Audience Profile

A typical audience member for my film will be between 15 and 25, generally male but perhaps female, middle class, perhaps a student educated to A level. One word to sum up my audience might be 'individualistic'. A typical audience member for my film might spend their spare time doing things such as going to live music events, surfing the web, studying, and might be a film fanatic. I imagine my typical audience may be drinkers, perhaps smokers, who enjoy socialising and reading.


Male: 70%

Female: 30%

Age Group: 16-25

Brands:

Clothes: Attitude, Darkside, Phaze.

Shoes: Converse, Doc Martens, Babychams. 

Alcohol: Cider, Spirits, Beer.

Bands:

Kings of Leon

Hed PE 

Metallica

Film and T.V.:

Film: The Grudge, Saw (1-7), Donnie Darko, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, The Ring, The Mist, IT, The Others, Hostel, Final Destination. 

T.V:  Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, Ghost Whisperer, True Blood, Being Human, Heroes.

Demographic:

My film is mainly aimed at males, aged 16-25

My film will be aimed at C1, C2 and D

Psycho-graphic

Mainstreamers: people who don’t like to be different but are conventional in their tastes and aspirations

·   Traditionalists: people who don’t like change and are very
       set in their ways

·         
     Hedonists: people who just want to have a good time

·         
Individualists: people who want to stand out from the crowd
       and like to think for themselves

· Rebels: people who don’t want to conform but challenge the traditional way of doing things.

My film will be aimed at Rebels, Hedonists and Individualists.

Thir13en Ghosts Analysis

In this post I will analyse the opening scene to Thir13en Ghosts. The scene starts with the Columbia production credit, however this has been edited and darkened and accompanied by creepy, eerie noises. This is then followed by another dark animated production credit for Dark Castle Entertainment. The scene then starts with a dark scrap yard with a car hanging overhead, the camera seems hand-held and swirls to the side. The titles appear from the front in a yellow, scary block letter font. The sound is intense and asynchronous. The angle of the camera then continues to swoop around, as if the audience are floating, much like a ghost, the audience should have established by now through use of sound, title and camera angles that the film is a supernatural horror. A piece of material suddenly appears on the left adding to the intensity and giving an idea that there is something strange going on as it moves in the wind, which seems almost unearthly. Large floodlights in the sky provide some light and give the scene an eerie glow. More shreds of material continue to move in a creepy manor as the camera fans around to more cars on this deserted, almost 'ghost town' scrap yard. This is followed by more titles and then the title, the title shines through the writing as if looking through a keyhole. The trucks then appear breaking through the gate ruining the unearthly silence of the scene. The scene then continues with an overhead shot of the trucks, as if they are being watched.

Research and Planning: Narrative Theory

Roland Barthes - Narrative Codes


Codes are combinations of technical features that have a specific meaning, Roland Barthes suggests that there are 3 different theories of codes.


 The first being Hermeneutic Code, sometimes called the Enigma Code, this refers to part of the story that is not fully explained, leaving the audience with unanswered questions or 'enigmas', hence the story becomes a mystery to the reader. The purpose of this is typically to keep the audience intrigued and guessing until the final scenes when all is revealed and closure is achieved. For example, in the opening scene of Dexter shown above, we see Dexter doing normal day to day things but in a very sinister and slow way, this provides the audience with enigmas and questions about him and what he does, why is he so sinister?, and makes the audience to want to carry on watching.


The second is the Proairetic Code, this is used to build tension and suspense and refers to any other action that indicates to the audience that something else is going to happen, allowing the reader to make guesses on what will happen next in the narrative. For example,  as shown in the opening scenes for Dexter, the blood drips in a sinister way, which suggests that something unpleasant will happen at some point and adds tension.


The third is Semantic Code, this is the way images or music might be used to mean something in addition to what it already shows. For example,  as shown in the opening scenes for Dexter, we see him doing things such as tightening his shoe laces, although to the audience it appears as if he is strangling someone, however, this is filmed in a 'macro' style, and accompanied by the strange angles, this depicts a world within a world. The images do not mean what they might mean if filmed differently.




