Target Audience Research

After we interviewed two of our target audience, we also decided to create an online survey to obtain more quantitative data from a larger sample. Only females answered our survey and they were all either 16 or 17 which is our target audience (see below)

 Because of the mostly negative response to Black and white film, combined with the comments in the interview that young adults find it 'boring' we have decided to make only small parts of our piece black and white, as a visula effect to show the child is from the past to create more tension and as it demonstarted to the audience that she is long since dead.

Rocking horses and dolls were the most scary according to the target audience, so we have managed to source a small rocking horse and at least 4 china dolls which we will use in our piece as props for close ups. We could not find a music box, but we are basing the sound on a music box type instrument which should have a similar impact.

Abandoned building was by far the most popular place to set a horror film, and we have investigated a few different possible locations (see Location research) and found an abandoned school, formerly Lillesden school for girls, in which we are going to set our horror opening.

The fact that over 50% of our target audience said they find children scary 'a lot' in horror films stongly supports our decision to focus on a young child from the past, as from our reserach into other films (see Analysis of 'the children'  and 'Uninvited') we discovered that one of the most primal fears is innocence being ruined and this is an idea we want to explore in our piece. 

This supports our own personal views that we should have a girl actress in our piece, as visually they can be made to look more innocent which makes it all the more twisted when they become monsters.

Japanese Puppetry Experimenting

We were interested in using Japanese Puppetry so we experimented using it and edited it together.

From the experiments we concluded we didn't want to include Japanese puppetry in our film opening as to make a successful and effective piece of puppetry we would need more resources and the skills to produce an effective piece. We also concluded that it would take away from the action we wish to include in our film opening and does not fit in to our early decision of Victorian, so we thought it would be better to exclude this from our film opening.

Japanese Puppets Cut Out

We have been interested in incorporating puppets in to our film opening so we wanted to experiment with Japanese Shadow Pupperty so I made a few puppets in the style we intend to use.

Japanese shadow puppetry

Shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat cut-out figures to create the impression of moving humans and other three-dimensional objects. Shadow puppets are cut-out figures which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen. A talented puppeteer can make the figures appear to walk, dance, fight, nod and laugh. They normally tell a folk tale that may have a moral message too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_puppet

Used in Tim Burtons, “Lemony Snicket’s a series of unfortunate events” title sequence.
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/lemony-snickets-a-series-of-unfortunate-events/ 

Horror Makeup

We looked alot at special effects and creating our own inguries. We decided not to use any in the end as we thought the child had a scarier effect looking more innocent, rather than obviously asphetically scary.

Phobias and fears

You wont make a good horror film if it doesn't scare anyone or a big enough audience which is why its important to pick a subject that scares allot of people. We chose the idea of haunting, death, children and possession by looking at common phobias.

'A phobia is more than a simple fear. It develops when a person begins to organise their life around avoiding the thing they are afraid of, whether it’s an animal, object, place or situation.' - from the NHS website http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Phobias/Pages/Introduction.aspx  

We looked at peoples top 10 phobias and coming in a number 10 was Necrophobia (fear of death or dead things) http://www.hypnotherapykettering.co.uk/page/10mostcommonphobias.htm

'Necrophobia is fear of death in general and things associated with it, e.g., of corpses, mummies, etc.' The child in our horror is a tormented soul that died in the late 1800's Victorian era. shes a dead spirit that haunts the house she was abused and killed in. she lures unsuspecting passers by in and kills them as her revenge on people.

Uninvited

I looked at the trailer for the film uninvited, and found a young girl character who is meant to be dead, which is similar to some of the ideas we discussed for our own project. 

 This picture is of one fo the recurring themes which is ink, however I thought this is useful because we could use similar ideas but instead with blood.

 This image links with two ideas we discussed which were bathrooms and relections so we could combine these in our own opening.

In the last picture you can see the blur of the children moving and also it's in black and white which was something we're thinking about.