Target audience research.

As I have decided my genre will be a 'Psychological Thriller' I think it's important that I research the suitable target audience for the movie opening I am going to be producing. The majority of Psychological Thrillers I have been looking at such as; Seven, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, The Devil's Advocate and Unthinkable are rated 18+ (according to www.lovefilm.com). Therefore I have asked only people of the age 18+ years the following questions:

I asked two male's and two female's from each age range (18-21, 21-25, 25+), resulting in 12 people in total, I wanted to ask two people per gender, per age range to ensure my results weren't biased. One of the people I gave the questionnaire too have been recorded as shown below:

The results I have received have proven that:

The majority of people I questioned like horror's and thrillers, followed by Romantic films, Comedies and the least favourite being Sci-Fi. Mainly to the audience who admitted to liking Thrillers - I asked if they ever tended to watch Psychological Thrillers - the majority did, (as shown on the first video), finally I asked what the audience like about Psychological Thrillers basically what makes them choose to watch films of that genre more than others. 3 out 4 people who chose the Thriller genre were female, two of them being in the age range of 21-25, and one of them being 25+. One male chose Thrillers as their favourite genre, who was also in the age range 21-25. These results have proven that women particularly favourite Thrillers - all of which agreed to liking Psychological Thrillers too. The majority of women were between the age of 21 years to 25 years, meaning this is my specific target audience. Due to the majority of men I questioned preferring horror's, I believe men like the guts and gore which are featured in horror's, rather than the mind work that is required in a Psychological Thriller.

According to the research I have taken on www.imdb.com, the Psychological thriller films below share the same target audience (18+)

<b>Silence of the Lambs

Se7en

Fatal attraction</b>

Movie and production company name.

Deciding on a name for my movie and production company has been a difficult task. The films I have looked at tend to have a meaning behind them, relevant to the film, such as:
Black Swan.
Black Swan is an oxymoron, as Swans are usually associated with the colour white; which signifies purity and innocence. However juxtaposing 'Black' and 'Swan' together as a movie title implies that there is a further meaning - rather than just the dance that the girls compete in.
Hide and Seek
Due to Hide and Seek being a childhood game we as viewers immediately presume that the film features a child as the protagonist, or at least as an important character in the story-line of the movie. Again, the film name successfully implies that there is a hidden meaning to the movie from the title.
I thought of the idea of using a name of an attractive, apparently innocent looking flower, which is in-fact poisonous; as this is a reflection on Arabella's personality. Arabella appears to be naive and childlike; however her actions are the complete opposite.
The flower I have researched is called Oleander - the meaning of this isn't overt therefore I'm going to call my Production company Oleander Productions rather than my movie, in order to avoid viewers misunderstanding.
As the protagonist to my movie is 'Arabella' I want to ensure her name is included in the movie title, I also wanted to keep it to a minimum of 2 to 3 words. The basis on the story-line is developed from Arabella's mom finding her diary, that reveals all her deepest sinister secrets...I have simply chosen to call my movie 'Arabella's diary'.

Research and planning prezi

Research and planning on Prezi

Film opening.

I am producing a two minute film opening for my AS Media, I haven't yet decided what genre I'm going for, nor what I would like the film opening to be based on, therefore I am doing a lot of research into existing films in order to thoroughly plan my own.

Below are a variety of movies genres I have been looking at for my film opening;


Thrillers; are known as films that form an adrenaline rush on the readers behalf, amongst tension and excitement. They have the capability to stimulate the viewer's mood, creating anticipation and anxiety. Thrillers often feature cliff hangers and a sudden twist to the story as they're known to be unpredictable.

The main elements of a Romance movie are; emotion, passion and affection between the two main characters. The film often follows their relationship as the main plot focus, usually an obstacle they're forced to over come - such as: infidelity, physical or mental illnesses, prejudice or discrimination, and family issues, to name a few.

Sci-fi is short for Science Fiction. Science fiction films consist of speculative science and the phenomena we are not familiar with such as: aliens, time travelling and space travelling, robots, and futuristic life.

