Audience Feedback on Final Animatic.

Here is my final animatic for my opening sequence.





From my audience feedback, who were media students themselves, I have decided to make a few changes to my animatic. Most of the targets from my audience were to:

• add more sound effects, for example, having the sound of the phone ringing.
• have some diegetic sound

The changes I am going to make are to add a door slamming sound effect to one of my shots. Hopefully this will make it more clear what is going on.

My audience feedback was marked out of 70 which consisted of different types of categories, these were:

• range of shots types & editing transitions
• appropriate pace & content for genre
• position and order of titles
• introduction of characters
• introduction of storyline
• clearly an opening sequence

The highest marks that my audience gave me were for my range of shot types & editing transitions and my introduction of my storyline. I am pleased that they understood what my storyline was. The highest mark that I received from my audience feedback was 58/70. 

Questionnaire Analysis.

I completed my 12 questionnaires on 15-30 years olds of a random sample of men and women but most of the were male (8 male and 4 female), the reason why I have done more males is because I want my target audience to be mostly males.

My second question - 'What type of music would you expect in the opening sequence of a horror film?'

As you can see from my graph none of my participants chose upbeat. This is clear and obvious to the audience that in a horror film you would not get upbeat music. Most of my participants chose eerie. This is good because my music fits into the eerie sound so it fits into how I would want my target audience to view the music.

For question three - 'What mood do you think should be portrayed in the opening sequence?' eight of my participants answered tense/suspense and the rest of them answered scary. This shows me what mood I should try and create to make sure that it fits in with my target audience views. I think my be a little difficult as trying to make the mood like this could make it seem more like a trailer which I am going to have to try and avoid. 

This graph shows where people would expect to see the film titles.

From this graph you can see that the majority of people said that they thought the titles would go in between different shots (appearing on a black background). This is good, as I thought this would fit in better with horror conventions rather then over the top of shots which is a more social realism convention and I also don't have to change my ideas as my target audience had the same views as me.

Question six and seven - 'What age would you expect the main character in the horror to be?' and 'For a horror, would you expect the main character to be male or female?'.  For these questions 9 participants all answered that they thought it would be a young female character. The rest of the 3 participants answered that they thought it would be a middle age man. I think that this question might have confused that 3 participants as they could have thought I meant the main character was the killer, in that case it is more likely to me a middle aged man but for what I meant it doesn't fit in with what I am going to do. However, the majority of my participants answered what I hoped.

This graph shows where people think the opening sequence should be set.

As you can see, this question gave a variety of mixed views but most of the participants answered in a house. As I have decided to use this location it may be seen as slightly typical but as it fits in with what my target audience would expect I am going to keep it the same. 

This graph shows what people find most interesting about horror films.

As you can see from this graph most of my participants thought that not knowing what will happen most interesting about horrors. This shows that in my opening sequence I shouldn't give too much away and also make it something that they don't expect as that was the second highest. As it is only the opening sequence to much shouldn't be given away anyway so hopefully that will fit in with their views but for the 'something you don't expect' may be quite difficult as a lot of horror films can be seen as typical and it can be quite hard to make a horror film unique.

The Follower - The Script.

Storyboarding so far.

I have now just finished the whole of my storyboard and am now onto my animatic.

I found the whole storyboarding pretty easy but choosing what distribution titles I am going to have etc was quite difficult and at this moment in time I have still not decided. When I was half way through my storyboard a new idea popped into my head that I really wanted to do but I then thought it would be to difficult to actually achieve what I wanted and that the audience may find it difficult to understand what is going on so I stuck to my original idea.
All my times that I have predicted have fitted into my 2 minute time slot but most of the time they end up changing so I will have to see how that turns out.

The only thing that is worrying about my film is that it will end up looking to trailer like which is very difficult not to try and get all the main ideas into 2 minutes so I have tried to keep it as simple as I can. Altogether I have got 51 shots. Now that I am moving onto my animatic I have started to think about the music that I would like. I have found a piece on 'mp3unsigned.com' so all I need to do now is email the artist to see if it is ok with them that I use it, hopefully it will be!

Props.

The props in my opening are pretty important as in a typical horror film props are used to get across to the audience what genre it is and helps set the scene. Some of my props used will help raise enigma codes to the audience which will make them wanting to watch more to find out what is going to happen and foreshadow later events.

The first prop I have in my opening sequence is a mobile phone. This is a typical horror convention as when there is a tense moment happening, a mobile phone normally starts ringing to scare the audience and then set up enigma codes of who is ringing? I am going to have the phone ringing to make the audience wonder if it's the killer but then really it is only going to be her boyfriend.

Next is the most important prop in my opening sequence, the year book. This will set the scene for the audience and make it more clear that Ruby has a stalker and show the reason that he is obsessed with her (love). It also raises enigma codes of many different things. It will keep the audience left on the edges of their seat as they will not know who is the stalker etc.

Character Profile.

My main character in my opening sequence is going to be a typical young, blonde female girl. To portray this I have chosen to use Emily Nolan. She is the perfect age for my horror film and portrays the exact look I'm going for. Even thought Emily is not an actor I have used her before in my past experience of filming the music videos, she acted really well in that so I have decided to use her again. She has blonde hair and has an innocent look to her so it will be easy for her to get into a situation that she finds herself in danger, so using her will fit in really well with the typical conventions for a horror film. Emily will be playing the role of Ruby, a 17 year old girl. Emily is also this age so it will be perfect for her to act and it will be easier for her as she will not need to try and act a younger or older age. Ruby is the typical teenager, she likes to go out with her friends, she drinks when she does go out and likes to have fun. She has a boyfriend, which although he is not part of my opening sequence he is introduced. Education is pretty important to her but she can have her dumb moments and she also doesn't let it take over her life! Ruby doesn't pay attention to the reality of some things in her life and can be very clueless at times. She has good relationships with her teachers. She also has lots of friends at school and out of school. She comes from a middle class background, this is shown from her house in the opening sequence and the props that are used (television etc). Her relationship with her parents is the typical relationship, she gets on with them but they also have their arguments and as Ruby is an only child she can sometimes be spoilt. I think using Emily for this character will be very successful.

Why I Want To Conduct a Questionnaire.

I have decided to give out 10 questionnaires on people aged 15-30 consisting of mostly males to help me find out what they expect to see in the opening sequence of a horror film and get a basic understanding of what most people like about horrors and what they would like to see. Doing these questionnaires will hopefully help me make my final decisions about what I am going to do and help me change anything that needs to be changed to suit my audience.

I am going to try and give my questionnaires to a random sample of my age range of people that I don't know. This could be difficult as I will have to go somewhere like Town and try and get people to fill in my questionnaire. Once I get them all completed I am going to do a quantitative analysis of my findings to help me see it more clearly.

Here is my questionnaire.