Treatment

The film “Haunted By The Nightmare” is about the family which tries to live easily and normally. However because of argues the family breaks. The Father leaves the wife and 2 children. They need to find a new place to live. The place they found is haunted by the ghost. One of the kids Max, have the dream to be the director so he is recording lots of things around that happens at home and outside of it. When the family moves to the haunted house the Max starts to record the things that happen in this home. The ghost is very nasty and makes the bad things to the family.

 Firstly it was moving objects, however later on it started to be more dangerous. The Ghost started to be aggressive and dangerous to the new occupants. The family tries to do something to live happily however the ghost stands on their way to the happy life. The finance problems don’t make the whole problem easier.  There is the war between family and the ghost.

The film take place in different locations but the main one is the haunted house, where the ghost is doing bad things. Sometimes action happens in school, where kids go to, or work place where the mom works. The location is not one of the most interesting things in the movie because it happens in normal English style house. However the things that happen inside make a very big impact on the way that family acts and behave.

The film doesn’t have any other interesting characters. There are some friends of kids that tries to help them but they not really sure if the ghost really exist. They don’t want to stand face to face with the danger that happens in friend’s house.

Audience Research

Why Audience Research is important?

Audience Research is very important for creators of the media text. It allows them to know what are the people who watch it, what they like, how they react on different scenes etc. It is waste of time and money if company makes a film worth millions of dollars, and no one would like to watch it because it is not enough exciting or interesting. The company wouldn't make any profit at all.

How Audiences are categorized?

The audiences are categorized in to different categories. The demographic devides them into certain categories like age, gender, hobby, occupation, religion, nationality etc. while the social economic demographic devides people into different social classes. A - upper class, B middle class, C1 lower class, C2 working class, D... etc.

This helps the makers of the media text, to specify, what kind of audience will want to buy their product. For example if they will create sci-fi film, audiences will be people interested with the space, robots, future, science or supernatural things. So there is a large variation of the people who will or may watch this film.

Key Audiences Theories, that explain the Media's Relationship with the Audience

The best theories that explain the relationship between media and audience are:

* Hypodermic Needle Model
* Two Step Flow Model

Hypodermic Needle Model - this models suggest that the media is capable of mass manipulation, and people believe in it. The best example of it is when you see the advertise in the TV and it shows some cleaning product that is so great that little amount of it will clear everything very well. So people believe it and they buy this product. The same thing appears in the film. If the film shows that the alliens landed on the earth people may think that this is true and they will start to believe. Also there may be people who will watch it and agree that maybe alliens are existing but they havn't landed on the earth.
 

Two Step Flow Model - this model suggest that the media is passing on across people. So for example if i have watched some nice interesting film, i will tell it my friends, and persuade them to watch it because it is so good. They will watch it and persuade other friends to watch it. And so on... until thousands or millions of people know about the current media text. It is the one of the best ways of advertising the media text product.

websites:
http://www.c4life.com/media/ecom/cat/self-hypnosis1.jpg
http://blackpoolmedia.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/blog-two-step-flow-diagram2.png?w=267&h=317

Genre Research

What is Genre?

Genre is the type/style of the film/play. It helps to recognise what the film is about and make the audience to understand and/or suspect what will happen in the film. The conventions are the most important in creating genre as they are the key concepts that create the genre and make them recognise.

For example:
Convention - kissing.
Genre - Romantic Film
It make audience allready to know that the genre of the film is romantic film, as we can see the love happening there.


Advantages and Disadvantages:

The advantage of genre is that the audience are easily know what they can expect. For example parents know that they can't go with little child on "Final Destination" because the genre of this film is horror, so parents allready know that this film is not well for their childs.
Other people may not like some type of film, so they know that they will not spend their money on the film that they will not enjoy.

However, there are some disadvantages as well. As the time goes, the new genres are created, and new conventions are presented. Sometimes the genres are mixed, and it is really hard to decide what type of genre it is. When the hybrid genre appears, like comedy/horror, then its hard to decide what the film is more about. Also some people may like comedy but dont like very much the horror films, so probably they will not want to see this film.

There are lots of different conventions that suggest that the film is this genre however the film is totally about something different, which later on build big confusion in the audience mind.


The genre I have chosen for my film and its conventions:

The genre I have chosen for my film is horror mixed with bits of documentary. It is because the film is going to be about ghost, and haunted house, however, the film is presented in documentary way. It is because the film is recorded with handheld camera, also the hero is the person who is recording everything. The film is quite similar to the "Paranormal Activity", as it as well show the story by the camera used in the