Planned locations

We need to make sure that our location is the right place to film our opening and that it has the right atmosphere. If we don't get this right then our film opening wont have the effect that we want it to have 'Zombie/Thriller/Horror'. We were thinking of using the school because it will be easier to film and there will be no one around when we film so it will give us the look of it being deserted and creepy. We also were thinking of using a field in coates to film our opening because Bret had this idea that we could film the first half of the film opening at the scene of the school and when our main character comes out of some trees then it can switch to the coates field so when our main character comes out of the trees she is in an even bigger deserted area which give a more scary and creepy effect. We would have to film when it looks sort of dark but not pitch black dark because we don't want to be filming in pitch black darkness when we wont be able to see, we were thinking of filming then because it will give the film opening a more scary feel to it and it would be better to show zombies following and stalking our main character. We took still shots of the locations so you can see were we are talking about. 

This first shot is of the gates near the science block in our school. We chose to take a picture of the gates half open because we were thinking that we were going to probably start the whole film opening from this point when our main character is walking his/her dog we will get a match-on-action shot from when him/her is walking from the right or left side of the gate through the gate and then the camera will change to show a different scene. We chose to pick these gates because it looks like your walking into a park where you would walk your dog but also it looks slightly creepy and eerie because all you can see is the grass path going down the middle and trees all around it. You can hardly see the building behind the trees so we thought the audience wont see it so they would think the area was an abandoned park. We are going to have a sign that has been half broken off and that is attached by one corner saying something like 'No Trespassers'. It will be broken and decayed so you cant read it properly so our main character wont know what trouble he/she is in. 

The second shot is of trees and a bush that is past the gate next to the science block at our school. We took this photo to show what the area will be like where we will be filming. We were thinking that our main character could walk through the trees and the bush with her/his dog on her own when it was dark to give the opening the effect of being creepy and scary because he/she is on her own walking her/his dog. 

These two images show more trees that look quite creepy and that will give our film opening more of the thriller effects that we are going to hopefully achieve when filming. They will look more creepy if we filmed it at night when it will be dark.

This picture shows Reece from the back.This shows what type of camera angles and shots that we will be using as we will be filming our main character from the back and from the side to show a match-on-action shot which will also be using the 180 degree rule. 

This image shows a rotten stool. We took a picture of this because it shows that the area is abandoned and that no one has been there for ages. This gives the effect that the area is creepy and has an eerie feel to it and you wouldn't really want to go here on your own with a dog which is ironic because this is exactly what we are going to do. 

These two pictures are of me and Bret which Reece took. The first one is of me and Bret running towards the gate, Reece was standing near the fence and he thought it would be good if he took a picture of this because we will be using shots like this through branches of the trees to show the zombies point of view as they are looking at our main character while he/she is walking her/his dog. The second picture is of me and Bret standing next to the gate where we passed through earlier. Reece is taking the shot through a few branches from the trees around him, we will be using shots like these to show the point of view for the zombies and the close up shot will give more detail and show our main character more and better and clearer than in the first shot where it is from afar and quite blurry. 

The results from the questionnaire.

Results from the Audience Research Questionnaire

The first question we asked was weather our audience was male or female. This is important when we decide what we are going to do for our film opening because each film is aimed at different people also asking this question would decided weather we have more male or female actors as having this will attract a bigger female or male audience. 

The results showed there were more females that were interested than males, so we will be focusing on the female target audience to try and convince them to watch this film we will be using more male actors in our film opening and having an exciting and interesting storyline we will also be focusing at the male audience but not as much as female. 

For the second question we chose to ask our audience how old they are. We did this because we wanted to find out what age our audience would be aimed at so we could make it suitable for that age group. 

From the graph you can see that we have 21 people from ages 15-17 so that is the type of audience we will be aiming at. Now we know what age we are aiming at we can start planning and deciding what we are going to do for our opening.

For the third question we asked our audience what type of genre they would prefer so we can decided what one would be best to choose and base our film opening on. They picked Zombie as the most preferred so we will include zombies and the features that zombie type films have in our film opening. Thriller and Horror were as popular as each other so we shall also include a horror/thriller theme to the opening but not as much as a zombie theme.

