Focus Group 2

After the first focus group we realised that we needed to do a second in order to get a clearer idea of how our target audience felt about our opening sequence idea.

We gathered a larger group of teenagers and showed them our Film Title idea of "the Subject", different fonts to use for the credits, and also our costume and make up ideas. 

We concluded from their feedback that the costume and make up could be improved and more realistic, with maybe a bit of distress to the costume to look more like she had been living in the woods.

The font they decided on was over all agreed and we found that it was probably the best one to use.

They all liked the name and agreed that it was fitting to a psychological horror, due to the enigma and vagueness surrounding it.

Font Research: Initial ideas

Here are some font ideas, along with our current name for our film: "The Subject". 

This name is a strong candidate for what we actually use because it sounds and appears like a horror film that you'd hear in the real world. The vagueness of this name adds enigma to what it could be about. 

We plan to show these fonts to our focus group and ask them their opinion of the name and also which font looks better for our credits. 
All of these fonts are quite typical to horror film fonts as they all include some sort of edge or sharp effect which makes it look scary and immediately aware of the fact it is a horror film as opposed to a rom-com for example which would have much softer fonts used for their title and credits. 

Other Films

In classic horror films, the fonts used are all extremely similar and all follow a traditional vibe. 

 As you can see from these classic horror films, the fonts used in the titles are all very basic and traditional and this could juxtapose modern horror film fonts which could challenge the traditions and go for something different which wouldn't immediately suggest that the film was a horror. I want to make our film a mixture of traditional horror fonts and modern fonts which challenge the conventions for our credits too. I feel like this will give our film that sentimental and classic value as well as a modern twist that will alter and trick the audiences expectations (audience theory by Neale).

Fonts used in Modern Horror films

 As you can see from this advertisement from the recent movie, "the Visit", it cleverly uses a homely and child-friendly font for the title and other advertising letters which makes it seem like a happy or friendly film.
However, because we as the audience know that its a horror film that we have chosen to watch a horror film as a psycho graphic, this font will perplex us and make us feel excited to know how this film is going to shock and scare us as its going to completely contrast a 'friendly' film.

These modern fonts are inspiring to us as a group and we want our film to have the same effect as 'the Visit' does,  where it presents itself as a friendly film whereas its actually scary: we want to excite the audience. 

Inception: Opening sequence

 Although Inception follows themes of the psychological-thriller genre as opposed to horror, its opening sequence still features multiple conventions which I plan to use in my own opening sequence in order to reflect the suspenseful theme which my opening sequence will feature, as well as a sense of the unknown and confusion. 
We aim for our film to be difficult to follow, and thought-provoking for the audience; analyzing Inception is a perfect opportunity to gain knowledge for how to create this in our own opening sequence.
Just by watching this films opening sequence will give us ideas on how to create a confusing and perplexing opening sequence due to the psychological genre conventions which this film utilizes. This film and our initial idea are parallels to each other as in this film we know that it is constantly switching between dream land and reality, and our opening sequence switches constantly between past and present. 
This film is going to give us an outlook on  how to successfully pull off a change in time period: past to present. 

CASTING AND COSTUME PLANNING

 When it came to choosing who was suitable to play the part of our main character in the opening sequence we decided that our friend, Chayce was perfect for it. 
 As part of our costume and make up planning we decided to use a traditional hospital gown which we got from one of our parents work. It was perfect as it was exactly how we imagined our costume to be for the main character. 
It is stereotypical to the conventional "dead girl" which is seen in many psychological horror films, such as "the Ring", "Grudge"and the recent TV series "Stranger Things". 



 The hair and make up was also inspired by traditional horror films and the 'ill' and 'haunted' appearance. 
We used a hairbrush to back-comb Chayce's hair to make it appear disheveled and messy, this gave off a 'wild' and 'spooky' vibe which was exactly what we wanted our character to have. It also reflects how in the 1960's, there was an extreme lack of care in Mental institutions for the patients, so the fact she looks dirty and messy shows how there was neglect from the staff at the hospital, which would be seen in our film.  

For the make up we stuck with the previous decision to keep it stereotypical to that idea of the "dead girl" character which features in most horror films by using white face paint to create a pale, ill appearance, and used black and red eye-shadow to create 'bags' under the character's eyes which gives off a vibe of being haunted and also looks quite haunting. 

 Our aim when taking these images was to see how scary the character would actually look when filming and get an idea of how we could adapt this character into making her fit the opening sequence perfectly. 
We plan to show these images to our focus group which we are in the process of organizing: we will get a group of our target audience and ask them too discuss our costume and make up planning, as well as film name and character name. 

Target Audience: Teenagers

We asked our friends some of their opinions on our initial opening sequence ideas and got some helpful feedback on what we plan to do. 

This has made us realize how useful it would be to do a full on focus group where we got a larger group of people to discuss our film idea in depth, where they look at our font types, costume and make up ideas and also our location of filming.

This will advise us on what to change and what will improve our film.