Questionnaire summary

The majority of people that answered our questionnaire were aged between 18-21. This is mostly due to the fact we handed most of our questionnaires out around college. More females answered our questionnaire with 60 percent being female. In total we handed out 35 questionnaires.

What was good for us was the fact that horror was the most preferred film on the questionnaire. As our film is going to be a horror that is good with helping us decide what audiences want from a horror film. People said what they enjoy most about horrors is the scary and horrific scenes, also the quick camera shots that make the audience jump. This was surprising finding that horror was the favourite film people chose in our questionnaire, this is because 60 percent of the people who did the questionnaire were female so we thought romantic comedy would be the most popular.

We asked people if they preferred watching horror films at home or in the cinema and the findings were very close with only a few more people saying cinema. The characters they expected to see were innocent victims, big, scary masked men and zombies etc.

Certificate 18 films

Certificates are issued by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). In their opinion the film, video or game should not be seen or purchased by a person under 18 years old. The 18 certificate was only created in 1982. For a film to be classified as an 18 in will contain some of the following; hard drug use, supernatural horror, explicit sex, sadistic violence and sexual violence.

Until recently sexual violence and sadistic violence were not even issued a certificate and were seen as not acceptable. According to the BBFC website no drugs promotion is tolerated, only films showing effects of drug misuse are given a classification. The use of bad language in films depends on the language being used; mild bad language could be given a certificate 15 but frequent bad language will be classified as an 18.

Natural nudity is allowed for all classification levels, with sexual content resulting in more restrictive classifications.

If the theme to the film is racial, sexual, paedophilia, drugs or violence it may be classified as a 15 but in most cases will be given certificate 18.

Business data for the Horror genre

In 2008 28 horror films were released, bringing in a gross box office take in of 23.4 million. The top performer was Saw V. The horror genre had 126 sites at widest point of release from 28 films, only 5 per cent of films released in 2008 were horror though. Horror films are classified as "15" or "18". The majority of films released in 2008 were certificate "15", 193/527; there were only 51 "18's" released. Certificate "18" films have been consistently the lowest earner, with Sweeney Todd being the best performer of 2008.

Continuity piece

Definitions


Camera Shots


Extreme close up - can show the expression/emotion of the character.


Close up - where the subject fills the frame. Shows face.

Medium close up - chest upwards - more of their physique/costume.


Medium shot - waist upwards - see their costume and some emotions.

Medium long shot - where the subject and setting are in equal proportion. Normally knee upwards.

Long shot - see whole person and some setting.

Establishing shot - setting fills the frame - usually used to set the scene.

High angle shot - shows power of person.

Low angle shot - person is vulnerable - looking up at someone.

Aerial shot - birds eye view - usually a helicopter.

Crane shot - camera positioned on a crane - gives a sweeping movement to the shot.

Point of view shot - through subjects eyes.

Wide shot - show a subject within an environment.

Two shot - shot that shows two people within a proximity.

Pans - camera moving left to right or right to left.

Tilts - camera moving floor to sky or sky to floor.


Hand held - camera work gives a sense of uneasiness.

Forward tracking - moving forward

Reverse tracking - moving backwards




180 degree rule - this is a guideline used in film making that states two characters in the same scene shoulds always have the same right/left relationship to each other. An imaginery axis is drawn between the two characters that shouldn't be crossed.


Match on action - a technique used that is a cut that connects two different views of the same action at the same moment in the movement. By carefully matching the movement across the two shots, it seems that the motion continues uninterrupted. For a real match on action, the action should begin in the first shot and end in the second shot.

Personal analysis of my continuity piece


I am in a group of three, consisting of Tom, Ismail and myself. Our continuity piece of coursework was to produce a short clip showing we understood some basic rules of filming and using cameras. These were;

• Being able to set up the tripod and the camera.
• Use different types of camera angles including shot reverse shot.
• Not to break the 180 degree rule.
• To show a match on action in our clip.

Ismail worked as the director and was in charge of the camera as he has more experience than me and Tom as he has already completed a year of media. Me and Tom were the actors and concentrated on how we were going to show the rules of filming in our clip. We did this by producing a storyboard which can be seen on another post in this blog.

We made some mistakes at the start as when we were recording seperate clips we were pausing the camera to watch the clip back. This was affecting the recording as when we then started to record another scene, all the scenes were getting jumbled up and being lost. We came to realise this problem though and conquered it by recording our entire clip without playing anything back. This cost us valuable time though and next time we will learn from this mistake as we have deadlines and may be short on time. Our clip showed we have a good knowledge of a wide range of camera shots and they were used effectively in our short narrative. We also filmed our clip without breaking the 180 degree rule and constructed our match on action perfectly so we are pleased with our performance.

We did most of our filming in an empty classroom so there was no problem with people getting in the way of the camera. Overall we as a team are happy with our piece of coursework and are confident of getting positive feedback off our teacher and fellow classmates.

My groups questionnaire

1. How old are you?


2. What gender are you?


3. What is your favourite genre out of horror, thriller and romantic comedy?


4. What do you enjoy about this genre?


5. Do you enjoy horror movies?


6. What do you enjoy about horror movies?


7. What is your favourite horror sub genre?


8. Where do you usually watch horror movies, cinema or home?


9. What type of characters do you expect to see in a horror movie?