Quick group meeting 2

We held this meeting to clarify a few things for our narrative.
Things we clarified:
How are we going to portray her manic depression? We decided to have a shot of pills each time when she wakes up from her sleep to show that what she has seen (or what she thinks she has seen in her dream) is just nightmares and doesn't help her sleep. The pills should calm her down.
Our narrative is both restricted and omniscient as the audience know some things that the character does not, and also they think they know other things that the character does not but then in the end, both the characters and target audience find out the same thing at the end, which is that our main character is teh killer of her two bullies.

Our production name

My group couldn't decide on a production group name so we took the two that we couldn't decide on and conducted a survey on our target audience, and saw what they preferred. Our target audience helped us to decide as the results were 'Dark Arts Productions', and so this is our new production group name.

Group meeting 1

Setting out and sharing group tasks for planning.

This allowed everyone to have an equal share of tasks to do.

Treatment plan

Name of Film: Senseless

Tagline of Film: Everybody has a good and a bad side. Unfortunately, Mila's bullies discover both

Production Name: To be confirmed                                                                      

Medium: Short Film

Format: Audio/visual

Certification: 15+

Target Audience:  We aim to target people over the age 15 this is because the film involves the character being mentally unstable with manic depression and identity disorder, it also involves blood and gore which may distress some younger viewers. The demographics is of category D and E, this is an audience that have the appropriate income and have enough money to go cinema to watch films and are of the appropriate age to watch horror films. As a production team, we decided to on category D and E as we did research on survey monkey and found that mostly teenagers like to watch horror films. We also aim to all genders to include everyone. Our short film is mainly targeted to people who enjoy the psychological horror genre and the crime genre, as the short film includes murders and discovery of murders and a double identity. The psychographic of the audience would fit the ‘explorer’ (people who seek adventure, thrills and like to try something different), and ‘reformer’ (people who believe in seek personal growth, are socially aware and curious). We also aim to reach an audience who enjoys reading horror novels such as ‘The American Psycho’, ‘Coraline’ and ‘Carrion Comfort’.

Synopsis the film:

Sam is a timid girl who keeps to herself. Sam’s pent up frustration from keeping quiet from her bullies’ results her in having Dissociative Identity Disorder where she develops a pseudo identity that desires to avenge Sam’s broken-self and torture the bullies to death. Although, Sam doesn’t remember any of these murders taking place.

Character list/profiles:

Sam (Main character): A shy college student who ruthlessly gets bullied by students in her fellow college peers. She suffers from manic depression and has a rare mental disorder known as Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Bully 1: One of Mila’s college peer who emotionally abuses Mila and drives her to madness, Mila murders in an abandoned place.

Bully 2: Mila’s bully who torments Mila, and Mila eventually kills the bully in discreteness.

Key Scenes:

1.       (Day 1) Flashback of a dark figure stabbing an already dead body ruthlessly. The camera is at canted low angle to make it seem as if the murder is being watched secretly.

2.      Mila the main character wakes up from a ‘nightmare’ (flashback) and is out of breath from the vivid imagery. The camera: mid shot of her in bed distraught.

3.      Mila walks into her Kitchen and makes breakfast, cleans and continues doing her normal daily routine.

4.      Sits down to eat. The camera shifts from mid-shot to close-up of her.

5.      Flashback: Mila getting teased and getting emotionally torn and physically beat up from her ruthless bullies.

6.      Mila picks up her bag to go to work. The camera is positioned as a long shot where the door can be seen

7.      Later that day Mila comes back, the camera is still at the same position

8.      (Day 2) Mila walk into her room to sleep, camera from behind Mila following Mila’s movements

9.      Mila struggling, groaning in her sleep (camera is canted to show her reaction when she is struggling)

10.  Flashback/nightmare of Mila in a operation theatre, watching an almost-dead cadaver covered in blood, the camera pans to Mila’s face of her distraught reaction to the dead body. (Diegetic sound of Mila’s phone dinging continuously)

11.  The dinging sting continues into next scene of Mila waking up from her nightmare due to the sound of her phone, Mila sees an article of the person being operated on ‘Dead’ on her social media.

12.  Mila walks into her sitting room in utter confusion to clear her head thinking she might go psycho, when the sound of news is playing in the background, camera pans to TV, Mila hears her name and slowly and uncertainly turns around she feigns shock at what she sees.

