Sean's Evaluation :$

Question 1.

I researched thoroughly about my sub-genre of Psychological Horror so that I could watch opening/title sequences of other films in this sub-genre so that i can have a better understanding and try to use ideas created in professional films.




This is the production logo of Capitol which doesn't really have the best logo and most eye catching. It's just simple slanted text with a shadow. It looks slightly authoritative as its for the horror film 'shrooms' and it looks a bit plain and relates to the horror film as it looks slightly mysterious and psychological even though this production company focuses on other genres of film.

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This is the title included n the title sequence of Paranormal Activity 2. It's weird in a way and plays with my mind by the fact that the '2' is in between the words rather than at the the end of them. Also, the word 'Activity' isn't spelt backwards, the letters have actually been reversed as if you were looking into a mirror. This plays with your mind just like a psychological horror should.









This is our title in our horror film project. It consists of















This is a scene from Paranormal Activity 2 which consists of the woman being possessed and standing up watching her husband sleep. In the scene it fast-forwards time for 3 hours in which she doesn't move. You see the time in the corner just so that you know how long its been. Possession by spirits or demons etc. is one of the few key conventions in making a successful psychological horror.
Compared to our scene, the threat is not shown but there is a loud bang which alarms the victim and makes him paranoid.




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This is not a film from our sub-genre. This is the zombie film 'Resident Evil' - this image shows character, it shows the strength and intimidation of the character due to the slight high angled shot. Plus, the swords on her back and her guns raised which challenges stereotypes and produces recessive ideology. It shows the character is violent and not afraid. However, our shot supports dominant ideology because the stereotype of a drug taker would be a male and that is what we included in our opening sequence.









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This is my example of a image that shows mise-en-scene from the existing film 'The Strangers'. The content of this scene/image is of two women and a man intimidating a couple in their own home. Masks are worn by the women and the man is wearing some sort of baggage case with straw-like material to hide their identity. You can see that the woman has a large and sharp knife in the right hand next to the woman hostage. All three are looking down on their 'victims' to show they are the dominant characters. In our shot (as shown blow), the threat in our scene is a male in the mirror with the mask and knife. We tried to recreate the idea used in this film as the woman on the left has a mask and knife, but we again chose to stick to dominant ideology by having a male killer.

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This image from our own film also has the content of strange characters in masks. However, in our film we didn't show any weapons so that the audience isn't sure if they are the villains. However they also look intimidating because of the slight low angle shot used. We also added the effects on the video quite weirdly as it's a psychological horror which is supposed to be abnormal and mind-playing.

Question 2.

1.Shrooms Scene 1 - the woman is the victim. The female victim is portrayed as being the victim due to high angled shots and close ups of which show her scared facial expressions and thats she's breathing heavily. She is a young adult/late teen currently on some sort of drug. However, she looks quite averagely normal which means thats she could be just a typical, outgoing young adult.

2.Strangers Scene 2 - the female character is again the victim in the scene which seems to be one main theme in our sub-genre of psychological horror.

Our planning and research into our film has given us a great understanding of Social Groups. We have seen a lot of examples already and looked up their iMDB rating of which showed us the main target audiences which are young adults most commonly, not particular genders targeted (more males view but not substantially). In our story, we include drug usage which leads to disaster and danger for the consumer, just like 'Shrooms'. However, only one person takes the drug and its at a party instead of in a field/woodlands. We decided to go with recessive ideology and had the victim as a male when the victims are often females in psychological horrors.

I would have to choose our party scene to relate to the dominant ideology that teenagers when partying take it too far and take drugs, dance a lot and drink as if they have no worries in the world. I could not find a film to compare it to so i chose a TV Drama which is a Skins Party Montage. In this montage, there's scenes of drugs being taken, drinking vodka, running away from parties and female characters being outgoing and dancing seductively. n our film that we're yet to shoot, we will try to include most of these conventions that make the party scene actually look like a party.


Question 3.

Distribution is getting your film out there and seen by a range of people so it is known. So, to get our media project of a horror film seen, I would probably upload it to YouTube and share on Social Networking sites.

 This is Lionsgate, it is one of the biggest major media institution up to date responsible for all the Saw films, My Bloody Valentine, Kick-Ass and many more. Twisted Pictures is an independent production company which has contributed to mostly the classics from the 1950's - 1970's such as 'The Mummy' and 'Dracula' (originals). However, Twisted Pictures has recently made the new horror film 'The Woman in Black'.

