Our Pitch by Kirsty and Stephanie

Our Target Audience● For our horror movie, we have chosen our target

audience to be teenagers/young adults (15-25). This is because they would be more likely to relate to the movie, and because they’re the main movie-goers in this society.

● We are going to target both males and females, although it will be predominantly female; this is because our main character is a female, so girls would find it more relatable, increasing the horror for them.

● Our film is going to be a 15, because of references to drug and alcohol abuse, along with suicide and strong language.

● We will target this audience through the use of social media, film posters, magazine articles and trailers.

Sub-Genre

Our sub-genre for our horror film is Psychological. A psychological horror is one which relies on the character’s fears and emotional instability to build suspense; the main character is usually a regular person who creates the horror through their mental vulnerability.

We chose this sub-genre because the audience can relate to it as the antagonist is a human so it ties in with reality, increasing the fear factor.

A psychological horror film could feature flashbacks as the antagonist thinks on past events that may have caused them to behave erratically.

Narrative

Our film’s storyline starts with our protagonist, Marie being abused by her parents when she was a young child. This continues into her adolescence and we begin to see how it is affecting her mental capacity. She begins to have nightmares of herself being attacked or her attacking others. These nightmares have caused her to turn to drugs and alcohol as a release from her torment and she becomes addicted to them. Her addiction causes her to have hallucinations such as her taking a bath and it slowly filling with blood even though it is only in her mind. Her boyfriend attempts to help her through her struggles; but she ends up killing him in an unprecedented rage. This leads into her being mentally unstable; hearing voices in her head and smashing a mirror because she sees that her reflection is of her dead boyfriend. In the end, it becomes too overwhelming and she commits suicide by hanging.

LocationsBathroom → In the bathroom, this is where the girl’s

bath turns into a bloodbath, although this is only a hallucination; this makes it scarier for the audience because it’s a regular place turning bad, and it’s unexpected.

Train Station Platform → We chose to use a train station because it’s a lonely place; here she thinks she sees her boyfriend and ‘follows’ him. This helps link our film to the theme of suicide because she would question committing suicide by jumping in front of a train.

Cemetery → In the cemetery, she visits her boyfriend’s grave, and the audience find out that her boyfriend is watching her.

Inspirations for our horror movie‘Girl, Interrupted’ is a psychological film with

running themes of drugs and suicide. In our film, the protagonist commits suicide by hanging herself at the end of the movie; this idea came from a scene in ‘Girl, Interrupted’. 1:40 → 2:12

● The reason behind our protagonist’s troubles is because of her past abuse at the hand of her parents; this idea came from a scene from ‘Case 39’ - a psychological horror in which her parents try to burn her to death. (stop at 1:10)

In ‘Black Swan’, Nina pushes Lily into a mirror causing it to smash in an attempt to kill her. This inspired us to include a scene in our movie of our protagonist smashing a mirror; this will signify her losing her mind, trying to kill herself and what she sees.

Early Ideas for the Promotional Package

● An early idea for the poster in our promotional package is the image of our protagonist with her back to the camera facing a broken mirror with the reflection being the image of her dead boyfriend. The poster will feature our masthead and our tagline along with institutional information.

● Another idea for our poster is having a noose hanging from the tree where our protagonist hangs herself.

● For our magazine front cover in our promotional package our idea is to have the main image of our protagonist Marie giving the reader direct address whilst standing alone in front of a brick wall to represent her loneliness.

Early Ideas for the Promotional Package

● An early idea for our trailer would for it to be a montage filled with quick cuts showing our audience what has happened to lead up to our protagonist becoming insane.

● The trailer will include white writing on a black background fading into view to give our audience clues to what the narrative will include.