13.  CCTV footage of Mila caught dragging a body and stabbing the body repeatedly and ruthlessly. She looks up into the camera and smiles of finally avenging her past self.

14.  The camera zooms out and pans to Mila’s face: she’s smiling back. Close up shot of her face.

Unique Selling Point:

Our unique selling point is that our main character develops this unique character that we don’t get to see in real everyday life. Our character has DID, DID is a rare identity disorder and it forms form having a very abusive childhood. Our production group presents the audience the consequences of emotional and psychical bullying. Also, our main character is unaware of being the murderer of her bullies which isn’t conventional for horror films as there is always one protagonist and antagonist, whereas our main character is both the protagonist and antagonist. This would be shocking to the audience because in most horror films there are conventions that the audience expect from these horror films, however because the audience settle into expectations when watching horror films, this is a shocking revelation to the audience.

Competitive market:

Our competition are movies with the psychological horror genre. An example would be of M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, Split is a psychological horror film and its main narrative is about the DID, however our film largely differentiates from Split as Split involves a number of personalities, and our character tries to discover what’s wrong with her. Moreover, Split is made by BlumHouse productions, who have made well-known films such as Paranormal Activity, Anabelle, Insidious, this means they are able to provide Split enough budget money to add CGI effects and to have a good location for filming whereas we did not have a budget and tried to improvise with what we have access to such as a green screen. 

Proposal: Poster

Proposal for Poster (final)

Name of Film: Senseless

Tagline of Film: Everybody has a good and bad side. Mila's bullies unfortunately discover both...

Production Name: TBC
Medium: Print Advert 

Format: Landscape

Target Audience: The audience we aim to target are that of the age of 15+ with the demographics of both category D (semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers), and E (unemployed, students, pensioners and casual workers). The reason for this is because of the fact that most of these types of people, students and teenagers in particular, are fans of the horror genre. To add, young adults may be interested in said genre due to rebellious reasons, for example, when a horror movie contains themes which society is against or refrains from mentioning, they will be more likely to watch the movie. In addition, another reason why is because the people around them are giving positive reviews so they feel obliged to watch the film. Therefore, our film will appeal to this niche audience. Our target audience will also be aimed at all genders as we think horror movies appeal to everyone. This is evident in our surveys answered by the public which convey that males and females of all ages are interested in the horror genre. Furthermore, the appropriate psychographic of our audience would be ‘Explorers’ as they will be likely to want to figure things out, which our sub-genre requires. Having said that, we will therefore also have an active audience as they not only need to obtain information passively but also  be actively involved- often unconsciously, in making sense of the ideologies within their personal and social contexts, and thus our film too.  

Content of the advert: Taking inspiration from 'Identity', a movie of the same sub-genre, I believe we are to create a poster of roughly the same colour palette: black, white and red. However, unlike Identity, our poster will be landscape as we, living in London, have noticed through research that poster from here do not tend to be portrait. 

Concept 1:-

In addition, there will be a red background with two identical head silhouettes- one of which will be black and the other white. The white silhouette represents the protagonist's innocent, oblivious side, whereas the black silhouette will represent the pseudo identity that our main character has. This silhouette will be superimposed over the white one to symbolise this identity's sovereignty in the denouement of our film. 

Concept 2:- 

Our main character's head will be centre, half of which will be normal/tinted white, and the other will have a black tint. The normal/white represents her oblivious side, whereas the black tinge represents her dark and evil side. 

Also, the blood red background was chosen so that the audience could recognise our film's genre: horror. To add, regarding typography, due to the short attention span of today's youth, we had decided that the film's title, rating, tagline and hashtag will be present at the bottom of the poster- these are the most necessary things we need on the poster, that our audience will remember and can share with others; the hashtag will enable web 2.0 to be used and ensure our product is known. Speaking of which, the font of our typography will be simple so that most people can understand what it reads if they were, for example, in a hurry, walking past it in the train station. The font I have chosen for the title is ‘KaiTi’. The reason for this is because, not only is it clear, but the slight spaces between the letters represent the close proximity Mila’s paradoxical identities have, in regards to their past as well as the fact that they are one person; our protagonist has compartmentalized her psyche in two as a defensive measure. As a result, this led to creating a malicious identity that’s sole aim is to avenge the antagonist by murdering her past bullies. Hence, our antagonist can switch identities unconsciously, therefore the title will be somewhat distorted too, to symbolise the on edge mindset the antagonist has, and distressed feelings of uneasiness Mila has after flashbacks. Having said that, the title will be black and the distorted text will be multi-coloured with a colour palette including bright red, blue and pink. In other words, our title will repeat transparently in said colours just like how this picture has done but with text instead:

