Group- Questions 4&5TEEGAN HARVEY AND CHARLIE HALLIGAN

Who was your target audience?

DEMOGRAPHICS We targeted the demographics of age range 15-24, the core audience for

horror. Psychological horrors are typically targeted at both females and males

therefore a specific gender category isn’t apparent for our film, as we have a female as the protagonist and the antagonist as a male, and our piece implies that he has killed many females in the past. Showing how our piece would have the narrative of ‘the final girl’.

PSYCHOGRAPHICS We considered psychographics of our

targets audience when constructing narrative as we knew that our audience would be the type of frequent movie watchers who enjoy watching this type of genre.

Therefore we tried to make the mise-en-scene and sound effects really conform to the psychological horror sub-genre by creating tension and enigmas where possible.

We did this by precisely choosing sounds that would link well to our narrative and create a depressed and gloomy atmosphere for the intercutting frames at the beginning of the opening. Then use a discordant sound that emphasised the horrific and sadistic ways of the antagonistic as he plans his murders, adding bangs in precise places to create tension.

• Furthermore we knew our audience would like the fact that the antagonist thoroughly planned and watched his victims, instead randomly killing them at any given opportunity, as it was like a game for him that gives him pleasure.

MISE EN SCENE to create tension:• We covered his lair in photos of young girls and

maps, putting weapons on the table

• Also had him stroke the pictures and mark where certain girls lived with a knife. To portray how he has a mental disability and is insane, as this isn’t a normal act to do making the film more pleasurable for the audience to watch.

How do the characters appeal to this target audience?

• The characters we used appealed to our target audience, because we used a traditional white, blonde, pretty, young female who is stereotypically used as the protagonist in many horror movies. Due to her age it creates a more sympathetic mood as the audience feel sorry for her due to how vulnerable young girls are.

• The expectations of our genre is to have somebody who is of a psychotic nature to perform horrific acts.

• Therefore this is what we did, also we knew that our sub-genre couldn’t make the audience jump much as we didn’t have any gore or fighting in our piece.

• So we decided to create enigmas and to make the audience think about the narrative and who each character was and how they linked together.

We did this by having the mother and the protagonist intercutting with one another

CREATED ENIGMAS FOR THE AUDIENCE

BY:

Having the teenage girl’s scenes all in black and white.

• Then went to a flash back ‘one year earlier’ to explain to the audience why that woman was at the gravestone and who the young girl was.

How did you test your concept and sequence to an audience throughout the process?

• This was that a man had a strange obsession with girls, and wanted to kill them.

• We then decided that the girl who had been ‘chosen’, would be walking to school as if she was on route to where the man would capture her, and take her back to his lair.

We tested this concept in a pitch presentation to our class and teachers, who liked the concept and gave a few improvements to which we could make it feel more like a horror.

• Firstly, Teegan and I came up with an idea that we thought would be appropriate for a psychological horror opening.

We then put our concept together, created storyboards and decided on when to shoot. After we had shot our footage, we put this together in a rough cut which we then showed various friends and family to see whether they liked it or not.

Premier Interface of our first rough cut of the killers den as you see there is less photos on the wall and no map on the table .There are boxes and cans on the table that should not be there and completely subtract from the idea that this a killers lair and decrease how realistic this room is. Also because we filmed in the day time, the lighting doesn’t feel very iconic for a horror here either.

• The majority of our audience said that they liked the concept and idea.

• however there were some aspects which we could improve and reshoot in order to dramatically increase the quality of our film.

• Our audience said that we could improve various aspects of the mise-en-scene in the killers den as it didn’t look tense enough and didn’t fit into the horror style enough.

• We then decided to reshoot our footage with the improvements in the den and after we did this we put this together with the other lines of action in order to create our final cut.

• In this final cut we included the titles as well as sounds and effects in order to create verisimilitude and tension for the audience.

• We exported this and uploaded it to YouTube, to then show an audience and receive our last pieces of feedback.

• This feedback included various comments such as slowing down some shots, as well as changing the saturation of the image of Portia’s scenes, so that it could be emphasized that she was dead and that those scenes were in the past.

• Below is the premier interface of our final piece when we were editing the killer lair.

All of these processes allowed us to connect with our audience as we were able to see what an audience would think of the film if they saw it for the first time. This was effective as the audience might have been able to spot things that we couldn’t see, or give us recommendations that we couldn’t think of.

Did your final audience testing demonstrate that you were successful in appealing to your audience?

Our questionnaire

Our final audience testing was to a group of friends as well as other media students (based around our target audience), who we then asked to complete a questionnaire based on what they thought of the film.

• The majority of people liked the film and said that they wanted to see more or they would recommend this film to their family and friends.

• Most people understood the different lines of action and how they all linked in which each other.

• This final testing allowed us to understand that our film opening appealed to the majority of our audience as they were intrigued by the concept.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

Who is the woman at the graveyard?

12/12 said mother of the girl

How old does the girl look?

11/12 said 15-18 years old

1/12 said 11-14 years old

How tense do you think the film is on a scale of 1-10 ? (1 is low, 10 is high)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 101/12 0/12 0/12 0/12 1/12 1/12 2/12 7/12 2/12 0/12

1. Does the music feel sad?

11/12 said yes

2. Does the setting of the killers den work effectively?

12/12 said yes

• All of our feedback shows that our concept was very clear and easy to understand

• However the one confusion our audience did have was they didn’t understand why the antagonist burnt the photo of the protagonists boyfriend, as you can see in the next slide many people thought it was because he didn’t like him, but it was meant to imply he envied him.

What was your favourite part?The killers den parts- 9/12All of it- 1/12Killer’s identity not being revealed- 1/12Graveyard scenes- 1/12

What was your least favourite part?House scenes- 1/12Graveyard scenes- 4/12None- 6/12The relationship between characters wasn’t clear- 1/12The killer’s den- 1/12

Why do you think the girl s scenes were in black and white? To increase tension- 4/12 The girl is dead- 5/12It’s a flashback- 4/12The girl is afraid- 1/12 Would you recommend this film to your friends/family?Yes- 11/12

Did you understand who the man was and what he was doing?No- 1/12Planning a killing- 3/12 The murderer of the teenage girl – 8/12

Do you think the titles worked well integrated as well as fitting in with the genre of a psychological horror? Yes- 12/12 Why do you think he burnt the photo of the boy?

Envies him Next victim Doesn’t like him Revenge7/12 2/12 3/12 0/12