Pre-Production Paperwork Video

Placebo Storyboards

Placebo Shot List

Placebo Recce's

Placebo Talent Releases

Placebo Location Releases

Placebo Risk Assessment

How Audience Research Impacted Our Ideas

From our questionnaire results we were able to get information on how we could make our ideas for our horror trailer better. To get a wider range of results and to make our results more reliable we used 3 different ways to collect results two of these involving different media platforms such as SurveyMonkey and Emailing friends. As we didn't want to be bias against a certain sex we tried to get an even amount of boys and girls to answer our questionnaire. We were able to get 28 males and 23 females and although it isn't exactly 50% we still had a good amount of different sex applicants. We tried to ask certain questions to help shape our trailer better for our target audience.  14 people said they liked horror films in general and 31 then went on to say that they would go and watch a psychological horror film. This means that the general public would go and watch our film (if it was being made) and we are not taking huge risks as people would go and watch our movie and we can see this from our results. We were able to understand more about our applicants as we asked what age they were, from this we can clearly see that most of them were between the ages of 17-24 with 28 applicants, 11 0-16 year old's and only 5 over 25's. This allows us to get an in site to larger audience and what age groups like different things, its also clear that our target audience is going to be between the ages of 17-24 as this will give us a larger reach. We asked the very important questions of how our applicants heard about new upcoming films and what social networking sites they use. These 2 questions would allow us to not only understand more about our audience but to also think of a marketing plan (if needed). The 3 main ways of people hearing about the films were through friends, online (reviews, blogs etc) and adverts for the film. This didn't surprise us and if anything just backed up what we already knew however we still felt the question needed to be asked so we had the facts to back us up. We had a mixed response with the social networking sites question of course Facebook and Twitter being the highest, however other less known/used sites like Myspace were still in our results, this shows us that even though a certain media platform or a certain social networking site isn't used very much there are still people and still an audience using them, informing us that if we did need to advertise our film we should advertise even on the less used sites such as Myspace and Bebo. Of course the main question of our questionnaire was do you like horror films? This allows us to see if we are heading in the right direction with our narrative and whether it will be a success. 34 out of the 51 applicants said that they do like horror films and these are the people that we would be targeting as 1: our movie genre is horror and 2: they're the larger minority of people. This would of course help to increases sales. Our questionnaire allowed us to gain knowledge on our target audience and to build the preferences for our target audience. Without this information we feel that our trailer wouldn't be used to its full potential and so wouldn't be as big of a success as we would want it to be.

Analysis of 3 Horror Movie Trailers

Group trailer analysis

The Ward (2010)

• Short, quick, snappy shots

• Don’t give away too much information

• Quiet singing music

• Fade outs

• Black outs

• Informs who the director is

• The actors in the film

• Shows minimal violence to keep the viewer wanting more

• Name of the film at the end

• Separating texts into clauses

Side Effects (2013)

• High budget film as well-known actors are in it

• Upbeat music to start with

• Fade outs

• Short clips

• Music changing to distressing beats

• Separating texts into clauses

• Atmospheric music throughout to suit the scenes being shown

• Actors name being shown towards the end of the trailer

• As the music speed the clips short it fit the flow

• Name of film at the end of the trailer

Sixth Sense (1999)

• Throws you straight into it

• Heart beat music

• Lighting pulses with the heart beat soundtrack

• Fade outs

• Actors name being separated through the clips

• Rating and people critics shown in the clips

• The name of the film at the end followed by a final clip

• Voice over 

Research and Planning

Title: PLACEBO

A girl ‘thinks’ she has a mental illness. She goes to see a psychiatrist to help with her problems. He gives her ‘false’ medication to get better and tells her she could be a danger to others and should be isolated. He recommends a ‘safe accommodation’ and for her to go alone, which is strictly for patients and nobody else. He says he’s never been to the accommodation due to the desperate need for the patients to be isolated.

She goes with 2 friends as they refuse to allow her to go alone. The psychiatrist is at the accommodation without her knowing; however he doesn’t know she’s come with friends. He realises, kills them off gradually. The main girl thinks she has killed them driving her to insanity; however it is actually the psychiatrist

She goes to commit suicide as she can’t live with what she’s done. When she’s about to cut her throat she catches a glimpse of a significant item belonging to the psychiatrist. Taking a closer look she realises its caught on a door. She enters the room to find collaged walls of people’s faces with crosses which are all people who he has killed. She sees her face, uncrossed. Panicking she goes to leave the room but he’s there. There’s then a final fight scene where the psychiatrist finally dies, leaving the girl alone in isolation, now mentally ill.

Character profiles:

Psychiatrist- doctor finnley

Male

Appearance: Tall, mid 30’s, Brown gelled comb over, smartly dressed

Mischievous

Troubled 

Serious

Intense

Intelligent

Main girl- (dumb blonde) erin

Female 18

appearance: Blonde, Girly girl, cares about appearance

Too cool for school

Popular

No ambitions

No common sense

Gothic virginal girl- sam

Female 18

appearance: Dark clothing and makeup

Mysterious

Stereotypical appearance

Quiet and sensible

Whore- maddie

Female 18

Appearance: brunette, a lot of makeup, tight clothes- showing skin.

Outgoing

Flirtatious and daring – up for fun

Clever

Likes attention

Settings:

Psychiatrist rehab centre where she’s prescribed the medicine. – doctor’s office e.g. chair, desk.

Rehabilitation area- deserted, isolated, empty, eerie, Large buildings, everything’s very minimalistic- very basic bedroom. Whole area has a very abandoned and run down vibe.

Audience info

Age rating: 15

Target audience: dominantly female targeted however could target males because of the male gaze. Mostly suited for 16 to late 20’s due to the teenage feel of the movie. Social status- targets students and working class.

Original Idea For A Horror Film

I wanted to do a simple idea which wouldn't cost a lot to make and would also be easy for me and my group to do and I also believe if you're too ambitious it either doesn't get done or doesn't look as good as some of the more simple ideas. So a simple but scary location I would use is some sort of woods, and the basic story would be a phycho chasing after people and brutally killing them. The phycho would be masked (as most horror movie phycho's are, Mike Myers etc.) as this would make him more scary as you don't know what or who he is. After killing a few of the characters in the film it would come down to the final girl being smart and killing the phycho. I took ambition from films such as Halloween and A Nightmare On Elm Street. It will be a slasher however I'm not quite sure that the weapon my phycho will use will be a knife. I'd prefer if the film could start in a house and the teenagers then run off into the woods to escape the phycho however the narrative can always change and they could be doing something within the woods to start off with if we are unable to use a house near some woods. We could also use certain camera angles and editing techniques to make our horror film that bit better, such as changing the contrast within the shots to make everything look darker and more dinjy which will give a better effect on the audience. POV of the murders would also have an effect on the audience as they would see the killing of the teenagers first hand. As most horror movie characters have the 'Slutty' blonde character which is dumb and always killed first I would want to go against the horror norm and make the final girl the blonde character and make the more virginal characters die first just to mix it up a little and for it not to be the same as every other slasher film. There would be strictly girls in this film as I feel as if a the man in the group has to attempt to protect the girls and always injures or puts up a fight against the phycho and I want to the girls to feel completely helpless in the film to make the audience connect with the characters and feel sorry and emotional when they die as they have built up this bond with then through the cinema.