Target Audience

We need to appeal to our Demographic and Pyschographic audience.
Demographic is the audiences social status determined by their career. For example, Manual Worker or Managerial role. They are all set in different 'social grades'.

We decided that C1, C2 and D were going to be our demographic audience as it is a low budget opening sequence so it would be easier to appeal to the lower social grades.

The psychographic side of the audience is a way of targeting needs, desires and aspirations of the person.Some psychographic groups are:

·   Mainstreamers: people who don’t like to be different but are conventional in their tastes and aspirations

·   Traditionalists: people who don’t like change and are very set in their ways

·   Hedonists: people who just want to have a good time

    Individualists: people who want to stand out from the crowd and like to think for themselves

·   Rebels: people who don’t want to conform but challenge the traditional way of doing things.

We are trying to appeal to Mainstreamers so we will use expected themes and narrations.

Film Openings - Genre Specific Analysis

The opening sequence from 'Dawn of the Dead' illustrate the genre of the film through the use of cinematography, editing and Mise-en-scene.

Here the black background gives the audience a sense of isolation from the world. The red text of the titles on the black background is associated with blood and gore and evil which tells the audience it's a horror.

Genre Moodboard

This is our Horror mood board. As you can see it has iconic horror characters such as clowns, zombies and masked men. The purpose of the mood board was to give a general idea of the genre and to get the creativity going.

First Ideas

Me, Dan and Zoe want to work in a horror. We will ask around e,g Facebook groups what genres people like. The target audience would be teenagers who like Horrors after asking around. The horror we make, will be set in modern day time and we want to use Tzvetan Todorov’s stage theory.

Dexter: Concept to Screen

Straight away I noticed that the title 'Dexter' had upside down letters in it but was still distinguishable. This gives this idea that Dexter is about understanding the deeper, darker meanings of things that appear normal on the surface of every day life. For example the letters were upside down, which looks normal at a first glance but when you look closely at the title it reveals this kind of upside down, messed up idea of Dexter because the letters are upside down giving this idea that his thoughts are upside down and that not everything in Dexter's world is how it appears to be like on the surface, but instead it is dark and mysterious. Also the text is white with this worn out look.  It tells me that Dexter could possibly be linked to science because it reminds me of the white lab coats, but because the letters are worn out, it gives the idea of corruption of Dexter's mind or profession.

The opening sequence shows close ups of every day morning routines. Because they are taken close up it gives them this sinister and mysterious effect. For example the close up of the shave. His hair is shown as rough and unfriendly because it sticks out at such awkward distorted angles. Again, this gives this idea of innocence on the surface of real life (he's shaving) but close up and underneath it's sinister and dangerous and linked to evil.

Juno - Analysis

Research: Key Conventions

One of the main points of the opening sequences is to introduce the genres, the cast and the crew, the key conventions and crucial information. We looked at the opening sequences of Kickass, Shifty, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, London to Brighton, Brick and Juno. 

For example Roland Barthe's Enigma code is used in Brick to make the audience ask questions to draw them in further by using this omniscient narration, it makes the viewers ask why is there a body on the floor? And through this we understand that Brick is dark and noir fillm.

 Exposition is used during the opening sequence of Kick Ass in the form of a voice over to give the viewers an idea of the main characters life, we understand that he a lonely teenager with an uneventful life, he lives with his dad, goes to school ect. Also ellipsis is used in the exposition, six months earlier, which gives the viewers an idea that it could be a flash back. This contrasts with this idea of a super hero sky which gives the idea that the film will be about action. Linking to Levi Strauss's Binary Opposites; Super Hero v Normal Human. Tzvetan Todorov’s  stage theory is also used but starts at the second stage; the problem is that he isn't popular and he is normal so he looks for a solution so he can become popular.

We have also learnt that we understand who the dominant characters are through the amount of screen time they have. For example in Shifty one guy has the majority of the screen time so we empathise with him the most and we want to like him and understand more about him.



 

Main Task

Our Main Task is to create the opening titles of a new fictional film to last two minutes.


Our dead lines are:

Research Deadline: 26/11/10

Photo-storyboard Deadline: 3/12/10

Filming Deadline: 07/01/11

Production Deadline: 28/01/11

Evaluation Deadline: 11/02/11