This document discusses research into film companies and their horror films. It focuses on 20th Century Fox, Hammer Films, and certification ratings. 20th Century Fox is a major Hollywood studio known for franchises like Star Wars but also distributed some horror films. Hammer Films was a UK company famous for Gothic horror films in the 1960s. Certification ratings aim to classify films by age groups to target appropriate audiences. The document also provides details about the production, distribution, credits and release date that would be researched for a hypothetical horror film called "The Black Forest."

1. This involves the research in to any film companies (of different
sizes) and their horror film products, certification, credits
Information and contextual information such as release dates.

2.  20th Century Fox is one of the 6 major Hollywood studios and is a
subsidiary of News Corporation. Our film idea isn’t necessarily designed
to be made for a large Hollywood company, but is influenced by some
large production films. It would be ideal for this company to distribute
our film (which will be an independent production) due to the popularity
of 20th Century Fox and success, and it’s ability to distribute to films to a
large area around the world, with effective and widespread marketing.
 The company isn’t particularly known for it’s horror films, as most of it’s
most successful films are other genres such as fantasy, sci-fi or action,
popular films include: Star Wars, X-Men, Die hard, Chronicles of Narnia
(all franchises) and Avatar.
 Notable horror films to be produced or distributed by the company
include Alien, Predator – though also linking to the sci-fi themes (as well
as their cross-overs) and The Omen.

3.  Hammer films is a UK based production company, best known for it’s
series of Gothic Horror films, often referred to as ‘Hammer Horror’. These
films included The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy.
Though Hammer films has produced many films since then, not many
famous or notable films were well-known around the world. This means
that the company is often and most noted exclusively for the horror
genre, allowing for good research in to their British horror films.
 This type of small production company would be the type in which our
film would be produced, but not distributed as their films were not self-
distributed such as those from 20th Century Fox, but used separate and
individual distributors.
 Styles within the horror genre from the early films are out-dated, but
recent ‘revival’ productions such as Let Me In and The Woman in Black
would be suitable for researching the film styles, as well as marketing.

4.  The certification or age-rating of a film is important information for a film
and it’s audiences. The whole point of certification is to class films in to
categories so they are suitable for those different age groups, ultimately
limiting the target audiences– allowing film producers and distributors to
target a specific audience and design their product accordingly.
 Typically horror films, due to having to ‘horrify’ the audience are a
certificate of 15+. Our horror film is designed to have a certificate of 15,
allowing for some, but not excessive use of horrific elements to the film.
This will be through the inclusion of murder (though not as graphic and
gruesome as some 18+ films such as the Saw franchise, the Final
Destination franchise and REC.

5.  This type of information includes the production and distribution
company information, contents of the credits (in both film and the ‘credit
block’ on poster) and release date.
 The small details that you will see on a film poster or the titling of a film
trailer are important as they reveal the background details of the film,
such as production and distribution companies, which may persuade you
to go watch the film if you like that particular companies' films – such as
the specific style of Pixar films. Other ‘credits’ such as director and actors
may be key in persuading you.
 The release date is also another large factor that is often seen on
marketing products, allowing the audience to plan around this certain
date. Our imagined release date for the film ‘The Black Forest’ is 1
November 2013, with a midnight release just after Halloween, an ideal
date – linking in with the themes from the horror genre.