doesn't give the feel that the film is a low budget production.

This is another production of Fantastic Films, Outcast. We can see an obvious improvement here since the use of camera shots, lighting is much well constructed here. For example, I appreciate the POV shot that shows the opening and closing of the eye, this allows the POV shot to be more incredible and realistic. The quality of sound here is only average. Same as Wake Wood, the mise en scene like locations, props and costumes here is still intend to be simple which allows the company to reduce money spent on the demonstration of mise en scene. But the simple mise en scene doesn't affect the quality of the story, and this film seems to be more up-market than Wake Wood with its tense storyline. By comparing both films, the company seems to be inclined to use normal people like me, you or our neighbour as the main characters of the film.

This is the poster of Outcast. There is an explicit improvement in the techniques of design of the poster. More effects like mist, gloomy light are added to the poster to emphasize the creepy atmosphere of the film. More details are added to the poster, when we look at the left side, we can see the palm of the unknown creature, then we discover more details of a city on the right side. Furthermore, the size of the palm here is far more bigger and clear to see than the swings and people standing beside the swings, this might give the hint that the city is under threat of being attacked or invaded by an unknown creature or power. The font of OUTCAST here is well designed and more gripping. It even helps giving hints to the audience of what the story is about by putting some blood spots on the both symbol and word 'O'. Thus something bloody is predicted to happen in the film by looking at the film title in the poster.



Black and Blue Films: It is founded in 2007 which is one of Britain's leading independent motion picture production companies. The company is mainly focussing on the evergreen home entertainment market, its productions are eventually sold throughout the world.

Examples of films:

This is the trailer of Dead Cert, which is produced by Black and Blue Flims. This film doesn't seem like a production by an independent production company. Its quality and style is resemble to Hollywood. The most obvious way to explain is by observing the characters' costumes. Their unique styles of dressing helps presenting their own personalities and characters. The props used are even more sophisticared like shocking pink car at the beginning of the trailer. Editing here is also very attractive, there are loads of extreme long shots with fast forward effect added in them. Also the lighting here we can see there must be some deliberate light structuring strategy used to create such perfect shots.

This is the poster of Dead Cert. Compare to the trailer, it appears to be less attractive. There are only some characters of the film shown in the poster with a relatively casual font type used for the presence of film title. However, this matches the style of Hollywood and even quite resemble to the structure of most of the American films. Although Black and Blue Films is a British company, it seems they want to get a wider range of audience by presenting their productions in Hollywood style.

In line with the previous production style, Devil's playground is again a film with Hollywood style in it. The editing here is fabulous that not many loacal and independent companies can do such great job. The makeup of the zombies and injured characters is also the spotlight of the film, as the makeup is so professional that spices up the film and helps giving the accurate atmosphere. The special effects in the film also enhances the quality, as there is massive use of fire and explosion in large area which makes the film looks more like a high budget production.

This is the poster of Devil's Playground. Like Dead Cert, Blue and Black Films uses the poster to present the key characters of the film in their poster. The dominant colours here are also same as Dead Cert which are black and red. Thus, we can see there might be a formula behind each Blue and Black productions. But this poster is somehow much simplier than the one used for Dead Cert, this can thus show the company focuses more on the making of the film and demonstration of mise en scene than the making of posters.

Major Media Institution

Lionsgate: It is founded in Vancouver in 1997, it is the most commercially successful independent film and television distribution company in North America.

Examples of Films:

This is the trailer of a famous film Saw. The use of location is fabulous here, since the story happens in an abandone place where there are so many violent murder weapons. There is no way to find a place like this in actual world, so everything in the film has to be specially made by designers and the crews. Such process requires a large sum of costs spents, and this is also one of the most common production expenditures of most high budget productions.

This is the poster of Saw 3. It seems to be a very simple poster wihtout much details, but actually such simplicity heightens the quality of the film. Because the theme of this series is clearly stated in the poster and white background makes the film title to be more jutted out. This is a very well designed poster.

This is another famous film of Liongate, Kick Ass. Although it's a typical American film, there are lots of special effects added into the film. The shots with the bird's view of an American city even makes the film to be more captivating. The camera shots and special effects here even give a sense of professionalism with very high quality.

The poster of Kick Ass is as simple as Saw 3, both posters contain only one major object/character. Here we can see the main character Kick Ass standing in front of the poster with some comic images of gangsters as background. Audience might be able to expect something to happen in the film by looking at the poster. In this case, audience might expect Kick Ass as a hero who defeats bad powers in the society, and this even helps to arouse the interest of audience in knowing more about Kick Ass's own story.

To conclude, we can see an obvious difference in quality of productions between independent companies and bigger companies. As the bigger companies receive more investment to develope in different bits of their production, so it's easy for them to produce films with perfect and professional quality while the independent companies can't afford the professional production for every part of their films, they can usually afford to have professional presence in particular area like the demonstration of mise en scene, editing or equipments. However, both kinds of companies have similar way of distribution, they both use the release of trailers and posters to advertise their productions. Apart from that, the bigger production companies might be able to take advantage as they have more money to be spent on distribution, they might hold worldwide premiere ceremony or advance screenings.
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Since we are only students with limited budget and equipments, we are not able to distribute
our film in the same way as the production companies do. So all we need to do is to make the most of free online platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr etc. We can upload the trailer or short clips of our film to YouTube as it is a popular worldwide platform where a large amount of audience will pop in to there everyday. Also, we could upload our posters and plot summary to twitter, Facebook in order increase exposure. As well as using social networkign sites, we can also try to get the chance of having our film being put on to some local film festivals, for example, Hong Kong Independent Film Festival.

This is the trailer of Hong Kong Independent Film Festival 2010, as shown, there is a variety of international independent films. So, it would be easier for our film to access this kind of independent film festival. Furthermore, the reasons why we should choose Hong Kong are the coexistence of eastern and western culture in the city and wide media coverage. Since Hong Kong is not like the traditional Chinese cities, it welcomes all sorts of indie productions and also offers a wide range of venues for us to do screenings or exhibitions, so it is an ideal place for us to get our film a wider public exposure due to the favourable atmosphere in Hong Kong.

The image shows one of the ways I've mentioned above, college's media students posting their films on YouTube so everyone can enjoy their products.






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This is the poster we made for our film which is inspired by the poster of Paranormal Activity 3(shown below).

Our film is going to be in theatres on 13th August 2012. As we see August as a golden opportunity to draw more audience from our targeted group. This is because our target audience are all having summer holiday in August and so they will get time to watch our film.

We are going to release our film's DVD on 13th December 2012, since most of our target audience will soon have theri Christmas holiday so they will be free to buy DVDs and watch at home.

In terms of advertisement campaign, we will upload our film trailer on YouTube in order to get it exposed to worldwide. Also, we will create an official page on Twitter and Facebook to get our young audience updated since these are the most popular social networking sites nowadays. Posters will be published in popular teeanage magazine as well, since this might draw more attention from our target audience who are teenagers.

Photos from first shoot