Publishing of the advert: The advert will be published for the audience to access in public and commune places, (which our target audience use every day), such as the train station or on lampposts. Additionally, we have also decided to use web 2.0 for publishing as well because it will be an easy and inexpensive/free way of making our film known fast; viral marketing will be achieved through the following popular sites: Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr (maybe Facebook). The aforementioned websites are densely populated with our target audience that also have easy access to sharing our product's poster. Most of which, especially Tumblr, are also known for their 'edits' and versions of posters which, if successful, our film may have too. Thus, increasing the awareness of our film through web 2.0 and fan edits.

Unique Selling Point: One of our unique selling points is us. The fact that we, too, are young adults like our target audience gives us have the better hand; we as millennials know what people our age are interested in and how they like to be thrilled. To add, the graphics we will use on our poster are not like most horror movies. In other words, most horror films use an extreme close up of an eye, a haunted house or a dark figure with their back turned to show ambiguity. Therefore, we are breaking the conventions as our poster consists of a close-up of a head split in two/two close-ups of the same head yet different identities. This may be considered unconventional and could make the audience question why there is a difference in the close-ups of the same character. Additionally, another part of our poster which is unconventional is our colour palette due to the fact that psychological horrors tend to only use the colours black, red and white, whereas we are using a more diverse range. Furthermore, with inspiration from The Dark Knight Rises (2012) we will also attempt to create a viral marketing scheme. This will be done by including our tagline on the poster shortened as the hashtag: #GoodOrBad. This will be a way for our audience to communicate with each other and share information on popular sites such as Twitter. Moreover, we will also include a secret hyperlink hidden on our posters which will be revealed on Twitter once the hashtag has been used a particular number of times. This will lead to a web page with various article clippings of mysterious random murders that occur in the film. Each article will also have three random letters in bold, making an anagram, which when solved will spell: BAD. This will hopefully enthuse and excite our audience as well as make others interested too.

Competitive market: Our competition is probably Jordan Peele's movie 'Get Out' (2017) as it contains almost everything, such as numerous plot twists which manipulate us to think we know what will occur, that our generation is interested in and very much reflects both current and traditional events and views. Moreover, the fact that the protagonist and most of the main characters starring in this psychological horror are African-American may also be of relevance too. Furthermore, their unique and unconventional concepts such as having their lead not be a ‘final girl’ who begins fairly carefree and fights back just at the right moment, but instead is on edge from the start; from being told he was going to finally meet his girlfriend’s parents then finding out she has refrained from mentioning he is black, to being stopped by a police officer for no reason shows he always has to keep his guard up because of who he is. Hence, the portrayal of how minorities tackle racism on a daily basis through the police scene. To add, Peele also manages to make awkward comedy become sinister, and uses sound and music to his advantage- the chanting voices which open the film are a literal Swahili warning screaming for Chris, the lead, to get out. These alongside other topics mentioned in the film like slavery will also make it hard for our short film to be of the same status and standard. In addition, compared to our poster, their one consists of a cracked piece of glass which seems to have been broken due to a gunshot- as seen in the bottom left of the poster. Also, we can see the main character in each shard but one. This acts as a narrative through stills due to the different emotions each shard connotes and ideologies they convey. 

Proposal: Radio

Proposal: Radio

 Name of Film: Senseless
 
Tagline of Film:  Everybody has a good and a bad side. Mila’s bullies unfortunately discover both…
Production Name: TBC
Medium: Radio advert
Format: Audio
Target Audience: certification is age 15+; all genders, ethnicity, class (and everything else) – basically anyone over the age of 15 because our main character is mentally unstable. She suffers from depression and identity disorder. The trailer would also hint to these for example, the sound of tablets falling onto a counter, and screaming for the conventional horror movie trailer. This may distress some younger audiences hence why it is certificated 15+. The demographics of our target audience is category D and E, which means they have the appropriate income and have enough money to go cinema to watch films and are of the suitable age to watch horror films. We confirmed these categories and age of our target audience through our survey on SurveyMonkey, as we found that mostly teenagers like to watch horror films. Our short film is mainly targeted to people who enjoy the psychological horror genre and the crime genre, as the short film includes murders and discovery of murders and a double identity. This will be represented in our radio trailer through vaious gestures, sounds and dialogues such as a news reporter talking about an incident. The psychographic of the audience would fit the ‘explorer’ (people who seek adventure, thrills and like to try something different), and ‘reformer’ (people who believe in seek personal growth, are socially aware and curious). We also aim to reach an audience who enjoys reading horror novels such as ‘The American Psycho’, ‘Coraline’ and ‘Carrion Comfort’.

