Saturday, 30 November 2013
Friday, 29 November 2013
Audience research
Audience research
horror audience theories; -Carroll(1990) notes that horror films may attract audiences because it is outside the viewers everyday experience.-Zuckerman(1979) high sensation seeking people are more likely to be attracted to horror films because of the excitement and scare factor.
-Zillman and Puallus(1993) People seem to enjoy the violence in horror movies when it is directed against those who they think deserve it.
'The male dominated genre'
it has been argued that the development of horror films are dominated by men. I chose four films, old and new to research into and find out if this is approximately true.
Psycho- writer and director, male.
The exorcist- writer and director. male.
The cabin in the woods - writer and director, male.
The ring - writer and director, male.
Plot synopsis
Plot Synopsis.
The film will be set in bishops stortford, an old historical town where a young ( 16-18) group of girls attend a private school for girls. This group of girls are slightly rebellious, despite their parents upper class backgrounds,and hang out together most days after school.One winter's afternoon after school they come across an old railroad in amongst farmers land. The bridge provided them with perfect shelter from the stormy british weather, and they found it a perfect place for their daily gossip, smoking and relaxing time. A place for them all to hide from their overly strict parents who all think their daughters are perfect angels.
On the third day of attending to the railroad, one of the girls jokes about it being haunted by a girl who got killed by a train 100 years before. An individual paranoid, and not as rebellious, character researches the bridge and its haunting when she gets home that night. She finds that a young girl did die on the rotted tracks 100 years ago, and that rumours say that once disturbed, the girls ghost will cause almost impossible accidents to the people involved.
Once warned, the other girls in the group do not believe the ghost story and continue to go to the old railroad and arrange to have a drink night there that Friday evening, whilst the paranoid girl ignores the others from then on and goes straight home after school.
at the drinks evening, the girls an older brother to buy them alcohol from a little shop in the small town. when he returns to the railroad with the drinks he is curious as to why they are hanging about here and notes ' its a bit spooky'. he then leaves them to it. as the night goes on, the girls begin to hear and see things, such as the bushes moving, and whispers in the wind. They continue to joke about the haunting and carry on with their evening. Throughout the night, some of the girls actually start to get scared, and begin to worry that the farmers are trying to scare them for being on the land, but the ghost does appear and 'accidently' causes and girl to fall over, they begin to laugh about it but then she suddenly gets dragged into the bushes and scraped across farmers feilds. The girls sprint in different directions, faint, fall over etc.
The next scene is in the morning and two of the girls are woken up by a farmer, whom is joking about under age drinking and jokingly tells them to move so he can plow the fields. The girls go home knowing that one of their friends are missing, one of the girls gives in and confesses to here mother and tell her what they were doing and that a girl is missing. The mum announces that ghosts stories are rubbish and that the missing girl would have probably woken up and stumbled home.
Over the course of a few days, the people involved started dyeing, the mother was involved in a car crash and died. One of the girls was chased by a car with no one driving it and dragged underneath it, another girl woken in the night and choked by nothing.
The paranoid girl had found out about all the incidents through the news and had not left her house. she worked out that anyone that did not believe in the ghost story, would be killed by the girl. which is why the two girls left were still alive because they where quite curious and frightened in the beginning but did not confess to this. The paranoid girl informs her parents and the 2 other girls, the parents do not believe and begin to think she is going insane.
People continue to die as the rumours where spreading and people began to investigate and soon the paranoid girl went to the railroad, screaming at people to stay away or believe. she did not get killed because she believed in the ghost. Her parents, the police, and doctors came to try and make her stop, and took her away screaming on a stretcher 'im not mad'. as they were taking her away her parents and the policeman got dragged away by the ghosts powers and were violently murdered.
The young girl was still sent to an asylum, although she was right all along, and she could never forget about the events because she would stop believing, therefore the ghosts would come back.
Idea Tree
In my 'idea tree' i noted that theatrical trailers give too much away, and after reading this article from the entertainment weekly, i feel much more confident in my choice in style of trailer, which is a long teaser.
The key point of the trailer
The key point of the trailer.
The key point of my trailer, will be to scare, and excite the target audience so that they want to watch the entire film. What many horror film trailer's do is give away too much of the narrative, and they leave the audience with the knowledge of what is going to happen. The reason that the target audience watch this genre of film and trailer is to scare themselves, and by already knowing the basic narrative, the scare factor will not be as great when watching the actual film.
The purpose of my trailer is the mildly explain the film, scare the audience and create a huge anticipation leading up to the films release.
http://www.drmarkwomack.com/pdfs/horrormovies.pdf in this interesting read by Stephan king, he notes that people watch horror movie's 'for fun', particularly the young, and to show that 'we can'. Friends and families often joke about who would be the most frightened in a film, and compete against each other, it could even be a peer pressure situation. Therefore Maybe within the marketing stage of my film, I can introduce a competition or slogan, to encourage younger viewers to compete.
Horror film timeline
This is a timeline that i made. it is interesting to compare horror films to our society, for example; at the time of the great depression in america, and when hitler striped jews of their civil rights, real 'madmen' where controlling our societies. This is reflected in frankenstien, which was released around this time.
As the 60s emerged, the horror film genre took a turn,film makers began to realise that it was humans who where the real monsters. this is shown in the film phyco(1960). in 1973, the exorcist was released and shows just how our society has changed too. it shows the evil inside of us.
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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