Update 15-12-10

We as a group decided to do more research on religious thriller/horror looking towards the conventions within the theatrical posters and how we can either emand it towards our own poster or follow the similar ones that shows repetition for the denotations even if it conveys different connotations.


Stigmata released in 1999

In this film poster we see that the main colours are white and red, which seems to be a continuing convention for horror. The darker the better would be a plausible answer to why richer tones like maroon are used and then white is there to strike out what important information you want the audience to pay attention to. In this case that would be the title, tag line and release date, all essential components to what makes an successful horror poster.
There is also a connotation in this image combined with the tagline 'The message is here' with the person being crucified looking up towards the text, this is extremely clever and to be taken into much consideration when making the final draft of that anchillary text.

Update 22-11-10 (Behind the scenes)

All the images below were taken from our filming days which was set in the chapel in our college.




Filming in our media classroom using the blue screen and applying the makeup for the gruesome scene

Research Update 15-11-10 (Vampire - Sub genre)

Monster is a name commonly given to films that center around the struggle between human beings and one or more monsters. While there is no specific academic genre classification of that name, the term is usually applied to films sometimes labeled as horror, fantasy, or science fiction films.

These films involve fictional creatures, but in most cases they are over-sized monsters, despite its beginnings with adaptations

of horror folklore and literature. In Japanese cinema, such monsters are referred to as Kaiju.

Typically, monsters in films differ from more traditional antagonists in that many exist due to circumstances beyond their control; their actions not entirely based on choice, potentially making them objects of empathy to film viewers.

30 Days of Night is about a town in Alaska being invaded by vampires as there will be no sun and complete darkness for 30 days.

Another vampire film that was popular was Dracula 2000,

Research Update 13-11-10 (Psychological - Sub genre)

Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror fiction that relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot Psychological horror derive their effects from gore and violence, and from the sub-genre of horror of personality, in which the object of horror does not look like a monstrous other, but rather a normal human being, whose horrific identity is often not revealed until well into the work, or even at the very end.

An example of a psychological horror is The unborn, directed by David S Goyer and released in January 2009.





Another example of psychological horror is 'The village' directed by M. Night Shyamalan, released in July 2004.

Research Update 9-11-10 (Comedy - Sub genre)

Comedy horror, also known as horror comedy, is a literacy and film genre, combining elements of comedy and horror fiction. The comedy horror genre almost always inevitably crosses over with the black comedy genre; and in some respects could be considered a subset of it.

As we all well know comedy is a popular demand from any generation with a purpose to provide humour especially in television and film. Horror is what unsettles the viewers bringing forth emotions of fear and disgust.

This enables us when we come across this sub genre to be intrigued in how it will be made possible to achieve this goal of laughter and fear.



Shaun of the dead is a popular romantic comedy horror film, directed by Edgar Wright and releashed in 2004. The trailer displays to the viewers that it contains the conventions of an comedy horror with the endless humour coming from actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost along with the gory zombies that appear throughout with missing limbs and disfigured faces.





Another example of a comedy horror is Lesbian vampire killers, a british film that was releashed in 2009 and directed by Phil Claydon.

Research Update 8-11-10 (Thriller - Sub genre)

Thriller is a genre of literature, film and television that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements. There are several primary sub genres of thriller that are used frequently within films, they are; mystery, crime and psychological.

It is mostly characterised by an atmosphere of violence, crime and murder by showing society as dark, corrupt and dangerous, though they often feature a happy ending in which the villains are killed or arrested, Evidently being a typical convention for all type of thriller films.

Religious Thrillers are of a big relevance to our group as that it conveys with the religious theme and thriller genre we shall use for our film.

An exceedingly popular religious thriller is 'Devils Advocate' directed by Taylor Hackford, released in 1997.

In this trailer, In contains some conventions for the thriller sub genre. There is a lot of suspense and tension within the main characters dialogue that leave the audience clueless and eager to know more. We get a hint of corruption with the characters in a few of the shots and quite a bit of distubring words about God, leading to an eerie sense of direction to satan being more favourable in this film.

Research Update 4-11-10 (Slasher - Sub genre)

Slasher is an subgenre from horror films, usually it involves a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a very graphic and violent manner using cutting tool, hence the name slasher. These such as a chainsaw, Although the term "slasher" may be used as a generic term for any horror movie involving graphic acts of murder, the slasher as a genre has its own set of characteristics which tells it apart from sub genres.

This is the official trailer for Scream, directed by Wes Craven (a known horror director) it was released in 1996 and then after had several sequels going up to 3 with a new upcoming scream 4 out in april 2011. In this trailer we can see it holds conventional attributes for the slasher theme, we have the psychological killer that eventually gets unmasked at the end, followed up by the victims that are stabbed throughout the film and a main character (Cindy) survives the bloodshed to venture into the sequels.



Another known and popular slasher film is Halloween directed by John Carpenter which was releashed in 1978 followed by several sequels.





This trailer also follows the typical conventions of the slasher subgenre. We have the psychological killer (Michael Myers) that isn't unmasked but is discovered by the end of the film.

Film Poster Draft 4

Magazine Cover Draft with all annotations.

Film Poster Draft 3

Magazine Cover Draft with all annotations.

Film Poster Draft 2

Magazine Cover Draft With all annotations.

Film Poster Draft 1

Magazine Cover Draft With all annotations.

Magazine Cover Draft 3

Magazine Cover Draft 2

This is the design that we chose to go with for our magazine cover.

Magazine Cover Draft 1

Update 1-11-10

We done excessive research on film magazines, analysing the conventions that can be similar within several magazines or individual ones that break out of the mundane qualities.

