Peer Pitch & Concept Refinement Chart

 Luca Patarini, Jonah Seldin-Schneider, Alec Miller 

AICE Media Studies AS 

Portfolio Project Concept Refinement 

Fall 2020 

CATEGORY 

DETAILS 

Film OR Magazine 

Film 

Genre 

Horror 

Target Audience (Be specific) 

 15- to 24-year-old and mostly male (horror enthusiasts)  

What is your concept? (Be thorough & specific. Review the links on Blackboard) 

Zach is an ordinary 16-year-old high schooler. He plays sports and is an A B student. Everything about his life is as normal as it gets. But what nobody knew was that Zach lives in an abusive household. Not having many close friends closed him off to express himself so he would take it out on drugs. Regularly Zach would go to a forest near his home to smoke, but on a certain night, his smoking hours didn’t go to plan. After smoking, he gets lightheaded and passes out on the forest floor, and wakes up on an eerie bridge. While trying to find his way back home he is distorted and realizes that something is watching him. He goes through a series of PTSD attacks and Hallucinations of the past while trying to find his way back home, and when he starts recognizing where he is, he starts to feel sick as if he was going to throw up his own intestines. He then passes out due to the excruciating pain. Soon after he wakes up in the first place he passed out. He realized that it was all a trip and decides to act in himself to stop using drugs... 

How did you conceive the idea for this concept? 

Well... We went through a list consisting of Zach having some sort of problem or disability but decided that they would be challenging to incorporate with a horror film and decided on a drug abuse/abusive household concept. We wanted it to have an impact on something in the real world. 

What do you believe is unique about your concept? 

It brings attention to drug misuse and student/teen mental health. The  

Why do you believe this product will be of interest to your audience? 

Since the main character is around the same age as the target audience, there will be a sense of personalization. Especially if the audience has gone through challenges like Zach's. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FEEDBACK RECEIVED FROM PEERS 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only major piece of feedback that we received was that we had to decide upon whether to take the darker route and kill off the main protagonist towards the end of the film or allow a happier ending. This difference alone could make the movie have an entirely different impact on the audience. 

 

 

 

During our pitch, though we only received one major piece of feedback, it will have a great impact on the concept of our film. Originally, we had decided that the main character would ultimately go to redhibition and better himself, but we had suggestions on to why we should consider killing off the main character. It was suggested as it may leave a greater impact resulting in further enlargement of the awareness of drug use.  


Also, our decision making regarding our target audience has reflected upon statistics in 2018. To explain, the article “Favorite film genres in the U.S. 2018, by age group”, states that “favorability of the horror genre reduced with age, with 68 percent of 18-to-29-year old's saying that they found horror movies very or somewhat favorable, compared to just 30 percent of adults aged 65 or above...” This evidence shows that we were precise with our target audience though it may have been a few years off. 


Furthermore, according to studies gathered by Mary Beth Oliver and Tilo Hartmann, regarding the amount of meaningfulness of different movie genres, “The analysis of the genres that described the film titles showed that dramas (44.3%) and comedies (40.6%) were the most frequent descriptors, followed by romance (34.3%) and sad films (29.5%). The remaining genres were identified as descriptive of fewer than 30% of the film titles, with horror films (1%) the least frequently used descriptor.” While normal horror films have a very low effect on people, our film has the asset that sets it apart from the others. Our film was created to have a strong impact on teens and young adults to bring awareness to drug misuse. It is shown that horror films generally don’t have a strong impact on people, but our film would contradict those statistics. 

 

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