The Woman in Black's poster consists of a victim in the foreground and the threat being in the background. It's main theme would be the darkness and involves the title with the slogan in a smaller font asking a rhetorical question which gets the audience involved and thinking (about the film mostly) which could maybe urge them to view 'The Woman in Black'. I Used this poster as my main inspiration of my poster for our film. There are a lot of similarities, for example, the threat and victim are shown with the title, a rhetorical question as the slogan. However, we did not include the actor's name as Twister decided to show the main actor because he is a famous actor but we obviously didn't have a budget for it so we had to just use a friend. We also included the media companies used out the way at the bottom of the screen but still visible.

This shot is of 'The Amityville Horror' trailer from Youtube (shown below). It shows Dimension Films which is a motion picture unit currently a part of The Weinstein Company. It was formerly used as Bob Weinstein's label within Miramax Films, to produce and release genre films.

Dimension Films is also mentioned at the end of the trailer alongside sub production companies and most trailers include the parent company, however this one doesn't.

Question 4.

The audience for our media project would have to be the usual target audience for most psychological horrors but we will probably have to target the males more than the females due to drug taking and the graphic images and slight humour that is contained at some points in the film. Our certificate is a 15 so our main target audience range is from 15-30 i should imagine. To suit our target audience, we chose a party scene with alcohol and drugs with load music which is something we imagine people between those ages can relate to easily.

Dom Habgood Evaluation :§)

Question 1:

The titles are simplistic but effective the red and black background hints it is a dark film, with red being the color of blood. The font is bold and clear, it represents the psychological horror genre well as its simple but effective. It alludes to what is going to happen and makes the audience think.

 This is a key shot from session 9 as it shows clearly who the victims are (The cleaners) and it show how alone they are. Torches are used as the only light source to show little light overall and make the cleaners look isolated. This follows psychological horror conventions as the victims are isolated and the threat is not directly shown.

 This is another key image as it again clearly shows the victim - but not the threat, this is common in psychological horror films for the threat to be hidden until the very end of the film or even not at all. The cleaner running away down the corridor is clearly the victim. He is also running into darkness which eludes to him being in further danger. This follows psychological horror conventions as the victims are isolated and the threat is not directly shown.

 This is an establishing shot in the film as it shows 'Danvers Asylum' the setting of the film, it is shown to be a huge daunting place, shown by the low angle shot of the asylum. This shows the asylum will be a key part of the film and the threat is from within it.

 This shot is one again a key shot as the threat has still not been identified but this high angle shot from within the trees shows the cleaners going about there business unaware of who/what is watching them. They are shown as the victims clearly by the use of the high angle shot to show who is weaker. This follows psychological horror conventions as the victims are isolated and the threat is not directly shown.

This is a key shot from session 9 as it shows how daunting the asylum is the writing on the wall gives the feeling it is a real asylum and that horrific events/ people were there. The darkness and the length of the corridor shows how big the asylum is and how small the cleaners are in comparison.  This follows psychological horror conventions as the threat is not directly shown.

This is the image of the company logo who for 'session 9' it isn't particularly scary but the black background and fairly simple font are usual conventions of a psychological horror logo.









                              This is our production logo the letters spelling out the name make it seem disturbing and the powder adds to the theme of hallucinations. We also added a black and white effect due to none of the production company logos we studied being very colorful.








Question 2:

1. The social group in the film session 9 is all male, who are a mix of young and older people. The threat is from within the characters themselves as its a psycological horror film so the social group for the threat is the same as the victims.

The male social group is presented from the start as happy and funny but as the story develops the characters become less and less comfortable with each other as they all become mentally unstable. These follow stereotypes at the beginning that men can deal with difficult issues and not crack under pressure also the end of the film sees the older men go crazy which is often a convention of psychological horror films.

This film (The Ring) challenges conventional psychological horror film as the victims are middle aged/ older men when usually women are the victims. However is follows the conventions of the genre as the threat is from inside the characters.

The victim is a young adult female which follows typical psychological horror conventions as they are portrayed as weak and unable to defend themselves. The threat is a supernatural power which is often the case and also the threat is not seen much which also follows psychological horror conventions. This clip follows stereotypes as the woman is seen as weak and scared.

Our main actor was a young male as we thought this would fit with the conventions of hallucination films e.g. Shrooms and Session 9. Those films use young males and are effective in creating tension. We used lots of close ups of our actor in our film, we got very close to his face so it was uncomfortable to watch. Because he is young and quite skinny he was made to seem vulnerable throughout our film.

 These two still's from our film are parts of the sequence that best establish the social group of teenagers, as there is only one character throughout most of our film the feeling of isolation which is key to a psychological horror. The fact that the character is young links to him being vulnerable when he wakes up in the house alone.

