Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience? (Connor Snell)

The target audience for 'Gone' is both men and women aged 15-45.

Our film genre falls into thriller/horror and is based around the idea of children going missing because of a sinister stimulus. A common theme in modern horrors is the idea of children going missing as this is one of the main things parents fear in society. Therefore we chose to base our horror on this as most adults can relate to this narrative. Below are modern examples of posters with missing children on them.

From looking at results about who watch horror films such as Insidious and The Woman in Black (males and females between the ages 15 and 40) I can conclude that our film will engage a wide audience as nearly all groups of people like watching horrors.

Another reason why people will watch our film is because horrors give a buzz to the audience in the form of a jump scare. Many people are fond of this and seek this feeling of true fear and creepiness. Also, missing people is a big problem that we have in modern society because it's the notion of not knowing where someone is or what could have happened to them. 

The disjointed narrative structure of our horror film appeals to the audience as it offers an alternative to stereo typically horror plots. This is shown in our opening sequence in the form of a flash back/forward.

The screenshot above shows the lack of events which are taken place in chronological order which is usually what is shown in a horror movie. This is because before we got to 1:52 we are shown a flash forward of what happens in the film. This would attract the audience to watch our film as this would show a new angle of showing a horror film.

This screenshot represents the creepiness of our film. The fact that the character in the image is unidentifiable as you cannot see their face or any other features leaves lots of enigma which people would want to find out more about

Examples of our audience from feedback

As a section of question 5 I wanted to talk about the feedback that we received about our film 'Gone'. As a result of this, I decided to create a survey monkey and let people watch our opening sequence and then answer questions which we wanted to find out the answers to.

The results of the questions can be shown in the pie charts below and I deem these not only to be good feedback, but another thing that I can learn from.

The main ages of the respondents were 17/18.

Was the genre easy to identify? 80% of respondents said yes.

Did the films show good conventions for the genre? 70% of respondents said yes.

Would you watch the full-length feature film? 60% of respondents said yes.

Did you get confused at any point? 60% of respondents said yes.

Question 7: Looking back at your Preliminary Task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression to the final product? (Jack Beeson)

Here is my final evaluation task. This features of a slideshare and my prelim task and my final product of "Gone"

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product? (Connor Snell)

 Age: 

 The age of our audience which we were aiming for was decided straight away because this would be the most important thing to think about when we filmed our scenes and how the film was displayed to the public. We decided from a very early point that we would make the audience from the age of 15 to around 45. The film certificate for ‘Gone’ is a 15 due to the horror and gore content. We knew through knowledge that anyone below the ages of 15 or above the ages of 45 would not be suitable to watch our opening sequence, let alone the full-length feature film. This is because some scenes would be disturbing and potentially unsettling.

 Age links into the narrative and style of ‘Gone’ because some parts of our film would not be appropriate to watch by young children or the elderly. These sorts of scenes would include jump-scares, blood scenes and offensive language. Horror films do not appeal to these age groups because they respond much more sensitively to everything.

Gender:

 The gender of our audience was also important to us because we didn't want our film to be sexually dominated. We also knew from knowledge that a large proportion of people that view horror films are stereo typically ‘couples’. This is why, even though there were not any females in the opening sequence which we probably should have done but it was hard as we were a group of 3 boys, we were confident that both genders would watch and enjoy our film.

 Gender links into the narrative because in the opening sequence we have only included characters which were boys. This may have warned of females if the film genre had not have been horror but because of the certain genre, the main group that would see our thriller/horror would be 'couples'.

Films with similar target audiences All three of the below horror films have young children as the main character, just like 'Gone'. 

The Omen (1976) is an old film and had a core audience of males and females aged 16-40

Insidious (2010) is a modern horror that has a core audience of males and females aged 15-30

 Orphan (2009) is another modern horror that also has a core audience of males and females aged 15-35

Question 6 (Tom Wise)

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products (Question 1 Tom Wise)

Analysis

Insidious Opening Title

The title of the film which is ''Gone'' is to create enigma for the film similar to what Insidious has done, we used this title as we feel it is simple and very relatable to the film itself.  We wanted to create a mysterious title which would make the audience think about why we used it.  In the shot we ended on, we watch the boy disappear which relates back to the title as he is literally ''Gone''.

