Audience Theory

In our media lesson we have gone over audience theory and reminded ourselves of the key points. We have related these to our own trailer, for example according to the Blumler and Katz theory our audience would watch our trailer for escapism and entertainment. We looked at the Effects Model, and considered the impact our trailer and film may have on the audience. Due to the violent nature it may be considered to promote violence to the people who watch it, which is something we are trying to control by having a 15 age rating on the film. This being said, the Blumler and Katz theory implies that as humans it is in our nature to be violent, and by watching films such as ours we satisfy our need for it. In this way, our trailer influencing our audience would not be an issue.

Voiceover

We decided we needed to change the beginning of our trailer, as when editing the middle of our trailer has ended up being short scenes and we needed a variety. We decided to feed off the idea of this being a 'teen' horror film, as the song choice has made this clear. We looked at some comedy trailers and classic teen film trailers. A lot of them featured voiceovers, so we decided to use this convention. We took inspiration from the Mean Girls trailer, and decided we would introduce each of the main characters so there is a stronger focus on them.

'This is Victoria, she's number one in our class, head of the prom committee and captain of the  netball team - your classic over achiever'  'Megan - she's the gossip of the group- tell her anything and everyone will know by lunchtime' 'Ellie - if she wasn't my friend I would be scared of her' 'This is Emily taking narcissism to a whole new level, yet again' 'My best friend, Lauren- living up to the blonde stereotype' 'And my names Rosie' We were inseparable, until summer last year when everything changed.

Production Schedule Changes

As the filming as progressed, many changes have had to been made. Our actors have changed, and dates have been brought forward and pushed back. As well as this, our setting has changes, so we have had to budget in time to shots of settings and then film the rest inside other places. This is our production schedule which is annotated and has notes on as things have changed, as well as costumes and props which will be necessary for filming that day.

Magazine Front Cover Research

I have started looking at film magazines which are likely to feature my horror film, so that I can begin producing my own front cover. Ideally, the magazine would be mainstream as this is the target audience I am trying to reach. When researching, I found Empire magazine to be the most popular film magazine, while Film magazine also appeared frequently. The covers of both magazines appear to be quite dark and serious, featuring a main character from a film. Whilst the dark aspect of the front covers appears to fit in with my genre, there are not many examples of horror films being featured on them. Instead, they mainly have action films such as The Avengers and James Bond. When major films come out, such as The Hobbit or Harry Potter, Empire magazine does a complete feature on them with no other films featured. This is the style of magazine front cover I want to do, so Empire magazine will be the best one of me to recreate. 

Trailer Music

As our editing is coming along, we have had to fit sound to the trailer. We have taken inspiration from 'The Gallows', a film with a similar teen target audience. In this trailer the footage is fast paced - like our own - and as creepy, typical horror music would not fit here they have used a remix of 'Smells like Teen Spirit', a song which meet their stereotypical teen audience. We have similarly decided to choose a recognisable but slowed down song, and have chosen 'Don't You (Forget About Me)', iconic to The Breakfast Club. This homage to a classic teen film is exciting for the audience and also adds a creepier tone to the trailer itself as the song is not how it usually would sound, setting the audience on edge. It is a cover, so regarding copyright we have tried to contact the person who has uploaded the cover to the internet to get his permission to use it.

Filming Progress

Our filming has progressed hugely as we have began to figure out ways to overcome our biggest problems. One issue which hindered our filming massively was featuring people who worked, and therefore actors often had conflicting schedules. To fix this problem, we have changed the people in the trailer and are using younger actors who do not work and therefore are more available. Another issue was our location, which looked very effective but was not weather resistant and difficult to get all the equipment to. We have decided instead to use the schools drama studio, with some shots of outside the location to give the appearance the characters are inside when they are not. Due to these changes, we have been able to get footage much easier and have began editing it to fit together.

Little White Lies Magazine

Little White Lies is a London-based film magazine which is distributed internationally by TCOLondon since 2005. It began when lifestyle magazine 'Adrenalin' went bankrupt, and a group of people decided to turn Danny Miller's (a student) degree project into a magazine. The Guardian referred to it as 'the best designed magazine on the shelf'. The publishers (Faber and Faber) also released a book 'What I Love About Movies' which is a collection of responses from various people involved in the industry such as Quentin Tarantino and Ryan Gosling when asked what their favourite thing about films is. The company is fully functioning, with a professional website, instagram page, twitter, youtube and facebook account and an option to subscribe for £29. It is a bi-monthly publication and has a readership of 45,000. The magazine was described as being 'at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement'.
This magazine is much more niche and appeals to an artistic demographic rather than a mainstream one. It features a print / sketch of the main actor featured, and sometimes the title of the film like this one does. This particular magazine front cover features Brad Pitt, however there are a whole host of actors some of who are not as famous or successful as Brad Pitt. There are no taglines or smaller stories on the front cover, which breaks convention of a magazine. There is also no mention of any other film which is inside which again breaks convention of a film magazine, which generally have as many films as possible on the front to attract a large audience. On all the editions there is a white circle at the top with the title and tagline in them, which makes it identifiable to a knowing audience. Within the magazine there are three sections - the lead review, a series of feature articles and a review section.