The scene where our character walks up the stairs and he is viewed from a high angle shot also adds to feeling of isolation as he is moving from the light room to the unknown darkness upstairs.







When that scene is compared to the scene in 'The Ring' where the main character is walking up the stairs, that shot is framed in the same way and has the same desired effect. She looks isolated and vulnerable, building up to the eventual stinger, just like in our film.

Question 3:

 - I understand distribution to be the way a film is marketed/spread around so that people get to know about your film. Our film could be distributed through an independent distributor as we are not signed to a film company. We could circulate posters of our film (put them up in cinema's) and a trailer which could run before 15 rated psychological horror films (e.g. Paranormal activity) in the cinema. Trailers that are similar to what we want ours to look like are the Session 9 trailer above and the Paranormal activity trailer.
- The Paranormal activity trailer is effective as there is an actual audience being shown jumping and frightened whilst watching the film - making viewers of the trailer think its actually scary and making them want to watch it. The trailer also shows brief jumpy moments of the film to give the audience a preview of the film. Session 9 was distributed by 'USA films'(Now known as Focus Features)  - a subsidiary of Universal Studios. Universal is a major media institution. Paranormal activity was distributed independently to start with at the Screamfest film festival in 2007 where Paramount producers saw the film and brought the rights, they then distributed the film internationally.

- To distribute our film we could perhaps show it at a film festival e.g. Mayhem and Bang! short film festivals in Nottingham. As paranormal activity screened their film locally and eventually struck a multimillion dollar deal with Paramount. The video below shows the range of films screened at the festivals and possible success that follows a good screening.

Our film poster will be influenced by other posters in the psychological genre e.g. Session 9's promotional poster:
The poster is effective as it uses conventional horror colours - Dark Green, Brown and Black. There is also a silhouetted man opening a door with light behind him showing he is walking into the darkness. Also 'Session 9' is in slightly distorted font and in white text against a black background.









This is our film poster:

-There is a dark background as very little colour is used in horror posters generally, we used a screen grab of one of our weirdest scenes (when the character is hallucinating). After inspiration from the Session 9 poster we changed the font on the poster to a slightly distorted style. We kept the colour scheme simple and the text simple and plain, all our text is against a black background so it can be clearly seen and seems intimidating.

-The poster would appear in cinemas on the walls as its not too explicit and would be allowed to go wherever, the poster would also be on advertising boards in towns and cities possibly even buses to spread the word.

-The Release date for the film would be around summer e.g. June 5th and the DVD release would be around 4 months after e.g. October 31st (To coincide with Halloween).


Question 4 & 5:
The audience for our media product would be adults and young adults as anyone younger wouldn't understand what is happening and also wouldn't be allowed to see it as our film rating is 15. I would justify this decision by saying that all the films we have based our film on are also 15 and aimed at the same audience - Session 9, Shrooms and The Shining.
 - Session 9 - Rating: 15, the possible target audience for this film is older males, as predominantly the entire cast are male and they are all over 18. They are all seen in a working environment so perhaps younger males could not relate to this thats why i think it is aimed at adult males.

- Paranormal Activity - Rating: 15, the target audience for this film is anyone over 15 as people younger wouldn't understand the story also there are more male characters although the film is not aimed specifically at a gender. I would say that the film is aimed at teenagers/ young adults due to its quick thrills and thin storyline, people see the film knowing it will be jumpy, not necessarily that scary.

- The Shining - Rating: 15, the target audience for this film is older males as the main character that the film is all about is an older male. This means older males can relate when watching the film as the character slowly turns insane.




-Funny Games - Rating: 18, the target audience for this film is clearly adults as the plot is about serial killers,  a much more serious subject than the last 3 films i've described. Serial killings are real events where as Session 9 and Paranormal activity are not real events. Also films like Session 9 and Paranormal activity show very little blood where as this film is rated 18 for terror and violence so its clear blood will be shown a lot.

- Psycho - Rating: 15, the target audience for this film is adults/ young adults as they usually have the patience to sit through a slow burning psychological horror that builds in tension.

After consulting bbfc.co.uk it has become clear our film should be rated 15, this is because our film has themes of terror and violence but not much blood, if any is actually show- therefore it would be granted a 15 certificate.


We attracted the target audience to our film by using a character the audience can relate to.





Question 6

AS Media Horror Film on Prezi

http://prezi.com/bwwbbwomml6a/edit/?auth_key=ymse91h&follow=jv4wege538br

Question 7

Tom's Evaluation

QUESTION 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

There is not much to say about the company logo, it is a plain 3D font in black and white, which could show a simple theme and maybe the psychological horror stereotype that there's normally something behind all the innocent and simple aspects.

