My pre-production work is located on my ‘Final Film’ page.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=CVTOtmjaGzTYMvjDrc_2bZ2g_3d_3d

1)      Are you male or female?

Male – 72.7%

Female – 27.3%

Is important when discussing the type of genre they choose. This relates to the type  of audience which might be attracted to certain genres. When looking at further results in my survey, I can look at what appeals most to a mainly male audience, and think about whether they would come under my target audience.

2)      How old are you?

15-21 – 60%

22-29 – 20%

30-37 – 10%

38+ – 10%

The age range mainly includes a younger audience so the results cannot be    generalised for everyone because the people who took the survey aren’t equally distributed in age. However, some of the older audience are included which means is more reliable than if the survey was only filled out by people under 21. Also, I can use this to my advantage to find out what an audience of the majority being younger prefer in films and particularly whether they would be interested in the one I will produce.

3)      What genre of film do you prefer?

Comedy – 60%

Thriller/Horror – 50%

Sci-fi – 20%

Action/Adventure – 60%

Romantic Comedy – 30%

Romance – 10%

Crime/Mystery – 30%

Drama -10%

Historical – 20%

Supernatural – 10%

Experimental – 30%

The most appealing genres appear to be Action/Adventure, Comedy and     Thriller/Horror. However Crime/Mystery, Experimental and Romantic Comedy are popular too. This means that a male majority audience will prefer suspense and action or something comical, compared to a purely romance or supernatural. This is important as it means that a mainly younger age audience prefers the genre of my film (Thriller/Mystery) meaning that they are important when concluding who my  target audience is. Also, my film will contain some experimental elements, and knowing that 30% of the people who took part in the survey are interested in this genre reassures me that it may still appeal to the wider audience.

4)      How do you mainly watch films?

Going to the cinema – 33.3%

Through the internet – 11.1%

Watching television – 22.2%

DVD/VCR – 77.8%

This shows that most of the people questioned watch films at home, with only a third attending the cinema most commonly. This means that the film is still going to have to be capturing without using all the effects possible in cinema. This implies that we need to make our film visually interesting so it still has an impact on the audience.

5)      Who do you mainly watch films with?

Family members – 30%

Group of friends – 20%

One or two friends/your partner – 70%

On your own – 20%

Because the results show that people usually watch films with other people, we need to take this into consideration. Therefore, when making a film, we will have to be able to attract the whole audience and keep them entertained throughout so that they maintain to watch the film, even when with friends. It’s also important to appeal to all family members and a variety of different audiences so that everyone feels involved.

6)      What attracts you to watch a film?

Reviews and ratings – 20%

Heard from others that it is good – 40%

The good actors in it – 50%

It’s your favourite genre – 40%

A good director – 30%

Description/Advertising – 50%

To socialise – 10%

The most important factors seem to be the actors, description (from either reviews or other people) and genre. This means it’s essential to pick a genre which will appeal to a large audience and to cast actors which give a realistic performance. Results previously show that Thriller/Mystery genre would be popular so I know that a large amount of people will enjoy it. Also, we will aim to cast the best actors possible, so that they give a high quality performance, so that our audience will enjoy the film as much as possible.

7)      What is your favourite film?

The dark knight, V for Vendetta, The Notebook, V for Vendetta, Platoon, The  Hangover, Fight Club, Dodgeball and more.

Most of these films have a tense atmosphere to them, with psychological inclusion   and action or thriller genres, although there is obviously a comedy appeal too. This   shows that an audience containing mostly men are more likely to enjoy a film of these genre types. Again, this concludes that because our film is Thriller/Mystery,    then it will appeal to men as they prefer films of this genre, shown from the list above.

8)      Why did you like it?

Main answers included: good story, suspense, action, music, script, memorable,  dramatic, impact, style and genre.

This gives us an insight into what people view a good film as and what it should include to be liked by this type of audience. Using this list, we can make sure our film contains all of these elements to a good standard so that it really appeals to our target audience and has a unique selling point as well.

