Individual Research

I completed some individual research into the potential audience of our horror opening sequence, I decided to post on twitter to see who and how many people like horror films and would watch horror films. 

As twitter is mainly used by people aged 13-25, this helps to give an insight to the age range that would watch horror films. As you can see 8 people in a short space of time said that they liked horror films, suggesting that our target audience should be for teenagers and young adults. As I mainly follow people on twitter with similar interests and with similar age group, it means that I can confidently say that from my research that an appropriate target audience for our product would be around 13-25.

This was important research to carry out as it gave me a better understanding of our target audience and gave new research and figures, as this was research I carried out it means that through posting our opening sequence on social media, we could potentially have a significant audience. 

Further Audience Research

I have done further research into the potential target audience of horror films, I found http://www.slideshare.net/mattmosey1/my-target-audiance was a useful website into the horror genre and its target audience.

From this it can be concluded that the target age for our opening sequence should be teenagers and young adults, this has been effective in confirming what my group already thought, it will now help us to plan a specific storyline that will be understandable and effective and dramatic enough to suit our target audience.

This research was interesting to read as I didn't have any preconcieved stereotypes for the horror genre, although this research says that men are more likely to watch horror films, I disagree. I think this genre can fit to either gender and give the same effect to both male and female audiences. We will need to ensure that our storyline is non biased to gender and it would be appropriate for both genders and be something that both genders would enjoy.

Now that I have a better idea of our target audience, our storyline can now be based around this, with props, setting and a script that is impactful and creepy to give the audience the "rush" and suspense that they expect when watching a horror film. 

Opening Sequences - Horror Films

While we are filming for our opening sequence, I have completed more research into other opening sequences in the horror genre to help develop my understanding of typical conventions of a horror film.

The first sequence I looked at was 'The Conjuring', what I found was:

• Voice Over- at the beginning, this is effective as it gives the reader ncssary information to understand what is going on in the scene, in this case it helps to involve the audience into the event and allow them to feel involved within the meeting. This sense of involvement helps to capture the audiences attention and heighten the creepy goings on with the doll.
• The close up of the eye suggests that the audience are also being watched by Annabelle and shows that there is a constant ghostly presence.
• The soundtrack is fast and sharp which helps to create tension, music being a fast pace gives the sense that something is coming or getting closer, which helps to introduce fear to the audience.

The second sequence I looked at was 'Sinister', what i ofund was:

• The long shot of the tree and the four people and the slow movement of them being pulled up the tree empathises their death and their cruel death, it also suggests that something isnt quite right as they're being hanged, it gives a sense of suffering which therefore makes the sequence more dramatic.
• There is eerie and slow paced, quiet music presents a more relaxed theme which contasts with the actions happening on screen. The quiet music implies that they are alone but as they are being raised it gives the impression that something is there with them, making it seem more creepy and eerie.

The final sequence I looked at was 'The Woman in Black', what I found was:

• Close ups of the girls faces and their toys give the impression that something is in the room with them, watching them.
• The use of childlike, innocent music gives a sweet and normal sense but does imply a eerie atmosphere, as the girls walk towards the window it gets faster and more intense, making the girls actions even more impactful.
• Props- the dolls, teapot and cups in the girls room shows them as being normal girls, which makes the audience question their intentions for their actions.
• The slow cutting rate as the girls walk up to window, could imply their reluctance to go to the window, suggesting that something is pulling them or forcing them do go there.
• finally, the over the shoulder and the establishing shot where the audience can see the whole room, a shadow is in the bottom right hand corner, showing that something isnt right and something was actually in the room with them, creating tension for the audience and asking questions as to what actually happened. The use of shadows is effective as the audiences imagination will take over and due to the unknown they will fill in what they think is the being, making the sequence seem more scary. 

Target Audience

As our groups main idea for our opening sequence was to do a horror sequence, I have looked on the internet at research into the popularity of the horror genre compared to other genres.

From the table the horror genre only has a 3% share with audiences and is the 7th popular genre but, most importantly it is still a popular and successful genre. This is because although it is popular it is more niche, whereas comedy and adventure films suit the majority of the population. This research has been helpful in determining whether or not it would be a good idea to create a horror opening sequence, I think that the target audience would fit in with teenagers and young adults and I think that is who we will need to aim our story at. 

PITCH

This is our groups inital ideas for our opening sequence, we presented this infront of our class and we were then asked the following questions:

• How will we incorporate titles into our scene? Which we answered, as we are planning to incorporate the titles into the props that we will be using, instead of editing then in later.
• Also we were asked how we would make our idea different and more original? From this our group decided on a new idea which we think will work better.

From these questions we were able to think of a new idea that our group feel will give the opportunity for us to be creative with but also that we are all confident on and understand our idea.We will now begin production meetings to finalise our story, organise propsw, characters, a location and also the sound effects and camera angles we will use within our opening sequence. 

Pitch