For our movie opening we chose to do a psychological thriller genre. When doing research into the conventions used in horror movies we decided that our opening would use these conventions instead of challenging them. Our group decided to do this as we felt that our movie might be quite hard to classify from the opening without the use of these conventions, this is because the opening consisted of our main character getting ready whilst remembering his past, when he was bullied in both his home and school life. He then decides to go out and kill those who harmed him in the past. The specific horror conventions we chose to include in 'When The Bell Rings' opening are the use of blood and weaponry which instantly signifies to the audience that the film will include blood and gore and eventually death. We also specifically chose the font from 'Life type Writer' and the effect for the font in the grunge catergory called 'Lurch'. We did this as it created a distorted effect which helped to signify a horror genre whilst also engaging the target audience through showing the jumpy or distorted effect of the film which is parallel of the text.
Our media group consists of a range of different people with different personalities and interests. This was very useful when coming up with our media product as when dicussing ideas we all had shared experience of bullying or knew someone who had been. This then turned into our main theme through the film and how it drives the main character to revenge from being bullied in his past. We believe that in respect to bullying, most social groups have had some experience with this as the people in our group have though this mainly resides in the teenage years, which is why our social group consists of teenagers to early twenties. Another element that links to this social group is the dark side of a the characters personality and the feeling of causing harm to those who do to you, this is also relatable to most in our social group as everyone has felt wronged or depressed in their life, though few may go to the extremes that the character in 'When The Bell Rings' did but there are some cases especially in the teenage years of self harm which is shown by our main character when he cuts his hand purposely in front of the mirror. This engages the audience as they can relate to what has happened in the opening of the film, in relation to self-harming.
We believe our film overall would be classed in the niche category, as, though it has elements that more mainstream films include we think that our films layout and plot classes it better as a niche film. Due to this fact it is highly unlikely that any big Hollywood studio would distribute our film as opposed to a Independent British Company. Though if a Hollywood company did wish to distribute our film, we think that ‘Twisted Pictures’ would be most likely to. This is because they have created such movies as SAW, which is also a psychological thriller
Our target audience is specifically men aged between 15-35. We have decided this through the research we conducted for example; questionaires to which the highest interest rate came from this group of people. We have also aimed our social demographic as C2-E as we believe it will have a greater appeal to the lower class background though we still believe there may be people from higher classes who would also enjoy this type of film, as for ethnicity we do not believe there is a specific group that wouldn't enjoy our film opening but rather it would be enjoyed by all as it appeals to any ethnicity and does not offend anyone from a certain race or background.
In reference to Grayham Burton’s audience theory, which says that an audience can be grouped by their common interest which in the case of the film industry would be the genre of a film. Thus if you wanted to target an audience who likes interlectual films with blood and gore, you would create your film in the psychological horror genre which is exactly what our group have decided to aim for when creating the opening for 'When The Bell Rings'.
Though this still leaves our target audience very broad so we wanted to narrow it down even further by using John Hartley’s social grouping theory. In this theory he says that an audience can be grouped further by their social background which could be split into five categories; Self, Gender, Age, Group, Class/Social Demographic and Ethnicity/Race. An audience member who likes our film opening's genre for the category Self would have to specially enjoy watching the pain of the characters within the storyline, which is called ‘Schneidenfraud’. With gender we believe our film is enjoyed most by men rather than women specifically aged between 15 (as that is the age rating our film would be given) and 35, which also covers the category Age Group. In reference to the last two categories we believe our film would do best targeted at C2-E as people with jobs such as trademen down to the unemployed should enjoy the disturbing footage and storyline more than people from higher classes. In reference to Ehtnicity, we again do not believe that a particular person of any ethnic background would prefer it over someone from another.
We also believe that the Richard Dyer Utopian theory relates to our films target audience as it states that an audience will respond to a media text if it offers a compensation for the inadequacies of the audiences own lives. This relates to our movie as when the audience watch the opening they may get a rush of excitement via being scared which gives them a sense of life and takes away any boredom a person may have felt before hand in their life, thus a Utopia is created.
