Story Board Research

Before creating a story board for our film opening we researched into different types of story boards artists and looked at some story boards by directors. I found this youtube video of the film Taxi Driver which was directed by Martin Scorsese, the video includes Scorsese's storyboards with every shot of the film, this showed us how a story boards transforms into camera shots.

Story Boards so far 

These are my groups story boards so far, these story boards are for the opening scene of the film, that involve a victim coming to the two killers home and later being attacked. 

Questionnaire

Here is a recorded questionnaire and the questionnaire we created and filmed, we asked our volunteers about the horror genre and how they felt about the genre, we asked specific questions about what they liked or disliked about the genre and why, we also asked them about our film and if the title itself enticed them to watch the film, this was because the title of a film has to be strong and attention catching to audiences.

Research into target audience and production development and advertising

Playback
Playback is a film that is based on similar themes of my groups film. It is a horror film based on a killer who video taped the death of his own family and now his spirit poses the video tapes. Who ever watches these videos become possessed by this spirit and again begins the murders via video. The theme of home movie killings is similar to the ideas of my groups film and this makes the film is a good example for our audience research. 

This film is a new make, and has recently come out in the USA and to later be released in other countries. The film in the USA has been rated R, a rating which means the age seventeen and over unless accompanied by an adult. The film was directed by Michael A. Nickles, he has only directed one other horror based film XII. He wrote and directed both Playback and XII. The film was produced by three production companies, Fontenay Films, Bennett-robbins productions, and Emmett/Furla Films. Bennett-robins is an independent film company and has worked previously on crime films.


However because this is a recent film and the companies are new finding information about the film, how they distributed it and how they researched into their target audience. 

Research into target audience and production development and advertising.

To research into the horror genre I used the Internet and came across a blog by Joshua Reeves, he looked at the horror film genre and discovered that 48% of horror film lovers are18-24, however there isn't a prominent difference between sex. If this age group was ignored when producing and advertising a horror film the film would lose a massive amount of revenue, finding your target audience and advertising the film to suit your target audience is where the most money would come from. Although other ages could see the film this would not recover the loss of revenue from ignoring the target audience. Knowing your target audience allows you to push the themes of your film, if you are producing a horror film and know your target audience is between the ages of 18-24 you know that you can add adult themes to your film and push the boundaries of horror, using gory killings and frightening effects. 

Unit 1: Foundation Portfolio - Two Minute Film Opening

The genre of our film opening is horror, we have based the film opening around three different films. We have taken ideas from Paranormal Activity, Saw, and My Switchblade Romance. All these films are horror themed but we based our idea around these three films because they are unique in individual way. Paranormal Activity is a paranormal film that the characters within the film record the film footage themselves, Saw is a film that features scenes of gore and torture, and My Switchblade Romance features themes of mental instability.

We have decided that our film will be from the killers point of view, through the use of 'home videos'. The audience will see the film from the killer's viewpoint of what they have recorded, this idea was taken from the way Paranormal Activity was filmed. Our film will be about two killers (Me and Natalie) who lure people into our home then film how they are tortured and killed, this theme was based from Saw. We have taken the theme of mentally instability from My Switchblade Romance. 

We will not have a full dialogue script, as our opening will be made up by mostly graphic images, and music, however, we will have some scripted dialogue but the rest will be improvisations. Because we will not have a script we will use story boards to create our opening scenes visually. We have researched into Jim Cornish a world renowned story board artist, and from this we can see how detailed our story boards will have to be and how we will have to visually create our shots in the story boards. The scripted dialogue will come into play in the opening credits, it will involve a recorded interview of the two characters who are being interviewed in a mental health clinic, the two characters are having different conversation but what they say mimic eachother and when the two are played in cut sequences switching between the two interviews it will sound as if the two sisters are having a conversation with eachother. During these interviews the films credits will begin, and after this the opening of the film will begin. 

From this story board by Jim Cornish you can clearly see the way in which it has been drawn displays the way in which the camera should shoot the scene.