This is the main title image for the film 'Shrooms', it is quite simple and plain but the black background and the gothic, old-style font of the title itself gives the title a quite sinister feel, and makes you think that despite the simple titles there's obviously a lot more to it.

This shot establishes the victim character in the film 'Strangers' as it shows the female character (stereotypical victim) looking quite frightened and defenseless, showing she would be quite vulnerable to any sort of threat or attack, which instantly gives the audience the idea she probably will.

This shot is from the same film and it uses Mise En Scene effectively as it shows the female victim lower down on the shot than the threat in the mask, making her look like she is the one under threat and she is doing anything she can to escape rather than fighting back (female stereotype).

This shot is the establishing shot for the threat in the film Shrooms, the extreme close up shot of it's mouth containing sharp teeth showing the inhumanity of it. This matches the psychological horror stereotype of an 'unknown' or 'unidentified' threat.

This is a scene from the film 'The Shining' which shows the threat Johnny smashing his way through a door with an axe to reach his victim. In this shot the close up of his face with his messy hair, wide-eyes and facial hair shows the true insanity of the character which would show him to be a 'bad' character. This matches the conventions of a psychological horror with the mental instability and insanity of the threat.

This is the scene in 'The Shining' in which the child sees some horrific images. The close up of the child with his hands covering his face and his mouth open shows the vulnerability and panic of a young child, following the psychological theme of vulnerable victims, such as small children or women.

This scene from 'Session 9' is quite a typical psychological horror strategy, like an 'anti-stinger' with the loud noise usually associated with a stinger (usually threat revealed or something along those lines) but no threat is seen and an innocent image is shown, leaving you and the character in the video thinking and in state of confusion.

This is our opening logo featuring our production company name as well as some sort of powder source present to represent the drugs aspect of the film. Also the writing in scrabble cubes gives it that sort of 'insane' and 'unknown' feel.

This shot establishes mise-en-scene as the threat shown in the flashback is a group of people coming right up to the camera, giving a quite eery and uncomfortable feel and the fact that most of the screen contains them shows they are the dominant force. This also shows the aspect of sub-genre as it shows the weird, creepy part of psychological horror.






This is the shot of our title, which like the logo is also in scrabble cubes and black and white again to give it an freaky, unknown feel.

This shot establishes character as it instantly shows the main character to be the victim as its a high angle shot and also with his hand over his face shows him to be distressed.

This shot establishes the villain in our film, which is only introduced in the final shot to keep the sense of the unknown apparent. The fact that the threat is also wearing the same masks as the people in the flashbacks also keeps the viewer thinking who the murderer could possibly be and whether he actually is real or just a side-effect of the drugs taken.


The images from my film represent conventions of psychological horror as it shows factors of the unknown and a state of mental instability, interpreting the idea of hallucinogenic drugs as messing with the brain. The only thing that seems to challenge the conventions of the sub genre is the fact that the main character is a teenage male whereas the victim is typically a weak, defenceless female character.
The titles and logo of our film are very typical in terms of conventions as they are quite strange and 'child-like' with the use of the scrabble cubes, and the dark look and lack of colour are also very typical in our sub genre.

QUESTION 2 - How does your media project represent particular social groups?
1) Research - Strangers Scene & Shrooms Scene - In these 2 films all the main characters (the victims and the threats) in the scenes are of white complexion, which could possibly mean that this sub-genre is a regularly white genre, possibly meaning it is enjoyed more by white people. Also in Shrooms the characters are experimental by taking dangerous drugs in the forest, a stereotypical act by white youths.
In terms of gender, the majority of the victims are female in most psychological films (including Strangers) which fits the stereotype of women being less able to defend themselves than men, but this stereotype is challenged in Shrooms as 2 of the victims are male, and as the story unravels you find out that the threat is actually a female, going against the stereotype.
2) Planning - The actor we've chosen for our victim is an adolescent male, which follows the convention shown in shrooms, both with the victimization and the use of drugs which is also shown in our film. In our story it matches some conventions of typical psychological horrors including a sense of the unknown and a fear of it also, as well as the threat playing with the victim's mind and conscience. We used our target audience research to find that this type of film generally follows the ideas of young people being the victim, some sort of unknown or hidden threat, and possible themes of party lifestyles and drug use. The character we've used isn't typical of the conventions of psychological horror though as the typical victim would definitely be female, but the fact the character is only young and quite slim in physique shows him to be quite vulnerable and susceptible to the effects of illegal drugs.
3) Construction + Feedback -