Content of the advert: It will start off with the voice of a newsreader announcing something very important, along the phrases of “Emergency news just in”. This will grab the target audience’s attention as if they are listening to a real life broadcast and something is about to happen in real life. Through this they will keep on listening until they realise it is our radio movie trailer. The actual content of what the news reader is saying will keep them listening until the end of the trailer. While the news reader is talking there will be gaps between the beginning and finishing of the newscast. During those gaps, they will be filled with short clips of sounds taken from our final short horror film product such as the conventional screaming and panting in horror movies, or sighing, chewing and more. In our movie, our main character doesn’t really speak, so this will interest the target audience. There may be little sound FX such as police sirens or thudding and footsteps. We will take some ideas from the ‘Paranormal Activity’ trailer (such as gasping and heavy breathing) in order to warn people that our product is aimed at age 15+. In a way, the newsreader will act like a narrator / voiceover.

Publishing of the advert: We will use web 2.0 to advertise our product, such as on our company website, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat too because most of our target would use this app (along with Instagram). We will use this method mainly because people of our target audience use these apps. We may advertise it on the radio, perhaps in a break in music and news stations such as Capital FM, because our target audience would mainly listen to Capital FM and other relaxed radio stations. They are very popular and allows news to travel fast from one another, allowing more people to hear about our product and watch our movie. Also, using web 2.0 is free therefore we don’t have to spend much to publish and market our product.

What is your Unique Selling Point? Our unique selling point is that it is produced and directed by the people the same age of our target audience (and over). It’s unique because we know what people our age will like to watch and watch is appropriate for them. Furthermore, the characters in the production are of similar age too, which creates verisimilitude as they may do the same thing other people do in their daily lives. However, she also does things that we don’t get to see in real everyday life, thus intriguing the audience and being unique. Our character has DID, DID is a rare identity disorder and it forms form having a very abusive childhood. Our production group presents the audience the consequences of emotional and psychical bullying. Also, our main character is unaware of being the murderer of her bullies which isn’t conventional for horror films as there is always one protagonist and antagonist, whereas our main character is both the protagonist and antagonist.  

Competitive market: Our competition may be The Ring / Two trailers as they follow the conventions of typical psychological horror movies. Their trailers show some narrative but not all, allowing the target audience to have a hint of what their film is about, yet leaving an enigma code to let them find out for themselves by watching the movie. This attracts viewers to the movie. We could use unconventional sounds in our radio advert. For example in The Ring trailer they use a unique selling point of having a narrator who narrates (kind of) throughout the trailer whilst there are scary sounds like gasping and whispering, shrieking and screaming. Instead of this, our radio trailer would have the voice of a newsreader as this is related to our story.

Radio Proposal ~ Draft 1

 

Proposal: Radio

Name of Film: TBC

Tagline of Film: TBC

Production Name: TBC

Medium: Radio advert

Format: audio

Target Audience: aimed at everyone who is over the aged of 15 as it is 15 certificated. They have to be an active audience, with the demographic of D/E

Content of the advert: It will start off with the voice of a newsreader announcing something very important, along the phrases of “Emergency news just in”. This will grab the target audience’s attention as if they are listening to a real life broadcast and something is about to happen in real life. Through this they will keep on listening until they realise it is our radio movie trailer. While the news reader is talking there will be gaps between the beginning and finishing of the newscast. During those gaps, they will be filled will little sounds taken from our final short horror film product such as screaming and panting, or sighing, chewing, eating and more. In our movie, our main character doesn’t really speak, so this will interest the target audience. There may be little sound FX such as police sirens or thudding and footsteps. In a way, the newsreader will act like a narrator / voiceover.

