Creating our production company

To come up with a name for our production company we decided to play the word association game. At the top of the page we put psychological thriller and underneath we wrote words that came to mind when we saw the word psychological thriller.

We decided to call our production company 'Pulse' because we liked the sound of it and we already started coming up with ways to present it. We have an idea of making the word pulse merge in with a heart monitor. Below we have drawn a rough idea of how we want it to look.

Our target audience

Establishing a target audience

To establish a target audience we set up a survey with the following questions:
- Are you male or female?
- How old are you?
- Do you enjoy watching psychological thrillers?
- What is your favourite psychological thriller?
- What do you like about psychological thrillers?
- What do you think are the main conventions of a psychological thriller?
- How many people would you expect to see in a psychological thriller opening?
- What genre of film do you prefer?
- How often do you go to the cinema?
- What do you like to do in your spare time?

From our survey we found out that our primary target audience are 15-20 year old females, their favourite thriller is paranormal activity, they like the suspense and tension. Their favourite genre is romantic-comedy's, they don't go to the cinema often mainly when there is a good film on. In their spare time they like to go shopping and catch up with friends.

Certificate rating

The British Board of Film Classification are the people who decide what certificate a film should have. Most thrillers are rated 15, This is because of the content within the film. A 15 normally contains either violence, some drugs, horror, dangerous behavior  bad language, nudity and sexual activity/behavior. The films we have analysed for our research have all been rated 15 so we have decided to make ours a 15.

What makes a good psychological thriller opening?

Similarities and Differences between our groups film analysis

DIFFERENCES:
-They start differently:
Black Swan starts with a dream
Inception starts with a flashback
The Ring begins by setting the scene with an establishing shot
Paranormal Activity starts as a home video of painting a baby's room
What Lies Beneath starts by going through trees

-In The Ring the production company has changed their original logo to fit with the film

-Paranormal Activity has imaginary friends/spirits -Inception includes weapons in the opening


  SIMILARITIES
-Black Swan and Inception both included synchronous sounds and close ups

-Young child featured in Paranormal Activity, Inception and further on in The Ring

-Shows women first in Paranormal Activity, Black Swan and The Blair Witch Project

-Music used for tension

-Heavy breathing in Black Swan and What Lies Beneath

-Handheld camera used in Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project

More analysis

Click the titles for more analysis:
Paranormal Activity 3
Black Swan
Inception
The Blair Witch Project

What lies beneath (2 mins)

Produced by Dreamwork and Image Movers
Genre: Psychological thriller

Main characters:
-Claire Spencer
-Caitlin Spencer

The opening begins with the normal Dreamwork clip, Night sky with clouds and stars with dramatic music. Then you see the Image Movers logo of a train moving forward in darkness to dramatic music, it then stills and you see ImageMovers in large text. Next you see the credits in darkness along with eerie music and the faint outline of trees. The title is created by computer generated images and is shown to be under water, you then move on to see more trees. This creates suspense, you then see an evil face for about two seconds before it flashes to a women's face. The women is in the bath and she gets up and is out of breath and looks scared.

Target audience:

The film has an age restriction of 15 so based on this i think it is for late teens to early twenties.

Trailer for What Lies Beneath:

The Ring (2 mins)

Produced by Dreamwork

Genre: Psychological thriller

Main characters:

-Samara 

-Racheal

-Aidan

The opening starts off with Dreamworks logo however they have altered it to fit the thriller theme, instead of a night sky with white clouds and stars they have changed it to a grey sky and bad weather. Special effects make it look like an old VHS which relates to the video in the film which is a recurring prop within the film. Another effect they have done is making their normal Dreamwork logo flicker and change in to the iconic ring symbol. After the production company clip there is an establishing shot of a house and alongside is the diegetic sound of rain showing us the bad weather. Next you see two girls home alone watching TV but they can't find anything to watch, they turn off the TV and start talking about a video that kills you after 7 days. The blonde girl, Katie, gets panicked and tells her friend, Becca, how she had watched the tape last weekend. Becca tells Katie how it is just a story, Katie then says that she watched it with Josh and some of his friends. They then go on to joke about her and Josh.

Target audience:

The film has an age restriction of 15 so based on this i think it is for late teens to early twenties.

Trailer for The Ring:

Analysis of film openings

Brief

To create the titles and opening of a film lasting two minutes.

Deadlines

Preliminary