How did you attract/address your audience?

We used a range of techniques to attract and address our audience, we made sure that the audience was interested in the film by trying to make it gripping; we did this by using a range of shots to show the location and choosing a song that suits the mood of curiosity we were trying to create. We also included a small conversation with the girls to allow the audience to understand them slightly; this will provoke sympathy for the girls when they are being attacked by the clown as the audience knows them and put themselves in their shoes. This will interest the audience and make them want to watch the film and see what actually happens to the girls. Another thing that we did to address our audience was make the characters average and people that the audience would be able to relate to as we thought this would give a better effect as the audience will not want anything bad to happen to them. The range of shots we used to start with were used to establish the location and show the audience that it is a typical village. The first minute includes these shots which create a very moody and spooky atmosphere along with the music which also adds to the tension; however we didn’t want the audience to be bored when watching the film so we ensured that there was a instant bang after about 1 minute, this was the clown which we showed straight away to tell the audience that this was a typical horror movie even though we found that some horror movies choose not to show their criminal until later on in the movie. We chose not to challenge those codes of conventions of horror as we are not claiming to have made the next ‘different’ horror movie. We feel that if you like nightmare on Elm Street scream and similar films then you will like this as we have followed their codes and conventions.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The general target audience for our film is quite general as a lot of people will be able to relate to it. First of all the setting of our film is in an average small village, this will cause a lot of people to be interested in our film as they will live in a similar place. Also people that enjoy horror films would also enjoy our film as it is quite a typical horror film that follows many of the codes and conventions of horror films. However the sub-genre that our film entertains is teen horror; this means that the main target audience will be teenagers around the age of 15-19. Teenagers would be interested in our film as it is more thrilling and interesting when the people are a similar age to the audience as they can relate to the characters which allows them to feel part of the film, In our research we found that a lot of films do this as it creates a better effect, they do this by using point of view shots and effective sounds. We have done this in our film as we have a point of view shot of Chloe and Kayleigh when they are looking out to the clown and a point of view shot of Becca when she is being held by the Clown.

The typical person that would enjoy our film is a person that is outgoing, looks for mystery in a film and likes to be kept on their feet when watching a film, our film does this as the audience are not sure what is going to happen and it is very surprising when the clown makes his way into the house unexpectedly. In our film we don’t intend to include too much gory detail as we don’t want to turn away our audience and make them feels disgusted as that is not the aim of the film; the aim of our film is to scare the audience and get them to feel part of the story.

What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?

The institution that would be most likely to distribute our media product would be the Canadian distribution company Lionsgate; in my research into horror films and their distribution I found that this company is very well known for its horror films. Lionsgate have produced many horror films such as all of the SAW films and American psycho. Also Warner Bros have distributed horror films in the past, they distributed the teen horror film ‘House of wax’ which was very successful, it was very successful and was shown in around 3,111 cinemas. In the first 3 days it made around $12million. It was a very famous film and made $42million in VHS and DVD rentals alone. If we were to have our film distributed by one of these institutions then it would be distributed well meaning that a lot of people would watch the film, both in the cinema and at home on DVD.

Whilst some films are distributed by just one institution some films are distributed by a few for example in my research I found out that ‘Prom night’ was distributed by many companies such as Alliance Films, Sony Pictures and screen gems. Due to the fact that Lions Gate is well known for distributing horror films we would like them to distribute our film, this would allow our film to benefit as people would see that the distributer was Lions Gate and go to see the film as they trust Lions Gate as they have distributed good horror films in the past

How does you product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products and represent particular social groups?

Our film is a typical horror film, we took influences from films such as scream and halloween, when we were analysing them before we looked at the codes and conventions of them and similar horror films. We tried to include them in our opening sequence in order to get a similar scary effect. We also found that these films are quite successful in cinemas and in general, scream was very successful as it has had 3 sequels. Due to this we thought it would be good to make a film that we knew would attract a range of audiences and be successful. Also in horror films there is usually a scary person or thing that is associated with the bad things that happen within the film; like Ghostface in scream, in our film it is the clown.

