1. The document discusses research conducted by Lost Cause Productions on genres, audiences, and conventions for their class project. They determined their target audience was teenagers based on a questionnaire, and chose to make a horror film. 2. They analyzed popular horror films to identify conventions to include, such as isolation, dark lighting, and staccato editing. Locations and actors were chosen to represent conventions and appeal to teenagers. 3. Upon completion, they received peer feedback which noted effective representation of genre but sometimes confusing editing, and aimed to represent insanity well in their opening sequence.

1. Psychosis Evaluation
Lost Cause Productions
Ami Barton, Anna Tehabsim
& Harry Spencer

2. Genre
To Help Us Decide Which Genre To Choose For Our Task We Decided To
Carry Out Some Research:
Audience Ideas Questionnaire
1) Age:
11-15, 16-20, 21-24, 25-30, 31-35, 36-40, 40+
2) Gender:
Male, Female
3) Which of these genres of film do you watch the most?:
Thriller, Horror, Film Noir, Comedy, Action
4) Out of the above, which do you enjoy most and why?
5) What was the last film you watched at the cinema?:
Title, Genre. What encouraged you to see this film?
6) What themes would scare you the most when watching a horror film?
(Select all that apply): Suspense, Gore, Paranormal, Sense of the
unknown, True stories, Insanity, Murderers, Suprise/Shocks
7) Which of these films have you seen?:
The Shining, Saw, The Blair Witch Project, The
Ring, Psycho, 1408, Alien, The Exorcist, Halloween.
8) Out of your selections, which film opening had the most impact on
you, and why?

3. Genre
From our questionnaire results, we found the following:
1. 16-20 year olds are most interested in Horror
2. Females are most interested in Comedy, whereas males are more
interested in Horror
3. Horror is the most popular genre of film
4. Surprise, true stories and a sense of the unknown are the themes
which scare the audience most
5. 'Saw' and 'the Ring' are the most popular films in our selection
6. 'Saw' has the opening with the most impact on audience.
From these results, and also by weighing up the positives and
negatives of other genres and forms (such as thriller & film noir) we
decided upon the Horror Genre for our task.
In order to make sure our Horror film fitted the genre well, we textually
Analysed various films (For example, 1408 (Mikael Hafstrom,2007), The
Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sanchez,
1999), Saw (James Wan, 2004), The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002), Evil Dead
2 (Sam Raimi, 1987) and Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)) and from these
Films we selected key codes and conventions of the genre that we would
Use.

4. Genre: Codes & Conventions & Themes
The Codes & Conventions we chose to focus our main task on that we compiled from our
textual analysis’ were as follows;
•Staccato Editing (Flashbacks, Montage)
•Isolation – getting lost, being alone, road to nowhere scenario – combined with the idea of
voyeurism – being watched
•Use of dark, ambient, low key lighting – shadows, flickering lights, side and back
lighting, smoke – for mystery and suspense
•Use of isolated locations – haunted house, derelict buildings, abandoned
houses, woods/forests, enclosed rooms, middle of nowhere, ghost towns (night
time, darkness)
Also, from these we came up with typical key themes of the horror genre;
•Isolation
•Insanity

5. Audience
From our questionnaire results, we found the following:
1. 16-20 year olds are most interested in Horror
2. Females are most interested in Comedy, whereas males are more
interested in Horror
3. Horror is the most popular genre of film
4. Surprise, true stories and a sense of the unknown are the themes
which scare the audience most
5. 'Saw' and 'the Ring' are the most popular films in our selection
6. 'Saw' has the opening with the most impact on audience.
The audience we chose for our film was 16-20 year olds, this due to their
interest in horror films. We chose to target a mainstream audience as
opposed to a niche market as we felt our film was more commercial than
niche. We also felt that the audience should, as opposed to being
passive, be active within our film. There was no specific gender we would
aim it at, despite the fact that our research found out that males were
more interested in horror than females. However, the idea that males
were more interested in horror did lead us to our actor choices.

6. Audience
The target audience for our horror film is teenagers. This is because
the themes that we portray proved popular with teenagers in our
primary research. As we already focused on the themes, our
primary research questionnaires showed us that teenagers were
the biggest fans of horror movies, and were also interested in the
themes we wanted to focus on. We are addressing this audience by
including teenage characters, and we would market it to teenagers
through specific marketing such as social networking sites. Teens
would relate to the characters we use, as they would expect to see
them in a horror film. The theme of the unexpected killer and the
gore that we would include in our film attracts a teenage
audience, as has been shown in popular teen movie ‘Scream’.
Through the recent trend and popularity in the ‘Saw’ franchise, our
theme of controlling your own destiny should prove popular with
teens, as it has been with various ultimatums in the ‘Saw’ films.

7. Social Groups
• Our film represents particular social groups as it uses stereotypes of
horror films, the main character that people can relate to, and the
damsel in distress character.
• The main character aims to seem as normal as possible, in order to
relate to the audience, so that they can imagine this happening to
them. This is the reason we chose our main actor, because he could
represent many viewers, so acts as a clean palate for the audience.
• We also chose the damsel in distress character, who lasts until the
end, as this is an element used in many horror films. This girl is
usually the main character, and usually lasts until the end.
• However we are challenging this stereotype as the audience sees
what they assume is her being killed in the opening scene. She
represents the damsel in distress as the shots of her being tied up
suggest helplessness, and the shots in the woods suggest isolation.