In the empire magazine cover first off you can see that the masthead appears to be behind the actor and for the total film cover it is on top of the actor. These are both very common conventions and whether either of them is used depends on what idea people are going for. We as a group decided we want to follow the convention of the masthead behind the actor because it doesn't overtake the image overall but has importance and is still visable for people to see. The coverlines are something that is most prominent for a magazine cover. It needs to be able to attract the audience with it's use of promotion for other films or what is offered to possibly intrigue them like reviews, exclusive interview etc... The conventions for the coverlines are different to each other in these covers. Empire mag has all coverlines on the left side of the cover whilst Total film has it on both sides to seem as though it is rounds the image, we are more elicited to going again with what Empire has done because of the focus on one said of the image whereas we can place other information on the other side like the title and invitation's to get free items.

Analysing the audience research

For this questionnaire, we decided that it would be good to ask 40 individuals to make it fair along with having 20 males and 20 females answer these questions, evidently giving us a good balance and not having favouritism. Regarding to race, it was shared out between different races so it wouldn't become bias.

In question 1, it starts off with gender which again shows up that it was equally shared amongst girls and boys.

Question 2, highlights that the age range who participated the most were 17-18 years old with a few 15-16 and 19-20 years old also. This enables us to get a better understanding towards the common age in which young adults begin to have access within cinemas and DVD rentals to films rated 18.

Question 3, Allows us to know that our audience enjoys special effects which is expected from young adults in this day and age, we have taken this into consideration that young people like more exaggerated films in which alot of action happens and gets these effects running rapid throughout things, which is an interesting recollection to take on board when it comes to editing our footage.

Question 4, has a good correlation in the most picked answer. Film in colour was picked most which understanding as everything in this day is in colour and it becomes harder for people to like more into the black and white era. However they was a vary of people whom picked both meaning that they have enjoyment in which ever contrast is being given into a film.

Question 5, This had the most varied answers within the whole questionnaire where every answer was picked at least once, the favourited answers for the horror sub-genre was comedy and thriller, Religious thriller horror is what our group came up with as it connects well with our story line and allows us to include many things which we have uncovered that the audience likes e.g. suspense, tension and mystery along with blood and gore.

Question 6, The length of our trailer is very important as we wouldn't want to cut it off too short not giving the audience enough to be excited about or having it to long giving away too much and boring them. The overall result was 30-40 seconds long in length, which we agreed is acceptable.

Question 7, We found that the majority of people want to see this trailer after 9pm which works within our favour as it wouldn't breach any codes for the watershed, even though we haven't to a final decision to what our rating for this film will be.

Question 8, people believed that swearing in horrors isn't necessary which could possibly be inflicted by background, religious beliefs etc.

Question 9, The male villian in a horror was picked more over a female by the participants possibly because of the use of males in todays society as the bad guys whether in horror or action or sci-fi, relatively women are unfortunately seen as weak and the audience may view a female being a villain not as scary or effective as a man would.

Question 10, The internet was picked highly above all others as the source that gets people alerted for new up and coming films, we can use this to our advantage by advertising on facebook, twitter and any other social networking sites that will exploit our film to the public.

Question 11, 25 people chose 'yes' for having background music, which informs us as a group when editing to incorperate this in the trailer appealing to our target audience.

Question 12, Colours in films and posters are an important factor to observe on. When doing horror the common colours that repeately show up is red and black. From this knowledge it wasn't surprising finding out that most favourable one to use within our film poster was red and black being the 2nd favourite. Dark colours embrace the eerie feelings for horror films which will make it more effective and enjoyable by our audience.

Question 13, In most teaser trailers there is an extensive use of sound effects which grabs the audiences attention and keeps this intrigued to what will happen throughout the rest of the film. We as a group decided that we will go with what the audience has demanded and put several effects in our overall trailer; this may include screams, a sound of a drill and many others that we might come across.

Question 14, The majority of people who done our questionnaire go to the cinema. This allows us to know that if advertisement were needed to be done, the cinema would be an effective way to do it. It connects to the previous question about the best way to be alerted about a film.

Question 15, Again to the previous question it helps us when coming to the advertisement aspects of producing a film. However it narrows it done to whether it would be worth alerting cinemas on the new film and evidently have no-one come frequently within the week to actually see it.

Question 16, Dialogue in teaser trailers vary and we thought that it would be a good idea to get information from our audience to whether it is helps them understand what is going on in scenes. Just as we expected, we discovered people want dialogue to be included so we will try and get some in our trailer.

Question 17, For our film magazine we took this response confrming that actors who are known from the film being on a cover will attract an audience into purchasing it, when discussing the design we will take that into consideration whilst doing the drafts.

Question 18, From the response of this question we see that people chose £1.50-£2 however that would hardly be possible because of the costs in producing so we have decided to make it from a reasonable amount of £3+

Question 19, Props in horrors are a usual convention which is used throughout different type of horror sub-genres. It pleases the group to know that our audience is prone to the use as we intend to use them in our trailer.

Lastly, Question 20 The more blood is seen to make a horror more effective according to our audience but of course we need to make sure that if we decide to take the route of alot of blood in our shots that it doesnt conflict with other subgenres of horror e.g. splatter , other than the one we have already posititioned ourselves into (Thriller)

Question 20 - Audience Research

Question 19 - Audience Research

Question 18 - Audience Research

Question 17 - Audience Research

Question 16 - Audience Research

Question 15 - Audience Research

Question 14 - Audience Research

Question 13 - Audience Research

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Question 6 - Audience Research