Planning for production - Two movies I feel in someways is similar to ours

In class me and my group had a discussion about what other horror films we felt shared some similarities to ours, in terms of themes, emotional hook, target audience and shared similar conventions of horror movies. Movies brought up included I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream, however we felt the two films that were most similar to ours was Saw and Final Destination.
Here are the reasons why....

Saw:

• Like with our film 'The Examine' they both have the similar idea of putting people who have sinned through a test for their survival
• The way victims are made isolated and trapped is something we also want to do
• Saw's use of setting is similar to the idea we had for some of our setting

Final Destination:

• Both center around the idea of cheating and although in Final Destination it is about cheating death, both our film and Final Destination both still explore the idea of the consequences of cheating.
• Age of their target audience is very similar to ours (teenagers/ young adults)

Planning for production - Themes of our movies

As well as our emotional hook, something also discussed last lesson was the different themes of our film. To come to a decision about what the themes of our film were as a group we first of all looked at the emotional hook and synopsis of our film and discussed what themes can be seen from it. As well as this we looked back on our work on Burton's Genre Theory and also on Applying conventions of horror films to a trailer in order to gain a full understanding on what sort of themes to include that would be a clear and appropriate representation of not only our film but of the genre as well and on how we could go about applying these themes to our trailer.

We came to the decision that the themes of our film are:

• Ambition vs. Disaffection
• Revenge
• Success vs. Failure
• Deceit

Will this benefit you?

Yes 100%, most successful horror films and films in general do so well because of the fact they have themes in their movies that their target audience can identify with. Likewise we have done this and so have applied parts of the uses and gratification theory into our film as our target audience will be able to personally connect and identify most of our themes. Burton's Genre Theory also stresses the importance of having a clear theme in your movie as it is one of the six elements that make up a genre .

Planning for production - Possible location for our trailer

Yesterday in class we were given a great opportunity to go to the schools basement in order to see a possible location that we could use for our trailer. I was very impressed by the location as I feel it had all the correct elements to use for a setting of a horror movies. Not only was it the lighting very poor, it was also very isolated, dark, entrapped, looked abandoned and also was very dangerous as even I was nervous when we was taking a look around it. This would be a perfect setting as from researching Burton's Genre Theory is very clear to me that setting is a very important element of horror movies and is in fact (according to his theory) one of the six elements of movies that can define a particular genre. For these reasons I believe the use of this setting to be of high importance as it perfectly captivates and expresses the genre of our film.

Planning for production - Emotional hook of our film

In my last post I mentioned the importance of having a emotional hook to your film in order for your target audience to have something that they can emotionally identify with, perhaps through past experiences or maybe it is something they are currently experiencing in their lives.

We wrote down ideas surrounding the emotional hook of our film

Because of this me and my group have decided to create the emotional hook of 'fear of failure' and 'cheating' in our film as these are emotions and situations that audiences (especially our young target audience) can identify with as succeeding in life is something that we all want and want to do our best to get, this element of cheating to it raises many questions that we want to play in the mind of our target audience through the emotional hook.
This includes:

• How far would you go to get something you want?
• Would you risk it all to succeed?
• What would you do for a better future? 

Image of the questions raised regarding the emotional hook of our film

We plan to highlight our emotional hook in the trailer through using the typical and in some cases varied conventions of horror movies to emphasize this idea of fearing failure and willing to do all to succeed as this would be playing on contemporary fears, something that we have previously discussed as being a main feature of horror films., very much in the way a movie like I Know What You Did Last Summer is able to emphasize its emotional hook of 'guilt' through the different conventions of horror movies used.

Planning for production - Initial ideas for our plot synopsis

Now that we have finally been put in groups and I was in a group with Morgan and John, it was time to come up with initial ideas for out plot synopsis.

In this task we had the privilege of being able to attend a after school film session where we were helped by industry professionals to come up with our initial ideas on our plot synopsis, with the goal of coming out of the session with a clear idea on what the synopsis of our film was. This was made much easier by the fact that we had the help of industry professionals (Scriptwriter Jesse O'Mahoney and Film Producer Hugh Spurling) who gave us direction and information on what sort of things to include to make a great synopsis, which as a result means the work we produce will be of much better quality.

Scriptwriter Jesse O'Mahoney came in to give us help and guidance on our work

First of all in my group we all had previously made our own synopsis and so now we decided the best thing to do was to look at all three and decide which one was appropriate and fitted in with everything we had been researching on horror (like Burton's Genre Theory, applying horror conventions to a trailer etc) and would then take any particular good elements from the other two synopsis' to make our one even better. After deep deliberation we decided to use my original synopsis (which centered around the idea of cheating and fear of failure) blended with John's and so now had to think of ways to make it even better.

This where the help of the industry professionals came into good effect as with the help of Jesse O'Mahoney we was able to take our original and add a significant amount of detail to it, his help allowed us to create a synopsis which reflected on contemporary fears and also had a emotional hook to it, whilst adhering and even at points challenging typical conventions of horror movies. With the help of Hugh Spurling we were also helped massively as with his help and experience we were able to create a synopsis that should fit within the budget given us to create our film trailer. 

Due to the help of the industry professionals we were able to produce real detailed ideas.

Afterwards we had a Q&A session with scriptwriter John O'Mahoney in which he answered any queries we had about our project. One particular thing he discussed which I think will help me massively is the importance of having a emotional hook to your film so audiences can identify with it, he explained that having a emotional hook to your film is one of the main elements of creating a really good movie. Me and my group plan to take these comments and use them to further develop our emotional hook of cheating and fear of failure.

How has this benefited you?

There is no doubt that this task has benefited me a lot and due to the session working with industry professionals has probably been the most beneficial task so far. This session helped me too how you would go about creating a film from the eyes of experienced industry professionals. Their contribution will help me and my group into taking a more professional stance into creating our trailer and has also helped to expand our ideas further, seeing that as well as having all the conventions of horror movies in our trailer, we need to also include a emotional hook that audiences can identify with. For these reasons I believe that this task has been very beneficial for me and my group and will be seen by the high quality of work we hope to produce. 

Research for production - Genre, Iconography and Ideology

In this task we were asked to take one of the horror film posters that we have been researching and analysis it in detail with the goal of discussing how genre is used to promote films through the films poster as film posters along with the trailers act as one of the main promotional tools when trying to promote a film. This task should help me to understand what is needed (in terms of codes and conventions) to not only express the genre of my film to audiences through the poster, but also to then go and find a way to use the genre and themes of my film to promote it to my target audience.

Below are my findings:

Genre, Iconography and Ideology on Prezi

How has this task helped?

This task has helped me to further my knowledge on what is needed to successfully promote my film to my target audience. Previously I had been ignorant to the fact that film posters have to emphasize the genre of the film in the posters or else they will not be attracting their target audience. However due to this task I know see the importance of highlighting the genre of my movie which is horror in my film poster through the use of iconography, colors, costume etc. As well as this highlighting the theme of the movie and revealing some of the plot in my films poster will be essential as it creates expectation amongst my target audience, as well as leaving them wanting know and find out more about the film. Overall I am now much more confident about the creation of my films poster due to this task.

Research for production - killers in horror movies

Moving on from my previous post I now looked and analysed a range of killers in horror movies with the goal of looking out for any commonalities found between the killers, thus distinguishing what the conventions of a killer in horror movies are.Below is a powerpoint presentation explaining my findings:Horror killers[1]

View more presentations from jmoore16.