Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Narrative Structure

According to Todorov there are stages to a story and he found these stages through studying folk tales. The stages are equilibrium à an event that disrupts the equilibrium à then there is recognition of the event à attempt to fix the problem (resolution) à this results in a new equilibrium. With this theory in mind, as a group we decided to follow these rules when creating a narrative for our movie.

So for our movie idea we started with an equilibrium which consists of a group of friends who live a normal life, they go to college together and do things outside of college as well, and we planned to show them doing these sorts of things so that the audience would know who all the characters are. However for Todorov’s theory to be put into place we had to have something that would disrupt the equilibrium that we had created. We wanted to have a signifier for the movie and so this became the Ouija board and from this it felt as though we needed this to be the disruption for the equilibrium, and so we decided that something would happen with an Ouija board that would make a change between the friends therefore making a change within the equilibrium. The next step in the theory is for the disruption to be recognised and so to do this we decided that the main character would realise that something has happened to herself and that no one else can see how much they had changed due to the signifier. So, to do this we used a clip in the trailer where the main character asks what is happening to her however it takes her a while to convince others around her that something is going on and eventually they begin to realise that something went on when the Ouija board was used within the group. We then needed to decide how the problem would be resolved and this would then result in a new equilibrium being created, due to a few of the characters being killed off during the process of disruption, we knew that a new equilibrium would be needed anyway and that there would probably be new characters added into the storyline. The resolution to the problem would have to include the main character overcoming what the signifier has done as well as the disruption and signifier being taken away and this case, we decided that to destroy the Ouija board would be the best way to show that resolution has taken place. 

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Original Photographs

This is the original photograph I used for my magazine cover

This is the original photograph I used for my movie poster

General Audience Research

To have a movie that will be accepted by an audience and become successful it needs to attract the right people and connect with the audience that is targeted at. For any movie distributor, knowing who their audience is is a key aspect, as these will be the people that watch the movie and then review it, therefore telling others whether the movie is worth watching or not. If a movie has a negative response, it means that the movie will reduce in sales and audience views, and vice versa, if a movie has a positive response, sales will increase and so will audience views and so this is why targeting the audience is so important for a movie distributor. However, if the audience gives negative reviews on a movie, it makes it easier to know what to improve on and therefore make future movies more successful.

Audiences are usually influenced to go and see a movie through the actors in it, and this is something that is found in any genre of movie. Often it is seen that if an American movie is coming out, it has a lot of American actors in it, and the same for other countries, another popular one being Britain. But it doesn’t mean to say that if a movie is popular in America, it won’t be popular in Britain and vice versa. By adding actors who are well known into movies, it means that the audience are more likely to relate to the characters, and so this means there are various demographics such as age, religion, class and gender that the audience can relate to.

According the uses and gratifications theory, many audience watch movies and television for a reason and one of the main reasons is Personal Identity. This is where the audience can find themselves indentifying with someone in the movie or television programmes, and from this they can learn how to behave in certain situations. An example of this is in the film The Notebook which is based around a couple in which one of them has Alzheimer’s and so others may find comfort in how the other member in the relationship deals with the situation if they feel they are in a similar situation, and so this may have been part of the reason for this film becoming successful.

The film industry is something that is continuingly changing, and so the larger the company the more films they will release therefore gaining more of an audience. A large company such as Warner Brothers who releases a lot of films is a popular company not only for what they release but because everyone knows who Warner Brothers are. With Warner Brothers releasing films such as Harry Potter, which was very popular, means that if audiences liked this film it is quite possible that they will go and see other films released by the Warner Brothers Company. 

It can be seen from the charts above that it is 25 – 39 years old who go to cinema more often than others and so this means that most films will be targeted for this age range as these are the people who are most likely going to go and watch the movie. I think the age of people how go to the cinema is affected by who can watch certain films due to film ratings and so this sometimes counteracts with who can watch a film that is rated as a 15 or an 18 rating. Films are usually a higher rating for certain reasons and so a lot of films are a 12 or higher and this means that a lot of younger audiences don’t go to the cinema as often and instead wait to watch films when they are released on DVD. And it can also be seen that there is an almost even split between what gender goes to cinema more often and so I don’t think that this affects what is shown in the cinema and therefore doesn’t affect what sort of film distributors want to release. I think there is no significant difference between what gender goes to the cinema more often as women are more likely to be able to relate to certain characters on screen and find emotional attachment whereas men like films that give them action and situations to imagine themselves in. Another reason for the gender being an even split is because a lot of films are aimed at couples, and so this means that both genders will be visiting the cinemas in order to see movies. A lot of these films, especially horror are good at targeting couples and this is because they are able to comfort each other while watching a film. Many women are easily scared by things that they see in horror films and sometimes in other genre of films as well, where men being more masculine like to feel powerful in these situations and so they often don’t feel phased by the things they see on screen and instead take it upon themselves to comfort the women. This then elevates the males’ strength and power because he has managed to take control of the situation.

Magazine Cover

Movie Poster