Our film Ellipsis is a sub genre horror film – slasher and incorporates a few of the generic conventions such as gore, mystery, horror, and friendship. An example of one of the conventions being used is in the first scene, mystery and horror are two of the main conventions that stand out as a girl is tied to a chair in a dark room, with blood on her face, which creates a good start, and makes the audience think about how this happened within the film. Some films that have the same generic conventions as ours are Wrong Turn, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Blair Witch Project. One film that is related to the whole “damsel in distress” stereotype is our character which is similar to the girl character in The Blair Witch Project.
The social groups represented in our film in terms of gender are teenage, British college students who are female and males. The girls tend to be stereotyped as quite girly, quite smart, interested in boys and relationships, and enjoy a goodtime with friends and love to party for the weekend. The boys tend to be stereotyped as quite outgoing characters, who like to socialise with girls and wanting relationships or are already in relationships with some of the girls, quite intelligent, but can sometimes be quite selfish towards the girls.
This links into because the target audience that will watch this may understand because some parts may relate to their personalities, and they all understand how it is to be a teenager, as everyone goes through that phase of their lives. Also, we chose to stick to using the stereotype of the “weaker sex” (females) being in more danger compared to the stereotype of “stronger, macho sex” (males) in our film is both the hero that saves the day, and also the “monster” who creates the horror. Our first scene relates to this stereotypical approach where a teenage girl is alone, helpless and vulnerable in an old abandoned house in the woods.
I feel that a distribution company such as Summit Entertainment would distribute our film which would be classed as an art house budget film, as they have distributed films such as Sex Drive, The Twilight Saga, and Sorority Row. They appear to work with some different genres of films, including horrors with different ranges of budgets. I feel that our film has similar budgets and may attract similar types of audiences to our film, such as Sorority Row. Most of these films had a similar cinema release, expect for twilight which became more popular than expected, and I feel that our film may have the same opportunity. They also have a wide range of advertising such as TV adverts, posters and billboards which would give publicity for our film.
4) Who would be the audience of your media product?
The target audience for our media product would be aimed at teenage boys and girls, aged from 15 to 25 years, due to the fact that it’s a horror film that contains the conventions of gore, mystery and death, and people over the age of the target audience may not find it interesting, or too scary to handle.
Some films that are similar and related to our film are “Wrong Turn” and “The Blair Witch Project” and both of these films appeal to target audiences of ages 15 to 30 year old and men that like the genre of horror and conventions of mystery, death and gore.
From our audience research, we found out that 10 out of the 10 people that we asked would watch our film, from looking at our 25 word pitch, and that 9 out of 10 people thought that the film was long enough at the length of 90 minutes, but one person thought it would be too long. These questions were asked to 10 people in our aimed target range, so it means that our film would attract our target audience to it.
We classified our film as a 15 because;
- Certificate 15 films have the largest audience
- Our film does not involve or promote the use of drugs
- Our film does contain any footage of dangerous behaviour (E.g. Suicide, Self Harming)
- Our Film does contain moderate amounts of horror- but it is not sadistic or sexualised
- Our film contains only mild swear words
- Our film contains no scenes of extreme nudity
- Our film does not involve any sexual scenes containing strong detail- they will only be mild and extremely brief
- There are strong images of pain and violence in our film- however they do not focus on the infliction of pain and it is not sadistic or sexualised
http://http://www.bbfc.co.uk/downloads/pub/Guidelines/BBFC%20Classification%20Guidelines%202009.pdf
We have attracted out target audience by using characters in our opening that are from our target age range. We have also included the generic conventions of a horror film and used iconography that will attract “horror” fans to watching this film. I feel that our opening to the film does build up tension and puts the audience on an instant cliff hanger to make them think how did the film get to this point. Also because of the girl screaming right at the beginning of our film, that helps to add tension also. Another thing in our first scene that adds to the situation is the use of low lighting to make the establishing shot quite mysterious, confusing and slightly surreal to the audience. We use a lot of slow camera shots in the beginning to help establish the environment and build tension. Our editing overall is good quality, but not always as smooth as some of the other shots. I feel that our camera work was of a high standard as the majority of shots work together and we have useda variety of shows within the first 2 minutes such as medium shots, close ups and eye-line matches. We did encounter some problems with some of the locations chosen for filming, due to them either being too small or unavailable to use, and also weather problems affected filming too. I feel that we worked well to overcome those problems overall.
Before this course, I had very little filming and editing knowledge based on film making, and the technology and equipment used. As time progressed with our film making, my knowledge about editing, filming and the equipment used increased, to make sure our project was to a higher standard.
I have learnt how to use the following equipment;
- Sony HDV 1000 camera and tripod – specialist professional filming equipment
- Tungsten lights – for special lighting effects related to our genre
- Final Cut Express Pro – Film editing software
From using this equipment, I have developed skills in;
- shooting different filming shots, such as smoother shots of different locations in scenes
- Rules of filming, for example 180 degree rule etc.
- filming techniques, such as panning and zooming
- How to professionally edit film
The problems I encountered were;
- allowing time for filming in bad weather conditions
7) looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Since the preliminary task, I feel that I have gained a lot of skills from creating this 2 minute film. One of the biggest lessons I have learned in this process is team work and how it can be so difficult at times.
I have also improved my research skills for projects like this. It helps boost the understanding of a project to create ideas and make life in general easier.
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