PLANNING: Introduction

Now that we've finished the research for our coursework, the next step is planning an getting everything in order for our shoot. But before all of that, let me introduce you to the team.

Amputato Productions consists of these two teenage girls:

Ella Drake
Age: 17
Favourite Movie Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi
Favourite Movie: The Nightmare Before Christmas
Favourite Director: Tim Burton
Role: Director

Katie Nicholls
Age: 17
Favourite Movie Genre: Disney/Animated
Favourite Movie: The Lion King
Favourite Director: Chris Columbus
Role: Director

Together we make Amputato Productions!

RESEARCH: Target Audience

The plan we have made is simple and, I feel, rather easy for us to stick to.
My role in this is to team up with Katie to create a survey by 12/1/12, discussing between ourselves the questions we shall include and creating the whole thing on surveymonkey.com.
We shall then use social networks such as facebook.com to distribute it to a wider audience, as the images below show.

Target Audience

The results of our survey show our target audience to be one based primarily in personal choice of film rather than age, race or gender. We had a wide range of age and gender, but the main consensus was personal taste being what drives a person to watch a horror film.

According to our survey…

Questions 1 and 2

Here we can clearly see the majority of our answers were from females, and the age range is surprisingly varied. This shows a large target audience.

Questions  3 and 4

Most of the responders claim to have watched up to 3 hours a week, so either a film or two shorter ones.  There is also a large variety in the type of horror film preffered, again showing personal preferance plays a key role.

Questions 5 and 6

It’s difficult to catogarise the 5^th question, asnit relies soully on people personal choices. However, the 6^th question shows that, although the results varied, the more popular aspects within the films are gore and tension. These two aspects are often used to create suspense with the audience, or with that case of the gore often to make them uncomforatble, all of which adds to the shock and moreover the horror of the film.

Questions 7 and 8

The majority of the answers dictate that viewers prefer a male as lead tole, however this could lead back to the fact that most of the people who answered this survey were female. There’s also quite a mix of answeres concerning what influences people to watch horror films, depending on personal tastes.

Questions 9 and 10

 The company in which people watch horror movies again varies wildly, however our results do show that people tend more towards watching with other people. This indicates maybe targeting the film towards a group-based audience, making it easy to identify with.
The main consensus with question 10 was that people like the first few minutes of a horror film to have a good amount of tension and suspense, the overlay of a non-diagetic sound track usually helps with this. Along with that, people tend to enjoy the ability to forge a connection with the characters.

Conclusion

Overall, the results show that our target audience is mainly at a case of personal preference, and not watched primarily by one type of person. However, what we have found is that the creation and development of strong characters, along with a build up of tension infused with gore and a fare amount of violence. In response to this, we have decided that the introduction to our horror film would need to include a good amount of tension and suspense, often by foreshadowing, as well as a good story concept and strong characters. 

RESEARCH: Conclusion

I filmed the conclusion to my research into the four films. I aimed to  include similarities in the four technical codes, and things I have learned about the opening two minutes ie what they do in realtion to the rest of the film..

RESEARCH: Genre

Here is a slide show of my research into my given genre;

Genre Research - Zombie Horror