8. Locations
The Locations within our main task film were chosen for specific
reasons.
1. The Forrest-Like Location – This site was chosen due to its long path.
Within this scene we wanted to use the typical horror code &
convention of the road to nowhere so this location was crucial in
showing this. The path used in this location was perfect to display
this.
2. The Isolated Room – This spot was chosen to be the perfect isolated
room, it was small and neutrally coloured. It had a variety of items in
it we could use for props, for example an old looking chair and
various wires against the wall to give a creepy effect.
3. The Dark Room – We used the hall for this location as it was a big
open space and we could easily alter the lighting and use the
darkness around to block out any unwanted background. This was a
perfect location for both the preliminary task and the shots with the
man in the shadows.

9. Actors
Characters
• Main character (Male) - Our main character was a man in order to relate to the male audience, and he fits
into the stereotype of an insane man, which in turn relates to the theme of the film. Through
discussion, we decided that to have a female main character would be a lot less effective as, generally
speaking, women have a different attitude to men and come about as being less emotionally stable, so to
see an insane women is slightly more common to the eye than a man.
• Second male character that lurks in the shadows - We chose our second male character to be a typical evil
villain type that lurks in the shadows, wearing black, hiding his face. Disguising the identity throughout the
film would help to create a sense of suspense and, overall, end the story with a twist.
^ Both the characters would be played by the same actor in order to fit the idea of the film.^
• A female character (who has a conversation with herself in our preliminary task) - Our main preliminary
character would be schizophrenic or display these qualities, as within our preliminary task she would have
a conversation with herself. An extra actor would be needed within the scene, who looks the same from
behind, to play the part as her reflection.
• Second female character that would appear in our main task. - She would be alike with the typical final girl
in her actions and her history shared with the killer. The female character from our main task (two minute
introduction) would have to play the stereotypical girl from horror films (Sometimes known as “the final
girl”, appearing in horror films such Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, REC, etc)

10. Marketing & Distribution
The film would need a distributer that would represent us. Film
distributing companies market and convince exhibitors to show the
film. There are main stream distributors such as 20th Century Fx and
Paramount, which distribute main stream films for a wide audience.
There are also niche film distributors that will distribute films that
are not main stream, and only have a small target audience. These
niche films will perhaps only be distributed in certain areas. Our
film would be distributed through a main stream distributer rather
than a niche distributer. This is because it is more of a main stream
product, as it follows the themes of mainstream horror and
includes characters that everyday people could relate to. It contains
mainstream themes of horror such as insanity and isolation, and
could go down well with a mainstream audience, rather than a
limited, niche one. It is filmed in a conventional way, and contains
codes and conventions that a main stream audience would be used
to seeing

11. Marketing & Distribution
Out of the main stream distributers we would pick Lionsgate, as they
distributed films such as ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ so are well known among our
target audience of teenagers as a distributer of popular horror films. This
could help the film become popular, as Lionsgate are associated with
horror films that most of our audience will have seen.

12. Technologies
With the technologies that we used, we did encounter problems at points.
For example;
• Problems occurred with the ability to capture film onto the computer due
to a camera which did not work properly, which led us to many scares that
our film had indeed been deleted.
• Another such issue was when our tape was chewed up by the camera, but
luckily, we had not yet recorded and remembered not to use this tape
again.
• Editing our tasks we used Final Cut express, which, whilst in some cases is
simple enough to edit with, for some of our shots, such as the split
screen, it was harder to work out what to do in order to create the desired
effect.
• With the Blog, there were difficulties with saving at points when work was
lost, and difficulties in uploading items (our videos were too large to
upload directly onto the website, so we overcame this by placing a link on
our post to YouTube on which we hosted our videos. We also had
problems placing photographs onto our Blog as certain files refused to
upload even though they were made smaller, etc.)

13. Preliminary Task Reflection
• Our preliminary task involved creating a short piece of footage of someone walking through a
door, and exchanging some dialogue. For ours we wanted to play on the insanity and split
personality idea of our film. We were inspired by ‘Evil Dead 2’ to do a mirror scene in which the
conversation switches, as the person in the mirror talks back to them. For this we needed a
complicated prop and to learn editing tools that allowed us to do a split screen.
• When doing this we learnt that mise en scene and lighting must be perfect, as it was a tricky task.
We also learnt about different editting tools, which gave us ideas of how to edit our main task. Our
preliminary task was a hard one, as we needed specific looking actresses, so that it would look like
a mirror reflection. This showed how important casting is. We also learnt lessons from criticisms of
our finished preliminary task. We posted it on youtube and got comments from fellow production
companies.
• The main criticism we had was the lack of tension building music. The lack of music was the
resounding criticism, as you can hear some background sounds and it lessens the feeling of
mystery. However, the rest was a success, and comments included the fact that the split screen is
very effective, and it was cleverly set up. I think the prop of the mirror was successful and the
reflection worked well.
• These criticisms and certain lessons we learnt for example how we have to be organised with
bookings of settings, helped in the filming of the main task, as we knew we had to meet harder
deadlines.

14. Main Task Reflection
• After completing our main task, we peer assessed
others work and in turn received comments about our
own work. We also received praise and criticism from
friends on our ‘Vox’ blog.
• Some of the comments-
• + Effective representation of horror genre
• +Effective representation of insanity
• +Good use of flash
• -Editing sometimes confused e.g. Not clear that Harry
is both attacker and victim
• -Framing sometimes off

15. Main task reflection
• Taking comments and criticisms into
account, we are happy with our finished
opening, and content with the mark it
received. We believe we represented what we
aimed to well and that editing ensured that
what we wanted to get across was clear.
• This hopefully would go down well with our
target audience and represent genre in an
effective way.