Fantasy films usually involve supernatural or make-believe elements in exotic fantasy worlds consisting of magic and escapism to the extraordinary. There are often powerful mystical experiences, such as flying carpets in Aladdin, the ability to bring death to life in the Green Mile and typically and most popular, Narnia - a movie based on a wardrobe that exits into another world featuring half human fawns and talking lions.

Comedy films emphasise on humour for the audience's enjoyment, often by exaggerating situations or the actions of characters for entertain and amuse the audience.

Horror films are regularly based on what we would see in a nightmare; fear of the unknown and their capabilities, serial killers, cannibalism, torture, gore and often direct satanism. All of these elements are created to cause unease and negative emotions of the viewers behalf.


I have researched a variety of film openings from different genres, and decided I want to base my film opening on the psychological thriller theme. Psychological thrillers are a sub-genre for thrillers and heavily focus on characters psychological state and ability to manipulate their victim's and the audience's perception. This is a contrast to the usual thriller, which generally focus on the perpetrators physical ability to hurt their victims. Mystery is often incorporated into psychological thrillers too, and usually look past gruesome and gore we see in horrors and thrillers and more into destructive mind games, which I intend on being a prominent focus in my own film.

Social Realism

Social Realism presented in films is the representation of British society within the last century. Recently, many British films have been based on the genre of social realism because it is recognizable by us, their target audience. Although we enjoy our big Hollywood blockbusters, it's interesting to see the actors we know living lifestyles similar to ours on our TV screens, experiencing what we do..in places we live close to. It portrays a variety of discrimination we see today, the social, sexual and racial issues that have developed in the 21st century as well as financial hardship or family lives we live as heroic - and beneath all the violence and suffering we see, we are eventually revealed a sensitivity toward these characters and story lines.

Conventions of a Social Realism film may include:
- Realistic settings/Urban locations - London, Manchester, Birmingham etc. Places we're reasonably familiar with in Britain.
- Realistic events and situations - we may not all experience what we see in Social realist films, e.g. This is England and Fish Tank - but we read about them and hear about them just as much!
- Believable filming technique - Rather than being filmed like the blockbuster films we see, they're more personal and natural - possibly to create the impression as if we're there ourselves.
- Hard luck/21st century villains - We witness several characters misfortune and deprivation, which molds them into the villain of the film, though when the story develops we often find ourselves sympathizing.
- Economic hardship - There is often a financial deprivation in these films, a single mother, a family on benefits struggling to provide for their family and trying to stay together.

Films and programs that are based on Social Realism:
- Waterloo Road
- This is England
- Sweet Sixteen
- Billy Elliot
- Ratcatcher
- The Boys
- The Plague

Below is a trailer for a couple of Social Realism films:

This is England


Billy Elliot

Preliminary Task

For my preliminary task I worked with Max, Joe and Liam. We were given a short script which we adapted our own ideas to and produced a short film. There were four characters, which Max played two of, as well as Joe and Liam who played a character too. My role was to incorporate a variety of camera angles in each of the scenes in order to emphasize the mysterious theme we were aiming to portray - we wanted to create a twist to the simple and boring script we were given.


I used panning when characters were walking toward danger in order to create suspense and wonder as to where the characters were being lead to.. I also included  close up shots to create empathy towards feelings and emotions. I found two person shots and shot reverse shot were useful when a conversation was being held.


Although we were all pleased with the camera shots we produced, unfortunately the lighting wasn't as successful. On several scenes we found the lighting was far too bright and interfered with the camera - in future we must avoid filming by windows!


The quality of sound was quite well too - fortunately we filmed in quiet corridors during class time as we knew we weren't likely to experience any sound distractions from other students at that time, there weren't any muffling or crackled sounds interfering with our filming.


We all took part in editing the short film, choosing what shots best fit each other to complete the filming efficiently in a well structured way that made sense and followed on from one another correctly. We came across some funny clips which we later decided to edit into an 'outtakes' slide at the end of the film. The editing made the film seem a little more professional, we were also able to create a sense of the theme we were creating with music and sound effects.


I'm happy with the short film we produced though in future I want to ensure we think about setting and faults we may find with the setting, e.g. the lighting by windows ruined the scene as viewers were unable to see characters faces properly. Other than this, I was pleased with the camera angles, sound and editing we all used in order to successfully create our short film.