Levi Strauss suggests that in all narratives there are binary oppositions, for example, villian vs hero. In Dexter this is Dexter vs everyday life or Dexter vs his psycho serial killer side.

The Grudge 2 Analysis

(0:00 – 3:11)

In order to analyse the opening sequence of The Grudge 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2006) I will look at the different micro elements and try and establish how they are used to set up character, narrative and genre. When the film begins, we see a black background with white text appearing, telling a story, introducing the audience to the film, this builds suspense and it gives the audience a slight idea on what the film is about. The word 'curse' changes to red and fades after the other text, leaving it remaining alone on the screen, allowing the audience a small insight into the nature of the film, we then know that in this film, there is a theme of isolation, lonliness and evil, it also specifies that the genre of the film is haunting or horror. 'Fury' also changes red and lingers on screen, this lingering and changing colour reiterates the importance of the words. Non-digetic soft high pitch ambient sound is playing in the background to add to the unnerving feeling of the film, this is later found to be the signature theme tune. We see an aerial establishing shot of a city to set the scene, location and period, Tokyo, roughly estimated to be early 2000’s . The camera then cuts to a low angle shot where we as the audience are looking up at a flat or apartment to show in more detail the location, asynchronous sound is used as we hear the birds squawking but do not see them. We see a close up shot of a woman cooking food in the kitchen whilst a man sits at the table connoting a sexist patriarchal scene with male dominance, later challenged by the presence of a female monster with male victims. The kitchen where the two characters are sitting has low lighting which sets an intense mood and atmosphere in the room, there is no noise other than digetic background noise of the frying and birds, this is synchronous sound, the sound of the hot oil in the pan has been synchronised and projected so we can hear it and it gives us an idea of how hot the oil is so we can then identify that the oil is going to play an important part in the scene. The combination of these things makes the audience feel that the two characters have had an argument and that there is friction between them. This is appropriately followed on by sarcastic comments made by the male to the female, she then serves the man his breakfast, but just before she moves away she hovers over him with the frying pan with an angry expression on her face. The audience then can identify what is going to happen. The man is shown dead on the floor while the woman calmly sips a coffee, accompanied by low eerie music. The man is lying on the floor with blood pooling around him. This scene is unnerving and odd to the audience as the woman is so calm, it builds tension and creates intrigue and enigmas for the audience. We as the audience can now expect that the narrative will be scary and demonic, perhaps even  with possessive and evil themes. The scene fades to white and a spot of blood, or what we as the audience believe is blood, appears accompanied by tense music, more blood appears and fades as the names of cast and directors appear in red writing. As the blood droplets fall they are escorted by a sound, almost like rain, the pace of the music increases as does the sound of the falling droplets, this then speeds up and the blood falls to form a Japanese symbol, assumingly translating to ‘The Grudge’. The number two then appears and fades to form a red area to the right of the symbol, in which the English for ‘The Grudge 2’ appears. This then fades and spirals accompanied by a water like sound form black lines,  almost like hair, a popular theme used in Japanese films, especially of this genre.  A red background appears and the audience can hear a low rumbling sound of water and perhaps thunder, accompanied by low music. The black ink like lines create different patterns as the names of cast and crew appear in a liquid style background.  We can then assume that this style of black lines and ink type writing will be echoed in the film, along with the signature theme tune. 

Research & Planning: Genre theory

'Genres are instances of repetition and difference' (Neale 1980,48). Also, 'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre'


This basically means that genres use typical conventions for narrative, cinematography, mise-en-scene, sound, editing, the cast and iconography, however there needs to be differences in order for movies to be succesful, 






The Grudge 2 uses conventional effects and styles, for example the narrative is conventional, innocent school girls and women are the victims whilst men are almost unnoticed. It uses typical technical features such as jump cuts and dark lighting and clothing, the sound is typically eerie with loud and quiet moments and typical iconography, such as dark abandoned house, creepy area of Japan in dull weather with innocent school girls. 

Main Coursework Introduction

The main coursework task is to research a film genre of our choice and produce 2 minutes of an opening scene to a film. To do this I will work with Hannah Scott. We have chosen the genre of supernatural horror.  Above is a basic storyboard of images found in supernatural horror films.