This is the house of the set which is challenging the park we used

The setting and location for ''Gone'' is mostly filmed in a park at night, we used this location as it was quiet and also very compact so we were able to show a lot in such a small area, we tried to keep this horror arguably similar to Evil Dead so that we can create a similar setting however much more mysterious you can see this in the bottom right shot as shows the park, we tried to challenge the real media product by using high key lighting.For the character in the film we used props and a costume, the main props were the article of the missing boy as well as the makeup we needed to use on the boys face to make him look muddy and dirty.  You can see this in use in the top left shot as there is a close up of the characters face with the dirty look.  This similar prop is used specifically in Evil Dead with the main character also looking dirty and muddy through out the film.

The Camera Work and editing in the close up with the boy, with the light shot flashing on him on and off as well as the ghosting effect in the editing is challenged in our inspiration film Insidious, we tried to sync the audio to the ghosting effect in editing to make it unique and clean.  We feel that using the lighting effect develops several lighting effects in Insidious specifically in the opening titles.

The titles font we used is Coolvetica which looks rather casual for a horror film, we tried to challenge the real media product being our inspiration Insidious which uses some old fashion style font however we feel that our font worked well with the editing and camera work in the film even though it was white and looked fairly casual compared to the genre, and if you look at the stereotypical horror film the font which is used is normally quite old style or fancy.

The story for ''Gone'' is rather typical for a horror film, the opening which sets the film up is fairly understandable.  Obviously the opening should only reveal only little of the actual film however we tried to create a enigma from the opening to set a tension, as you can see in the bottom left shot we filmed the end of the opening in a dark corridor as the boy slowly walks towards the camera not revealing his face, this is to keep the audience unknown and continue the enigma.

The genre for our film is Horror and we compared our opening to the real media product which is Insidious, both genres are horror however our opening is set to create enigma and not so much straight into horror which is challenged to Insidious which is typically known for jump scares as well as low key lighting which is a similar to ours.  The best example of the same use of lighting is in the middle top shot with the character and the yellow light behind him.

In the opening of our film we have one main character which is James, we introduced him with the news reporter saying that the boy is missing and we then show different shots of the boy in low key lighting to make it look late at night you can see this in the top left shot as you see the main character close up, this is challenging the real media product from Insidious as in the opening we do not really get to see the main character too much so we tried to develop the idea of creating enigma with the audience. 

In our opening we were limited to special effects, the main effects came from editing with effects such as 'ghosting' on the close up of the main character as well as the increased lighting in some shots.  Obviously we were not able to spend too much on the film since it is a media project however we were able to apply ourselves using the Adobe Premier editing tools as well as common lighting effects when filming.  We tried to challenge Insidious by using different effects which created more of a subtle enigma rather than straight up horror.

Institutions That May Distribute Our Film and Why? (Question 3 by Jack Beeson)

Production Company

We created 2 companies to distribute our film which are "White Box" and "Silver Lining", the two production films we created specialise in low budget films. The other production company we are using if Film 4 which is a already created production company. We have chosen Film 4 for one of our production companies as they are responsible for supporting many films that are created in the UK just like "Gone"

Distributor

When researching what potential distribution company to use to distribute our film there were many implications which would make us decide. Such as what company usually distributes our genre of film or what target audience the distributor usually aims their films at. For our film we were looking at the horror/thriller genre and our target audience will be mainly in between the 15-30 age group. The main goal was to find a distributor which would market our film successfully.

Marketing For Gone

With the current trends and the current technology we can use technology to our advantage when we market "Gone". The audience we are aiming our film at which is 15-30, this age group will be a very good group to be able to advertise towards. This group widely evolve their lives around social networking. Using social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook will help us reach out to our target audience and advertise to them specifically.
We will also be able to add videos on to youtube which is also very popular with our target audience. On here we could upload trailers, footage from behind the scenes or bloopers etc...

We will also be placing "Gone" posters on different sites to promote and advertise our film. These posters will be placed in appropriate places tailored for our audience.

Our main portrait poster that will be used.

Our poster on a bus stop.

Our film posters in a cinema

The showing of "Gone"

Cinema

The first screenings of gone will be shown at the cinema. The film will be a certificate 15 and will be shown across UK and Ireland cinemas such as Odeon and Empire etc...

DVD & Online

After the film has been shown in cinema's for numerous weeks the film will then be released on DVD. We are hoping it will also do very well on this platform and will be sold over years to come not just in the first month when it is released. We will also sell the film to be shown online streaming sites such as Netflix and Love film. When it comes to this stage we must take great precaution when it comes to piracy as this may effect us cost wise.

"Gone" with Particular Social Groups (Question 2 by Jack Beeson)