We decided to rate our film as a 15 as the main theme and context could potentially be a sensitive issue with younger age groups. We used the BBFC classification rating system to classify our product and compared it to similar films to come to our final decision. We found this on the BBFC website to research their guidelines and classify our own film http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ we found the student guide particularly useful. The violence in our film "is not portrayed as a normal solution to problems" and our "victim does not inflict pain" however "callousness is shown towards our victim". Following BBFC guidelines the violence in our product is strong but "does not dwell on the pain and suffering of the victim" and there is no sexual violence. However due to younger audiences being able to over come these age restrictions due to sources such as downloads we decided our product should be aimed a the youth audience around ages 14 to 35. The victim in our product is reflective of the target audience as she is in her teens.
When undergoing research into the BBFC we found they have an historically over-zealous attitude towards the classification of films. Before the 1960s films were often censored as a form of social control for example Rebel Without A Cause (Nicholas Ray 1955) was cut because it was believed it would encourage teenage rebellion. We researched which films in our genre had been banned and the reasons for this, we found that The Last House On The Left (Wes Craven 1972) was banned in 2002 until 2008. "The Craven film was controversial for its graphic violence, and for the manner in which the villains imposed their psychopathic and sadistic will upon the victims."
Ethnicity
Our product only includes Caucasian characters however still targets a wide ethnic audience.
Gender
The slasher genre is often seen as primarily male orientated however in order to avoid only targeting half the available audience we wanted to use the stereotypical "Final Girl" a tough, intelligent girl often used in horror films to attract a female audience. However due to only the opening being in our film we decided to stay with the stereotypical "Scream Queen"the blonde haired large chested unintelligent female who gets killed off in the first few minutes of the film. Our film may not appeal to some females as we have used this stereotype which is often looked down upon by feminists although could attract more males with the male gaze theory. This is the theory that when watching a film the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man for example when a scene lingers on a women's curves for instance, We dressed our female in a tight low cut clothing to emphasize this theory. We also considered the "movie as date" and the fact that this could reflect some of our target audience and bring in more female appeal. We thought carefully about how to represent gender and how it is represented in other media products. We had the male character with heavy footsteps, breathing deeply and grunting to connote masculinity. We had the girl shrieking and screaming, with long blonde hair and wearing makeup. She is also wearing a dress which wouldn't normally see a man doing this connotes she is feminine.
Socio-economic groups
Our product is a conventional slasher as its takes on stereotypes rather than counter-typing them therefore might be aimed more at a lower middle class to working class background such as C1C2DE who generally prefer "popular culture" rather than "high culture" classes ABC1 prefer. To attract higher class groups we added some still photos as flashbacks to give or product a docu-drama feel, similar to the techniques used at the beginning of The Texas Massacre (Tobe Hooper 1974) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4i4EBZzHGM&feature=related). Our product represents class groups C1 and C2 however it also appeals to DE class groups as it uses conventional stereotypes. We chose our characters to be C1 and C2 groups because whilst undertaking our research we found the majority of characters in slasher films were from middle class backgrounds for example Laurie and her friends in Halloween.
Nationality/Region
Although we do not have alot of dialogue in our product we decided to feature northern English
accents even though this has proved a challenge for some films to gain success. Films produced by Warp X such as Donkey Punch (Oliver Blackburn 2008) and This Is England (Shane Meadows 2006) however prove it is possible to overcome this. This could potentially affect foreign sales and there are advantages of using southern English characters such as Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones Diary (Sharron Maguire 2001) as this is generally the stereotype given to other countries by films such as the example and Love Actually (Richard Curtis 2003) for instance it may be hard for other countries to relate to different accents and dialects when this is the initial impression they have been given. We considered this option and still decided to use a northern accent as we felt it reflected and fit our genre better rather than a southern accent which are generally more commonly used in Rom-coms. We were going to name our film "The Basement" to appeal to an American audience however low budget British horrors rarely gain recognition in America therefore we decided to name it The Cellar to achieve as much British appeal as possible.
Fans Of...
We would expect the older section of our target audience (around 25 to 35) to be fans of classic slashers such as Halloween, Scream, (Wes Craven 1996) Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven 1984) and possibly Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960) For the younger section we also considered Scream to have been popular amongst them aswell as films such as Scary Movie (Keenen Waynas 2000) which takes a post modernist approach by centering the film around other films, this could help the audience be more aware of inter textual references which would make them more able to pick up on them in our product.
Psycho graphic Profile
We thought the typical person out of our target audience that our film is aimed at would be a 16 to 17 year old male possibly interested in video games as these often contain violence as do horror films. We came to this conclusion because of this factor, the male gaze theory could also play a part in the appeal to males and the specific age group.
We researched the box-office performance of films comparable to our own, in the slasher genre to find out how well they were received in the opening weekend. The Decent (Neil Marshall 2005) took £570,850 and was shown on 329 screens. 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle 2002) took £1,500,079 and was shown on 318 screens.
In comparison to other genres such as action films horror films seem to receive the lowest amount at the box office, with films such as Watchmen (Zach Snyder 2009) receiving £3,243,001 and was shown in 419 screens on the first weekend. This is most probably due to the fact horror films are generally lower budget and appeal to a narrower audience. Another factor could be that Watchmen was originally a graphic novel therefore already had a large fan base.
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