Lastly we have used the Uses and Gratifications Theory which was created by Blumier and Katz. This theory suggests that there are different reasons that a audience would consume a product including movies. These consist of
Entertainment; which our film achieves by scaring people and making them feel uneasy which gives a sense of excitement to them. In the case of 'When The Bell Rings' the audience could find excitement through the tension that we have tried to build through the non-diegetic sound.
Social Interaction which our opening shows by targeting the viewers emotions by given them mixed feelings towards the main character who is seen as evil but shown via flashbacks to himself originally to be a victim causing empathy but also fear to what the character may do because of his past.
Escapism, which is shown as when the viewer is engaged by our opening via emotional feeling towards the main character they will lose their selves within the world of the film.
With Information our film opening shows real life applications as children or even adults today our victims of bullying though all may not result in such drastic consequences as shown in our movie though there have been some cases though very few
Lastly our film involves Identification which is where an audience feel they can identify with a specific topic or character shown within our film opening, as said in Information, there are cases worldwide of bullying specically at younger ages which makes it very relatable and would attract the younger audience of our target.
When creating our film, we chose specific subject matter, props and costumes to help attract our audience. We also addressed them via making these groups as relatable to the audience as possible. We did this specifically through the use of verisimilitude. This was targeted mainly in the setting of the characters room as it is where the majority of filming takes place. We wanted to include things that would be seen in people’s rooms across the world such as a bed, curtains, mirror, desk etc. Though we kept the walls bare as we wanted to express this child is deeply unhappy and therefore has no interests that would bring pleasure to him. Though we have put a specific poster type collage of photographs covered in blood on the wall to show that the character expresses himself to show his disturbed or twisted mind. Through research that we did, we found that it's quite a common practice for those with issues to suppress them in such ways that may be seen as odd to most people, we put in this collage pictures of specific people with red paint smeared over them which signifies blood to the audience which can be taken from the audiences frame of reference in the media as these characters are targeted and the blood signifies that the characters in the photographs are to be killed or have been killed. This unknown fact also engages the audience as they now have seen potential victims of murder and they want to carry on watching to find out if the fatal act was carried through or if it is still to come.
Lastly we used flashbacks to help attract/address our audience by using a very relatable subject matter within them. This subject matter was bullying, which as we have stated before within this evaluation is a worldwide problem, affecting people from all ages. This attracts people via identification with this topic and the characters emotions in relation to it. There is also another subject matter, which the audience may find they can identify and relate to which is self-harm. Though there are many types of self-harm, we found that people from our personal social group (teenagers) self-harm mostly through cutting themselves.
Over the last couple of months we, as a group have been introduced into using new technology in the media to create the opening sequence of the film that we created 'When The Bell Rings'. The main two technologies that we used in order to create our opening were a camcorder to shoot the footage for the film and Final Cut Pro Editing software in order to edit the footage that was previously shot. When we first started using the camcorder we had some trouble that resulted in the us having to re-shoot the footage as we got some of the lighting wrong which meant that some shots were unusable when it came to editing the opening together. When using Final Cut Pro it took the group some time to work out how to use it so that we could make the best opening possible. this meant that the process of editing the film together took a lot longer than it should have done as we needed to play around with the software in order to find effects, for example and see if they would work in relation to what we were trying to create in the initial ideas. However from doing this project we as a group have become more confident to use a camcorder to gain good or even great footage for any future project that we do. In the last few weeks i feel that we have also learnt how to use Final Cut Pro editing software effectively in order to create films that meet a specific need and are finished to a professional standard.
As a group we feel that we have improved greatly in organising, shooting and editing a film together. When we were first introduced to all of the software we felt that we created a good preliminary task. However, after using the technology over the past couple of months we believe that the preliminary task was good but if we were to shoot it again it would be much better. The reason for this is because we as a group have learnt how to do more complex procedures on Final Cut Pro that would make any film that we produce look professional. This means that we feel we have developed the skills needed for this project, starting with a good preliminary film and ending with an opening to a film that is shot and edited to a high or even professional standard.