For the fourth question we asked 'What are your expectations of a horror?' Most of the answers we got included 'lots of gore' and 'lots of blood'. These two statements was put for mostly all of our responses, if we decide to do a more horror based film opening then we will include blood and gore, this will be fairly difficult to do because we would need to get the materials to be able to do this successfully. Also one of the answers we got was 'likeable and relatable characters so I rear more for their safety.' We would include this because then the audience who will be watching the film opening will want to watch the film more if it has characters that are liked, if we had characters that the audience didn't like then they wont be interested in the film opening and they would be more likely to turn it off. Another answer we got was 'to be very scared and slow action to build up tension.' We would need to include this in our film opening to entice the audience and to keep them interested.

The fifth question was like the fourth but only about a thriller. Most of the responses said 'scary', 'thrilling' and 'keep me on the edge of my seat'. If we were doing a more thriller based film opening then we would include all three of these ideas. This will be quite difficult to pull off as we will have to get all of the shots and camera angles correct with no mistakes or the film opening wont have the 'thriller' effect. We will also have to try and get the equipment and dark, scary locations for the filming of the opening; this will be quite difficult.

For the sixth question we asked was 'What are your expectations of a zombie film?'. 26 out of the 28 people we asked responded with 'funny', 'blood,biting and running away' and 'good graphics and make-up and some comedy as well'. If we decided to make a zombie type film opening we will take these responses into consideration. If we do decide to do a zombie type film then we will have to have to try and make the blood and gore as realistic as we can. This will be quite difficult as we haven't really got the equipment to pull this off successfully but we will have to see what happens.

The seventh question was 'do you think having music in the background helps set the mood of the opening, why?' As you can see from the pie chart 25 out of 28 people answered yes and 3 out of 28 answered no. The peoples written responses who said 'yes' were mostly 'it builds up tension' 'sets the mood' and 'creates an atmosphere' all three of these responses will help us to decide what type of music we will be using in our film opening. If we don't get the right music then we could lose the interest of our target audience. One of the people who said no said 'silence is better, with a voice over' we could use this instead of putting music to set the scene because it would be different, but if we did use this we might lose the audiences interest. 

 We asked for the eighth question 'In an opening scene, do you prefer?' the answers we gave were 'Getting straight to the point', 'Dragging it out' and 'Setting up an enigma (a mystery that is solved at the end of the film'. From the pie chart you can see 20 out of 28 people thought to set up an enigma. You can also see from the graph that 7 people thought to get straight to the point and 4 people thought to drag it out. 

The ninth question we asked was 'If you didn't like the opening of the film but liked the plot, would you still watch the film?' 19 people said yes and 9 people said no. We asked them why and they responded with 'The rest of the film might improve' and 'i would want to know what is going to happen in the rest of the film'. These sort of comments will help us to decide what the plot will be to make sure that if the opening is rubbish then if we made it into a film then the rest of the film will be good. But hopefully our opening will be good so people watch it.

For the last question we asked 'How long would you expect the opening credits to last?'. 13 people said 1-2 minutes and another 13 people said 3-4 minutes. No one picked 5-6 minutes but 2 people picked 7+ minutes. From the results off the graph we will be making our film opening from 1-4 minutes as these were the two most popular choices. 

We will be using all of the evidence that we have gathered from doing this questionnaire to come up with what we are going to film for our film opening based on the genres 'horror, thriller and zombie'. All of this information will help us make a much better film opening than our preliminary task that we did. 

The results we have collected relate to the deconstruction of 'Zombieland' more than the other two because this film genre is 'zombie' and by doing this deconstruction we will be able to use some of the effects that they have used in our film opening but because we haven't got that much equipment as the makers of Zombieland had. 

We found that some of our responses weren't taking our questionnaire seriously and they put silly answers especially for our written answer questions where we asked things like 'what were your expectations of a thriller?' one response was 'to be all like "WHOAAAAAAAA, did you just see that?!"' I dont think this person took the questionnaire seriously because all of the other responses by this person proved that they didn't do the questionnaire seriously.