In our short film we are going to be showing a teenage girl sitting down watching a horror film, when her parents go to bed they tell her they have locked all the doors and windows in the house apart from the one where she is sitting which is in the lounge, so she needs to do that before she goes to bed. Then suddenly she sees something out the corner of her eye from the window she gets up to look out the window and doesn’t see anything so she closes the window and curtains. She then thinks she sees something again and rips open the curtains with extreme fear, there’s nothing there when she looks, so she closes the curtain, she then turns around and the dog is just staring at her which makes her jump, she goes and strokes the dog and sits down to watch the film, The dog hears something and looks around, when Lucy looks around sees the masked man standing in the doorway and shouts for her dad but then faints. She wakes up and the film has just started and her parents say goodnight and tell her to close the windows and lock the doors, then sees the masked man outside the window again and it cuts to black and finishes.
The aim of this production is to educate and entertain the audience who are watching the short film; the way we are going to do this is by aiming it at a 15 year olds and older the channel we would show our film on is BBC three for two reasons, reason one is that Lord Reith the founder of BBC and the general manager for 16 years said that the BBCs purpose is to Inform, Educate and Entertain the second reason is that we completed a questionnaire of what age range watches what BBC channel and we found out that the age range we are aiming at watch BBC three more than any other BBC channel. We decided that the time it will be shown would be at 8:30 on a sunday evening because again in our questionnaire we asked what weekend nights the targeted audience stay in. The way it would educate the audience is by learning to be secure in your own home by closing and locking the windows and doors. The way it will entertain the audience is by keeping the targeted audience on the edges of their seats. There are a number of theories as to why people like to watch scary movies, here are a few below:
The largest audience for frightening films tend to be older teens and people in their early twenties. There are still more mature audience members that love the thrills and chills of a scary movie. (1) Watching a horror film is experiencing the sensation of being thrilled or scared in ways that most people do not get to experience in real life. At the same time you know that a film can never really hurt you and so it adds to the fun because you also know you are safe. (2)
We are going to be making a British horror film, British cinema has a long history of horror film making, examples include: Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti et al – 1945), Twins of Evil (John Hough – 1971), The Man Who Changed His Mind (Robert Stevenson – 1936), The Strangers (Bryan Bertino – 2008). The horror film offers the audience an experience of fear within a non threatening context. One of the simplest ways to create fear is by not showing anything at all, this is what we are aiming to do. The shot of a single face screaming in terror; can trigger the viewer to imagine a cause more horrifying than we could show on this budget. We aim to make a British horror film that appeals to the proven audience of this genre. (3)
1. http://www.wisegeek.com/why-do-people-like-to-watch-scary-movies.htm
2. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_people_like_horror_films_or_violent_films
3. Horror Films book written by Colin Odell & Michelle Le Blanc.
We decided to aim our film at under 18’s as we researched on Internet movie data base and examined at a range of horror films. The evidence showed that this genre is most popular with under 18s. For example; The Strangers (Bryan Bertino 2008) was rated 7/10 from under 18s, Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli 2007) was rated 7.5/10 for males under 18 and 7.4/10 for females under 18, Jeepers Creepers (Victor Salva 2001) was rated 6.5/10 for males under 18 and 5/10 for females under 18, Saw (James Wan 2004) was rated 8.4/10 for males under 18 and 8.2 for females under 18.
