Planning- Filming Risk Assesment

Film Planning- Title (18-2)

From our research we learnt it was important to keep the title either 1 word or a short snappy phrase to ensure that it catches the audiences attention immediately. We now know our plot line so we started to think along the lines of something ominous to make the reader question the title and want to find out more.

As explained our plot will follow 4 characters which are all connected by the same date of birth, which essentially leads to the curse between them and the spirit that follows them. We saw something similar to this concept in our research of "1408". We found this worked really well because through the omission of words you create a feeling of mystery and we immediately wanted to find our what the title was.

This lead to our decision to title our film (18-2), which is the date of birth that ties our characters together. Further to this the mystery that we are creating is particularly important for our film because we have chosen the horror-thriller genre and decided to incoreperate the supernatural horror convention. Having a title like this adds another element of mystery and has the audience asking questions from the start. An important element we found when looking to engage the target demographic.

Planning- Settings and Locations

After our research into what makes a film scary we found that many people found that isolated locations were considered to be a scary convention for a thriller-horror film. This convention is something that was first identified in gothic novels when the era of gothic emerged in literature. We found that this was an important stereotypically scary convention to include as we was creating a thriller-horror film. Therefore we decided to incorporate an abandoned barn as seen above in the image as a main location for our film.

In great contrast to this we have also incorporated shots of our characters in our sixth form school environment. This is firstly because in the trailers we have watched such as 1408 they always start with a neutral setting where there are not any stereotypically "horror" related mise-en-scene. Due to our young target demographic as discussed a school setting was also important for us to use as it is a typical environment that they see everyday therefore creating a relaxed feel to our trailer before we introduce our fast paced montage which will incorporate the horror from our locations as seen from the barn location. This location due to how relatable it is for our audience also reinforces the verisimilitude we wanted to create for the audience. 

These two main locations compliment each other well because they are so contrasting that they allow for the audience to quickly identify between the scenes of suspense and other scenes which release the tension built by isolated settings like the barn.

Planning- Target Audience and Age Certificate

We have chosen a target audience of young adults and teenagers between the ages of 15-25. From our planning we know that films similar to our such as 1408 have been received well by the same target audience. This is the demographic we feel that we will be able to get a preferred reading from, allowing them to be consumed by the horror and mystery of our film. The four main characters in our film are all aged 17 which puts them in a nearly central position to our target market, as the market will be able to relate to a character of this age. As we are looking to appeal to both males and females who like horror/thriller films we chose to use 2 males and 2 females as it offers relation of gender for all of our target audience. On the other hand, demographics slightly older than 25 may also get a negotiated reading as although they aren't our target audience they may still be able to relate to the characters we are presenting. Although we are more likely to get an oppositional reading from these types of people outside our target audience as they simply won't understand exactly what we are presenting through the characters in our film. For example we use elements of modern technology such as communication through the use of social media and smart phones, an older generation may not understand this concept.

Once we have established our target audience it was important to ensure what age certificate we could give our film. After researching what can be in a 15 we found that the following could be included:

-Drug taking

-Sexual nudity

-strong violence

-discriminatory language or behaviour- racism and homophobia

-brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

-strong verbal references to sex

-frequent strong language

-portrayals of sexual activity

As our films narrative includes a group of young teenagers being hunted and haunted and eventually killed in some cases we felt this fell into the category of strong violence. Further to this there will be the occasional use of strong language and discriminatory language or behaviour. Due to these reasons, although not conforming to the other aspects, we would give our film a rating our 15. However this was not a problem for us as our target audience starts at 15, therefore there should be no issues for any of the target audience trying to watch the film.

We also looked at similar horror/thrillers that we had researched to find out what ratings they were given. We found that the recent releases of Krampus, Oujia and When a stranger calls were all given a 15 rating. As these are in the same genre of film as ours and will be targeting the same demographic we saw our age certificate as no problem.