In scream we do not see Ghostface straight away, we hear him on the phone, this is also a main convention of horror films as it leaves the audience hooked as they want to keep watching in order to find out who the person who keeps phoning Casey is. However in 'Fun House' we see the clown straight away; we chose to do this as we thought it would allow the audience to see how scary he is and what damage he can do; we thought that is we were to show him straight away it would create more of a relationship with the audience as they would feel scared of what is going to happen to Chloe and Kayleigh who are portrayed to be vulnerable by the slight high angle shot which tells the audience that they dont have a lot of power in this situation.
There is only one social group represented in our opening sequence; it is young women, we have chosen to represent them as vulnerable which is not only stereotypical in society but is one of the main conventions of horror films, they are shown to be vulnerable by the fact that the clown corners them and they have no where to go suggesting that they are trapped in their own home.

Final Opening Sequence

This is our final cut, with the continuity error edited out, any comments are welcome.

Final Cut

We have been doing our final edits and changing our sequence around.We have also been checking the sound to ensure that there are no glitches however, the buzzing of the camera in the background is still there as we cannot get rid of it. We are doing our last edits now and are about to export our clip and upload it to our blogs, we will then do our evaluation where we will mention what went well with our film making and what went bad. Our final cut will be uploaded soon.

Editing

We have watched our opening sequence through once more and realised some of the shots of the streets are different lengths to others, we are currently sorting out this problem as we feel that if they are all a similar length then it will add a rhythm to the sequence. We are also changing some of the fades in the shots of the streets to give a better effect. We will have our final cut on our blogs soon.

Sound

Whilst watching our opening sequence through we have been noticing errors wiitht he sound, at all times there is a slight buzz in the background of the camera; at the start where there shots of the area are being shown we have been able to turn the sound down as we have the music that we spent a while choosing as we wanted one that suited the storyline of the film and we decided that the one that is on suited the film best, we are pleased with this choice. However when the camera switches to the conversation the buzz of the camera is still there, unfortunately we cannot turn down the sound as if we did this the conversation would be inaudible. We have considered recording the audio again and putting it on top of the film but we thought that if we did this then the mouth movements would be different and would cause our opening sequence to lack verisimilitude.

Rendering

We are currently rendering our film as we have edited out our continuity error with the opening of the curtains and changed the sound around, this has increased the amount of verisimilitude of our opening sequence. When our opening sequence has finished rendering we will watch it through again and look for other glitches with the sound.

Final Edit

We currently have 6 days, 14 hours, 13 minutes and 26 seconds to finish our final cut, we have been editing in todays lesson and are very close to having a final piece, we have spotted a huge continuity error when watching our piece through where the girls open the curtains to fins their friend outside and the camera cuts to their friends point of view and the camnera shows us opening the curtains again when they have been already opened, we have cut this out so the continuity error is no longer there. In tomorrows lesson we will be watching our piece through over and over again to look for any more errors and things that could be improved, we will upload our final piece onto our blogs on Tuesday 22nd March.

Rough Cut

This is the rough cut of our opening scene for Fun House, we have edited our shots and changed the sound. Any comments and suggestions will be welcomed.

Final Editing

Our frame rate was too high for Adobe Premier Pro, we have changed the files into a Dv format which means that our files will work better; however the editing that we did before has to be done again so we are doing that now and should have a rough cut on our blog soon.

New distribution logo

We have been watching our opening sequence through and we decided to create a new distribution one as our old one didnt look very professional, we are pleased with our new one and with our animation that we have put into our opening sequence. We should be uploading our rough cut soon.

This is our logo, it looks quite simplistic, however with the animations it looks very professional.

Technical Problems

We have had alot of problems with the rendering of our film as we left the computer to render and somebody turned it off meaning that our editing hadnt saved and we still had to render our piece, it has now rendering and we have began to edit again, we should soon have our rough cut uploaded onto our blog.