Evaluation: How did you attract/address your audience?

• We decided to use a young pretty blonde girl to attract the male audience (male gaze). We also decided we were going to try to dress her in a provocative outfit which not only ties in with the male gaze aspect but also helps to connote the fact she is a stereotypical scream queen.  
  
• To appeal to the female audience, we needed to have an attractive male actor. Nearly all films have at least one attractive male character and one female, for example; Sorority Row, Stewart Hendler (2009) features numerous beautiful young females. Another film would be Prom Night, Nelson McCormick (2008) which has attractive male and female characters. 

Budget [draft]

My originally was going to be around £5-£10 maximum however after researching props i realised that a more realistic budget would be £20.

The following is what i needed for the production of my film;

• 2ft doll - This cost £20 from Argos
• Kitchen knife - Free from my friends kitchen
• Hair/clothes/makeup - All were actors and actresses own and were therefore free
• Camera Tapes - £4 from school
• Blank C.D's to burn my film onto - (4x30p) £1.20
• Red food colouring - £1.15 from Tesco

Low budget slasher films still normally have a significantly higher budget than mine; Donkey Punch, Oliver Blackburn (2008) was filmed in just three weeks and had a budget of £500,000.

Other low budget slasher films include;

My Bloody Valentine, George Mihalka (1981) which had a budget of £1.5 million.

Black Christmas, Bob Clark (1974) whose budget was just £420,000.

Titles for my Film [draft]

Opening credits are an important aspect of a film therefore i need to consider the film name carefully. I decided that the best way to choose names from the following list would be to get audience feedback. 


Distribution Company Names;

1. .
2. .

Production Company Names;

1. .
2. .

Screen Title;

1. The Revenge of Gertrude
2. The Revenge of Josephine
3. Blanky
4. Play Time

Audience Feedback:
The titles 'The return of...' would not be suitable because they would signify that the film was a sequel. 

Soundtrack [draft]

As i had never used Garage-band before my attempts to build a soundtrack were quite feeble and no where near the standard I would have hoped for my film.
Instead John Cockshaw created my soundtrack for me as he has experience in producing them and also in music and instruments in general. 
Additionally John showed me how to use Garage-band step by step so i will be able to produce my own for future projects.


All the dialogue recorded during filming was not usable unfortunately as background noise was too loud and distracted attention away from the cast's lines. 
This meant that I had to over-dub all the dialogue and make sure the timing was correct. This posed another problem as the actor and actresses i had used were not available to record their lines. However i was able to overcome this by using some of my other friends instead.

Distributor/Exhibition

Childs Play (1988) or the 'Chucky' films are the most similar films to mine, mostly due to the fact that i based my film opening on them. 

• Childs Play was distributed by United Artists. 
• Childs Play 2 was distributed by Universal Pictures.
• Childs Play 3 was distributed by Universal Pictures. 
• Bride of Chucky was distributed by Universal Pictures.
• Seed of Chucky was distributed by Rogue Pictures.

None of these are indie film companies and therefore would not be suitable for my film. I am working on a significantly low budget (around £20) whereas these companies have budgets of millions of pounds. For example Universal Pictures's film Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi (2009) had a budget of $30,000,000. United Artist's film Jeepers Creepers, Victor Salva (2001) had a budget of $2,110,000 and Rogue Picture's film Seed of Chucky, Don Mancini (20 has a $12 million dollar budget. 

United Artists:

1. Owners include; MGM - part of subsidiaries, Providence Equity Partners (29%), TPG Capital (21%), Sony (20%), Comcast (20%), DLJ Merchant Banking Partners (7%) and Quadrangle Group (3%)

Universal Pictures: 

1. Owned by General Electric (80%) and Vivendi (20%). 
2. Universal Pictures is one of The Big Six.
3. Universal Pictures became a part of NBC Universal as a result of the 2004 merger
   

Rogue Pictures: 

1. A division of Relativity Media . 
2. It was originally launched by Focus Features under Universal Pictures.

Companies better suited to my film would be these indie horror production companies that specialise in short films rather than feature length films. 

Gender [draft]

Films normally target either a mainly male audience or a mainly female audience, however they do not want to focus completely on one gender as they would be excluding half of their potential audience. 


Chick-flicks are stereotypically targeted at females however using attractive female actresses can appeal to the male gaze. Additionally turning into a hybrid genre like a rom-com would also attract a male audience. E.G. Cameron Diaz in What Happens in Vegas, Tom Vaughan (2008)
The same applies to horror/slasher and action films. This genre is mainly targeting a male audience however make the film appealing to women by using physically attractive actors. For example using Shia La Beouf in Disturbia, D.J. Caruso (2007) made the filming more appealing to the female youth audience. 

Ethnicity

The amount of people willing to participate in my film was fairly low, either due to the fact that they were already taking part in someone else's film or that they lacked the confidence to act in front of the camera. My opening does not feature any non-Caucasian characters however this is only the beginning of a film and other ethnic groups could be featured later on to attract a wider audience. 

Tim Burton  has been criticised for only using Caucasian actors/actresses for main parts. For example in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), all the golden ticket winners were white. Other films by Tim Burton with an all white cast include Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Ed Wood (1994).