How did you attract/address your audience?

We as a group believe our film appeals to both a male and female audience. We believe the male audience will be interested in the gore and horror elements of the film. However we feel a female audence will also enjoy the film as it challenges the regular conventions of gender and has the male character as the victim and the female character as the the dominant character. In almost all thriller movies the female is the weaker character being pursued or hurt by a male character , eg "Halloween" , "Scream".


The title of our film was also the title of the diary in the film, this sums up the idea of the film which is about the female antagonists obsession with the male victim. We deliberately chose the text of the title of the book in red to be in a mismatched, jagged style, this is to show the audience that the film is disturbing. The obsessed book was also used to emphasize the female killers obsession with the male victim and to show that she has been watching him for a long time which the audience can see through the use of with different location pictures and diary dates. This would attract our target audience who are interested in psycological thriller films as this comes across as stalking and would make them think about why the female antagonist is doing this.


We also added fake blood to the book and to some of the props, this creates more horror and reflects our film theme. The blood also creates tension and questioning for the audience to where the blood came from, and if Mark had been injured by them. The mise en scene of the make-up on Mark also explains this, as fake blood on his face and make-up bruising reflects he has been hurt.

In the opening scene we have used a wide range of shots, sound, mise en scene and editing to attract our audience. Firstly we used mise en scene effectively to fit with the genre of the film. We used props such as different tools (eg. screw driver, hammer), a chair, the obsessed book, and the belt to show the audience somthing was wrong. We used the chair and belt to keep Mark trapped inside to create the tension we also used a pan shot of the blood-soaked tools to create create tension amongst the audience, as this shows the male victim has been harmed. The audience would want to see these types of clips as it is psycological thriller so they would expect to see this type of stuff.

The use of mise en scene for the male victims t-shirt emphasizes the state that he was kept in, with rips and blood on it, this suggests to the audience he has been pooorly treated and tortured. The use of colour of the victims white t-shirt represents purity and innocence. This compliments the character in the opening scene, as he is innocent. The costume for the character Jess also had fake blood, which was on her hands, and a black coat which was used to hide her identity. The use of colour for Jess also compliments her character, as black has connotations of death and evil. The use of all the colour directly attracts our target audience further as the negative colours will evoke an emotional response of fear and tension. To further evoke emotional responses we also used harsh diagetic sounds such as scribbling to make the audience feel uncomfortable. The sound is uncomfortable and was placed in the film to recieve a physical reation such as that a person may get when a chalkboard is scraped

We used a number of fast paced, seamlessly edited close-ups of the female antagonist cutting up photographs and scribbling out faces. This was done to make the audience think "what's going on?" and "why is she doing this?" however it becomes clear to the audience that this character is an obsessed stalker when we see her diary with various different dates and events written in it about the male character. Using the close ups of the male victim struggling adds a fear factor to the film, as he's trying to escape and the audience would be on edge watching. We used final cut pro to create the fast cut editing, we did this by editing in a variety of shots to build up the tension.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media piece (film opening) would be people interested in the Physiological Thriller and also the horror genres of films such as "Hostal" ,"Saw", "Seven and also films such as "Shutter island" and "Law abiding citizan". We feel this is because the theme and the constant atmosphere of our film is silimar to all of these films.

We aimed the film at 15 - 25 & 25-40 age groups. We decided to choose this wide audience as we felt anybody aged 15 and over would be able to watch this film and have the desired effects we were looking for, Which were to intrigue, create suspense and fear while watching our final piece.

In order to appeal to the fifteen to seventeen audience we censored the section of the film opening where the female killer is torturing the male victim. We replaced this scene with a black screen and a loud male scream. We did this so our film wouldn't be classed as an 18 which would exclude these viewers and make them unable to see the film. We chose to do this as we felt the younger audience would be our main audience as opposed to the over 40 age group which we felt wouldn't be particularly interested in horror films. This decision was based on nielson data that suggests that the over 4o market responds better to Tv dramas and aren't frequent 'cinema go'ers'.

As we felt such a wide audience would enjoy the film, we aimed our film at a mass audience by using younger cast to appeal to a younger audience and also cleverly implented gender conventions such a female antagonist with power over a male to appeal to an older audience.

Creating The Film

Mark editing our film opening, using the Final Cut Pro programme.

Sound

Recorded Sounds

Recording the flickering of the pages to use when Jess flicks through the 'Obsessed' book in our film opening.

The scribbling over the female faces in the 'Obsessed' book to emphasize how obsessed Jess is of Mark.

We then used Final Cut Pro to extract the sound and place them over the selected shots.

Obbsesed Music Sound

We created this piece, to create tension and evoke an emotional responce from the viewer. We closey watched the video and then used garage band to create this piece of music that would perfectly fit our film opening.

Filming

Over the shoulder shot of Mark filming jess with the diary

Siobhan filming

The chair we used in our opening, and shows the state which the mill was in

Mark in the ripped t-shirt and carefully applied eye makeup

Shot of Mark from the back, showing how he was tied to the chair

Shot of mark from the front, looking downwards

Mark from the side

Jess with the diary, and showing how we applied the fake blood to her hands to add more effect

A long shot of the mill, gives a better idea of what it was really like

Props / Mise-en-scene

This was the t-shirt that built up the main part of Marks costume which he wore whilst filming, as you can see we made it look ripped and blood stained to indicate to the audience that he had been being tortured.
This is the diary which was inspired by physicoligical thriller Seven. We developed the idea and made it into our own, and helped it fit into our opening. We used pictures of mark and wrote about them to add effect, as well as stains of fake blood. This shows the audience that this isn't just a random event and that alot of planning has gone into his abduction and torture.



The tools were part of the openings as weapons which would be used on Mark. In the opening you don't actually see Mark being attacked, just his reaction and movement of Jess's body. We positioned the tools near both mark and jess and applied fake blood to parts so they looked as if they had been used as torture weapons. This helped to create a sense of danger in the films opening.

Costumes

Jess
In the opening scene both characters had to wear particular clothing and make up to make sure it fitted in with the rest of mise en scene. Jess had to be dressed all in black and fake blood was applied to her hands to make her look more authentic. We positioned her in the middle of the mill surrounded by abandoned objects tyres, chairs etc. We did this to reflect the theme of our film and make sure everything matched.

Mark
mark's costume consisted of a t-shirt that we ripped and covered in fake blood to make look as if he had been in some sort of struggle. we used make up around the eye area to make it look as if he had been punched or it some sort of fight. We had him positioned also in the centre of the middle tied to a chair, to show the fact his he has been taken against his will.