The document discusses the opening of a student film and how it develops conventions of the horror/thriller genre. The opening uses eerie music, fade ins and outs between shots, and lacks dialogue to build suspense and intrigue audiences. It represents typical social groups like young white heterosexual couples to relate to more of the audience. A major media company like Lionsgate would be well suited to distribute the film since they produce many horror films and have broad reach. Research showed the target audience is 15-25 year olds, especially 18-24 year old females, so the film aims to appeal to this demographic.

1. Evaluation
Kirsty Salisbury

2. In what ways does your film opening use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?
• In our opening we decided not to use any voiceovers or
dialogue as it will give more suspense and questioning
to the audience because they won’t know what is
really going on. The music we used was very eerie to
make suspense throughout the opening so the
audience will be brought into the film and intrigue
them to watch it. We start the sequence with some
sunlight in the filming to make the romantic scene,
however, the creepy music with it tells the audience
that it is a horror/thriller. For each shot, we used a fade
in and fade out, making the opening seem more
mysterious.

3. How does your media product represent certain
social groups?
 Our media product represents certain social
groups in many ways. We have used young
actors/actresses to connect with the audience
so they can relate better. We used white
British people to film in our sequence as it is
usually the vulnerable white woman that gets
killed din the film and so that represents our
actress. We also used a typical heterosexual
couple to relate to more of the audience.

4. What kind of media institution might distribute your film
and why?
 We found that Lionsgate produces a lot of
horror films and thrillers. They are a very
well-known company and so this would be
good for the distribution of our film as it would
be easier to get out to the public.

5. Who would be the audience for your media
product?
• We said that 15-25 year olds would enjoy our film
most as our statistical research shows. My
audience profile shows that 18-24 year olds
prefer horror films rather than other ages, with
37% of the population. These statistics helped us
decide on our target audience. We put the
certificate as a 15 so that our target audience
could range more. My statistics also show that
44% of females prefer horror films compared to
the 26% of males, which is a reason why we used
a couple in our opening as it has a feminine
touch.