Publishing of the advert: We will use web 2.0 to publish on our company website, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat too because most of our target would use this app (along with Instagram). On the radio, perhaps in a break in music and news stations. Also, using web 2.0 is free therefore we don’t have to spend much to publish and market our product.

What is your Unique Selling Point? Our unique selling point is that it is produced and directed by the people the same age of our target audience (and over). It’s unique because we know what people our age will like to watch and watch is appropriate for them. Furthermore, the characters in the production are of similar age too, which creates verisimilitude as they may do the same thing other people do in their daily lives.

Competitive market: Our competition may be The Ring / Two trailers as they follow the conventions of typical psychological horror movies. Their trailers show some narrative but not all, allowing the target audience to have a hint of what their film is about, yet leaving an enigma code to let them find out for themselves by watching the movie. This attracts viewers to the movie. We could use unconventional sounds in our radio advert. For example in The Ring trailer they use a unique selling point of having a narrator who narrates (kind of) throughout the trailer whilst there are scary sounds like gasping and whispering, shrieking and screaming. Instead of this, our radio trailer would have the voice of a newsreader as this is related to our story.

Mindmap of ideas for Radio trailer

Mindmap of ideas for poster

The use of make-up in horror films (idividual research)

I made this timeline to show the development of make-up in horror films and how the impact of the effects of the makeup affected people. From my research, I found that the major change in make-up in horror films was from improvising using material such as wires, to, paint and now the most recent development of technology, where film editors can now use special FX. I think make-up is a key factor in horror movies, and it contributes to what makes a horror film scary. Nowadays many makeup artists are very advanced and artistic people, they can create a disgusting and bloody scar with just lipstick and eyeliner for effect.
In my product, I could use makeup to show that the bullies in the film are scared. since both the bullies are female, the common stereotype is that females like to wear makeup. If I add black eye-shadow and mix it with simply water, it would create the effect of black tears / tears mixed with mascara from the person's eyes. Lipstick could be smudged to show that the actor has been through some sort of trouble.
Special FX can be used to improvise a bloody scene. For example using a red hue or filter.

Preliminary task: Horror

I discovered a wide range of camera angles and tested a handheld tracking shot when our actress ran into the bathroom. Our preliminary task was inspired from the clip in the horror movie 'Identity' 2003 when the main actress was trying to hide from her partner. In our clip, we changed the way we filmed the actress entering, and we used little dialogue. Filming this preliminary task as it gave us a sense of what filming our actual final product will feel like. We each acted as a director many times as we had to tell our actress how we wanted her to behave, and showed her the scene we wanted to recreate beforehand so that she had an idea of what to do. When it comes to our actual production, she will need to go over an actual script instead of re-enacting a scene from a movie. We're fortunate that my actress is a drama student and has experience of reading scripts from the film industry before.

From the experience as whole, I learnt that planning is the most important factor in creating a media product, especially a horror film. Knowledge of editing, filming and narrative is needed, as well as sticking to a production schedule.

Preliminary Task Production

 My roles in the preliminary task:

• Make-up artist.
• Camerawoman, equal takes with the rest of the production team and discussing which camera shot, angles and composition used (seen in video below).
• Editing as well.

Restricted and Omniscient Narrative

Restricted narrative: The audience know only as much as the characters in the film know.
Omniscient narrative: The audience know more than what the characters in the film know.

We decided that intended film’s narrative is linear, restricted and omniscient.
It is linear as it is shown in the order of when things happen. For example, the killing of bully1 happens first, and then she wakes up to continue her normal day, and then on day 2 she kills bully 2, and then on day 3 she finds out she is the killer because she doesn’t remember doing any of it.
It can be seen in different ways as well. For example, the first stabbing scene where Mila kills bully1 might be seen as a flashback or nightmare. It’s until the end that the audience find out that it wasn’t a nightmare, but it was real all along (this is how it’s restricted).
It's also restricted because both the audience and the main character don’t know that she is the killer. However, it’s also omniscient as the audience know there have been several murders but the main character doesn’t. The way that this relates to the horror genre is because all horror films conventionally have murders and deaths of people in it. As John Corner says, familiarity with the genre can lead the audience to predict events in the genre. In this film, they can predict that the main character is the killer

Initial ideas

Generating ideas

We used WhatsApp to communicate because it was easier and time saving. It was very efficient as we all agreed on a time where we could chat about our narrative and plan it together.