These are 2 scenes from both my film and the psychological-ghost horror 'The Ring', in which the shots used are almost identical, with the victim shown at the bottom of a staircase coming up in a high angle shot, supposedly towards the threat. The male character in our film is shown to be quite young, naive and is wearing teenager-like clothing (skinny jeans, long jewellery) which is similar to the Ring scene as despite the gender difference, the female victim character is wearing a sort of school uniform, which makes it quite obvious that she also is of a teenage age and therefore quite inexperienced and  vulnerable, making her the perfect victim. Our audience accepted the male victim in our film as the film is aimed at a teenage audience, and therefore teenagers can relate to a teenage main character.

QUESTION 3 - What kind of media institution would distribute your product?

Distribution is getting your film seen by promoting your film using different techniques such as posters, trailers and so on.

There are different ways to distribute your certain media product, such as in the film industry there is major distributors (e.g. Lionsgate) as well as independent production companies (e.g. Hammer Films), but if we were to promote our own media product it would be independent distribution as we are not signed to a major company.

Independent Distribution

One example of an independent distribution company would be Rogue Pictures which is formerly a subsidiary of Universal but is now one of Relativity Media.

This is the trailer for the film from this company "Strangers", which has the production companies logos at the start followed by a sequence of some of the main, horrific parts of the film without giving away too much of the story. This is done to entice the audience to want to find out what happens in the rest of the film, using slowly building up music to create tension and fast tempo changes of shot to give it a really exciting feel. This film was promoted by adding this trailer to another Rogue film "Doomsday" in theaters as well as the director attending 'Comic-Con' where he did a Q&A before showing the teaser trailer for the film.

Here is a poster from another psychological film distributed by Rogue Pictures called "White Noise 2: The Light", it uses a black background with some sort of diagram with faces (supposedly of the main characters) screaming giving the indication they are in danger or trouble, as well as showing the company logo and the names of the actors (which may attract customers if the actors are well known).

The poster we used to influence ours was Session 9, with the dark colours, the psychological aspect and the dirty coloured blurry text to show insanity or the drugs aspect. Here is our poster in comparison to the Project 9 poster:

 Major Distribution
Major distribution is the distribution and marketing of films on a much wider scale with a mass and probably global audience. One example of this is major company 'Lionsgate' with one successful horror film, the ghost film 'A Haunting In Connecticut' which made a massive profit and was advertised at the Amsterdam film festival in 2009 before being released in the UK, USA and Canada.

Our film would probably have a cinema release date of around June as this is the start of the summer so students will have university holidays and college holidays, so that would entice more customers to come and watch our film as this would probably be the audience best suited for this film. Before the DVD release to come a few months later at the end of October as this is around Halloween time so it's a bit of a money-maker so more profit would be made and advertisements would be suited for the time. We would release the poster and the official trailer around the same time, probably around the spring of the year of release before other horror films in theatres of age rating 18, as this is the audience we would be trying to entice.

QUESTION 4 - Who would be the audience for your product?
The audience for our product based on research both on line and primary research would most likely be young adults (18-25) of either gender and that are into other horrors or psychological thrillers. The certificate would have to be an 18 though as the film contains a lot of horror, tension and more importantly a theme of drugs and partying which may not be appropriate for a younger person.

QUESTION 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Shrooms - 18 - this film is probably an 18 because it contains drug use, violence and sexual features, which are all inappropriate for someone under the age of 18. Also the characters in the film are all over 18 which could possibly be a factor.

The Shining - 15 - this film is aimed at anyone over 15 as it contains horrific imagery and contexts which would not be suitable for someone younger.

Session 9 - 15 - this films target audience is anyone over the age of 15 as it contains horrific and violent imagery and scenes which would not be suitable for someone younger, as well as the storyline being more advanced than for someone of a younger age.

The Thing - 15 - this film is aimed at anyone over 15 due to the use of violence, horror and gore which would not be suitable for someone below this age.

Paranormal Activity - 15 - this film is a 15 because it contains a lot of horrific, supernatural imagery, as well as major use of profanity and the story is difficult to follow.







Using this research we decided that our film would probably be rated an 18 as it contains more than just the usual horror and horrific imagery but it also contains an element of drugs which could possibly be inappropriate for someone under the age of 18.

QUESTION 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
AS Media Horror Film on Prezi












































 QUESTION 7 - Video Evaluation

The video for the pitch part did not work properly in the evaluation so to see that it is further down in a seperate blog post named 'PITCH'.