Initially we thought of filming a mother in a hospital, who has just given birth. She was to wake up from resting, in a hospital bed and looks to her side to see her child. However, the baby wasn’t there. When she asks the nurses they have to recognition of a child ever existing.

But we slowly realised that this would be very hard to film. The setting would be very difficult to manage and the mise en scene would be very hard to organise and collect, seeing as we would have to gather all the hospital equipment together.

Also, from the results of our questionnaire, we see that this type of genre (thriller/crime/mystery) attracts a male audience and we felt that having a woman as the main character in this genre of film would not appeal to a male audience as they would not be able to relate themselves to the mother.

However, we still liked the idea of something psychological or mysterious, so we kept this genre in mind for our film. The next idea we had was a car crash. We wanted to try and use interesting shots and do something different, so we thought that this was a good idea.

We then introduced a father and son into the scene. This solved our problem of not attracting a male audience, as the main character is a father figure, so men could relate to this. Also, it still appeals to a female audience because the actions of the father are quite nurturing; as he is trying to take care of his son. We then went back to the initial idea and thought about how we could include a sense of mystery into this opening.

Finally we created the idea of the father waking up from the crash and the son not being there, walking away from him, or being taken from him. We then concluded on the idea of the son being taken away from the father and into the woods. This really adds a sense of mystery to the film opening and the kidnapping of the son will add a frightening atmosphere as well, which would appeal to our target audience.

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But, some elements of the film were changed between initial pre-production and final pre-production. Firstly, we changed the characters in the film. Instead of a son and father being inside the car, we decided to involve more of a family, so that the film could be more relatable. Also, this gives us a chance to represent a wider range of social groups so that the film will appeal to all of the people in our target audience. Another smaller reason for doing this was that finding an actress to play the mother character proved to be a lot easier than maintaining commitment from the actor of the father, therefore it gave us more flexibilty when filming as the actress was available more often.

The second thing that we removed from the film idea is the flashbacks. We felt that as a film opening the flashbacks weren’t entirely neccessary and therefore we decided not to shoot them so that we could capture more visually interesting shots which would capture the audience’s attention more effectively. This also meant that there was no dialogue in the film, I think this will this prove to be effective in screening the film as the audience will become more captured in the action and the visual images rather than a script, which will help to create a more interesting film.

Lastly, we talked in detail about the ambiguity of the antagonists and the kidnapping, and we felt that it would be more interesting to only show the audience a slight insight to the kidnapping, rather than including shots of the kidnappers taking the boy out of the car and into the woods. We felt this would attract the audience more, as the narrative would become more unclear so the audience would want to continue watching as the story is revealed. Also, this meant that we could hide the antagonists’ identity so the film would become a hidden mystery which would again attract the audience to a greater degree.

1) A mother is driving her two sons home; the younger child, who is asleep in the back of the car, and his older brother. We see shots of the outside of the car, with light and shadows reflecting off of it, and close ups of the younger boy asleep.

2) Many close ups of the other characters appear, with added shots of the road to express progression and a journey, leading the family towards the antagonists.

3) The titles of the film appear, as the shots (including point of view shots) continue.

4) A car turns out into the road and the mother cannot stop in time, as she briefly turns around, which leads to the crash. At this point, the shot shows only black with sound of the crash, representing the blackout of the main character (the older brother).

5) Distant shots then show the kidnappers dragging the young boy through the woods, which reveals the kidnapping. The boy struggles to escape, but is finally killed by one of the antagonists.

6) The location switches back to the crashed car, and the audience sees older brother waking up in the car. A point of view shot shows that the mother is dead in the car seat, and as the camera turns, it shows the empty backseat.

7) The older brother gets out of the car, confused and frightened. The title of the film then appears.

Also, because of the music and rise in tension as the narrative progresses, we felt that a script would take away from this suspence and destroy the mood and tone we are trying to create for our film.

Furthermore, we felt that there was nowhere in the film opening that would work well with a script, as a use of dialogue never seems appropriate to add at any time. Instead, we thought it would be more effective to show a characters feelings through body language (shown through midshots) and facial expressions (shown through close ups). This means that the audience can still empathise towards characters, without having to include the disturbance of a script.