How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

Research real film audiences

• Three films that are most similar to our opening sequence would be American Psycho, MA and Panic room although they may not be similar in every aspect they all have the theme of kidnap and murder and other horror elements associated in this genre.
  
  
• The types of audiences you get for these movies could be varied as there is no specific nationality it is for though some of the films could not be shown in certain places due to cultural differences in how tolerant the country is to violence and more mature themes.
  
  
• The film is made for audiences 15 and above as it contains mature themes that are typically shown in most horror films such as violence, strong language, sexual content etc. Our film will not have an 18 certificate as it does not contain so much gore or things such as extreme drug use.
  
  
• There is no specific gender that the film is for but it will possibly attract more male audiences rather than female as the killer is male and the victims are primarily female meaning that the main focus of the film being the killer is more appealing to male audiences.

Identifying your target audience

• We did not plan on having an extremely specific target audience for our film so there are no divisions or preferences for what nationalities will enjoy it more than others the same goes for gender. We did however take into account what type of fans we would want to watch our sequence and those would clearly be fans of the horror and psychological genre as a whole.
  
  
• We aimed our opening sequence o audiences that had interests in indie films as a whole and specifically horror indie films that were shown and local film festivals and special screenings etc.
  
  
  

Examples of how you have engaged audience

• One way that we wanted to engage our audience was pacing and suspense this is a factor you must have to engage horror movie audiences though our opening sequence did seem to go on for more time than anticipated in certain scenes.
  
  
• Another way we wanted to engage our audience is through character design and overall feel of the set as a whole. We wanted the audience to feel as if they were in a different time period to where killers such as the one portrayed in our sequence would have been more prevalent.
  
  
• Through our editing we wanted to engage our audience by starting of with prod eminently calm and slow paced editing and when the idea around our killer is revealed the cuts start to become shorter and more fast paced to where we wanted to have the audience excited to move from the next cut to the next one.
  
  
• Sound and music was a main feature for our opening sequence as throughout we had 70's contrapuntal music playing during the scene this added a darker layer to our story as a whole. The music had to be exiting and reminiscent to music that would have been around in the 70's.

Have you actually engaged audiences?

• We had received mostly good feedback for our sequence mainly surrounding the music and the sound and the choice of location. Here is some feedback we had from our teacher "Great choice of location, and I really like the dark humour of the music as the man walks through the corridor.  The lighting is a little bit too dark in some parts and it might be nice to have a light that picked up some more details eg reflections in a pool of blood or something.  The wrapping and dragging of the girl does feel like it takes a bit of time, and maybe that could be cut down a bit or something added to add interest eg a wound or some other angles of Fleur." We had also received another form of feedback which was us getting nominated for our schools media awards where we were specifically nominated for Cinematography and Best Picture.

Intro to distribution

• Film distribution is the process of making a movie available for viewing by an audience. This is normally the task of a professional film distributer who would determine the marketing strategy for the film, the media by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing, and who may set the release date and other matters. The film may be exhibited directly to the public either through a movie theatre or television, or personal home viewing.
  
  
• Film distribution usually in tales the promotion and release for the film this can include, the digital home release for the film, the marketing e.g. posters, trailers and partnerships with other companies such as fast food restaurants and merchandising companies.
  
  
• Distribution companies might also have special social media campaigns for the films release such as special filters on social media apps or even just small clips and teasers for the movie.
  
  
• Some companies might want all their distribution to be done digitally nowadays as it is a more cost effective way to sell films worldwide.

Distribution companies

• I had looked for distribution companies that would most likely or only distribute low budget films through this process i found several companies but came to a decision as to which one I think would best work for our film in terms of advertising and generally marketing the film. The companies that I had looked through included Brain Dead Films, Breaking Glass Pictures and Left Films though out of these I felt not all of them matched what our film was about so I picked a distribution company called Uncorked Entertainment. I chose them as they specialise in advertising and distributing horror and psychological thriller low budget films and they have a good history with distributing the majority of their films.
  
  
• Some of their films that they had distributed include: The Antidote, Dawn of the Beast and Homewrecker. Some of the films even have a somewhat similar vibe to our opening sequence The Dweller.

Distribution methods for your own film

• For our opening sequence I feel the best marketing that we can get out from the distribution I chose to distribute our film will be more centred around posters and poster design as this is a somewhat cheap option and can attract certain fans if they have an interest in the style of the poster. Another marketing method the company could use is social media through the use of a separate account for the film itself with updates for the release of the film and small promos that will keep fans interested, social media will also be useful when wanting to share possible collaborations we might have had for certain companies or fairs etc.