Working on plots

My group and I have been watching horror movies due to create some plots about horror movies for our opening film. After that we have made a questionnaire to decide which one is the best for the opening film.
The presentation below, includes five different titles and their respective plots.

Plot titles from Lucia Segui

Analysing opening credits.

I´m going to analyse the opening credit of Insidius, where I´m including the director, the starring, productor, production company, music, distribution, and actors.

This is the first shot of the opening to the horror film Insidious:

The credits are in red and capitals informing of the presentation and production. And fade in with an echoing ball where is the name of the director, James Wan. This is a typical convention of a horror film, as red connotes death and evil and the echoed text gives an eerie feel. The ball turn into the lamp of the boy´s room. It shows the boy sleeping. After that, appears the little, INSIDIOUS and in every room of the house the red writing with the authos of the music, distribution and actors. 

Main actors:

-Rose Byrne (as Renai Lambert).

-Lin Shaye (as Elise Rainier).

-Patric Wilson  (as Josh Lambert).  

-Ty Simpkins (as Dalton Lambert). 

Institutional conventions of commercial cinema

Opening credits

Opening credits are a functional as well as creative part of movies. Telling the audience who is in the movie, as well as other known talent such as writers, directors and composers, sets the stage for what’s to come. Check out an example here.

Many great movies had no opening credits, such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Citizen Kaneopens with only the title of the movie, saving all the credits for the end.

With the introduction of computer technology a new era of film openings began. In 1978, the first digitally generated title appeared in the movie “Superman” fascinated audience and boosted its viewings substantially as it was the first of its kind as before this it was seen as physically impossible to interact in a movie in this way. During the early 80’s these computer based technologies become widely available for designers which stimulated a surge in computer generated credits. This progressed through the 90’s as there was constant competition to shock the audience digitally. By the late 90’s it was extremely easy for designers and directors to visually portray their opening titles on the screen. This digital revolution enabled a flow of new techniques and stiles combined with a few classic ones. Most recently opening sequences have combined typography and space to create visually astounding pieces of films. This is especially importantly as today with the aid of 3D animation in cinema the aim is to create the most interesting and visually pleasing opening sequence to get the audience excited for the film.

Research on audience

Today I´m going to talk about why does and what type of people likes fiction movie, and my team and I are going to prepare a questionnaire to take that information.   

Create your own user feedback survey

Questionnaire results

Questionnaire summary:

From the questionnaire, I collected some useful information for the horror opening film that my team and I need to create. For example, by asking if they watch horror movies and why. 

Some things that I found of my target audience:

• Regularly watch films.
• The 35% of the audience have horror as their favourite genre and the 45% like them.
• More girls likes horror movies than males: the 35% of the people that were given the questionnaire where males and only 28% of those like horror movies. Girls where the 65%, and 71% had the horror movies as their favourite one.

As a result, I will pay attention to all these points for the opening film, and do it as best as we can.

Audience interview

Audience interview transcript:

1. How old are you? - I´m 18 or above.

2. How often do you watch movies? - Once or twice a week.

3. Do you like horror movies? - No specially.

4. What gender are you? - I´m male.

5. What is your favourite movie genre? - Science fiction.

6. Do you normally watch fiction movies at home or at cinema? - At home

7.What is your favourite type of fiction movie? - Sci-fi.

8.Why do you watch horror movies? - Enjoyment.

Thank you.

Audience Profile

If companies do not know about their audience, they cannot market successfully. I´m going to summarise what I understand by audience profile.

As my team and I are going to do the film opening about horror we need to know who is our audience, before starting marketing and promoting the opening, we need to focus on an audience profile so we don't waste time and effort with the wrong people. The audience profile is a way to determinate our ideal target market of spectator and can helps us to have goals in mind.

Audience

The audience is the people who watch the film. Different films will have different audiences. Not everybody will watch the same film. The audience who watches Gravity may be very different to the audience who watches Big Hero 6. Films can have a primary (main) audience, teens, for example, and a secondary audience like older people.

Horror research

Today, my team and I, have decided to take horror genre, for our film opening. Because of this I have made a research on the horror conventions and join all the information on the powerpoint below.

Horror research from Lucia Segui