Institutional Context

The production company of Jennifer's Body is fox, the budget the budget was approxiamately $16,000,000. Also produced by fox is 28 days later with a budget of $8,000,000. The production causes a massive effect on how the film sells and how the film is marketed, for example 'Megan Fox' is a well- known actress and her price for the film would have been a large proportion of the film budget. This benefits the marketing side because she is a well-known actress in the industry and appeals to the target audience (teenagers) as a atracttive sexy teen, she has been used in other films for the same reason eg: Transformers 1 and 2

Target Audience

The target audience of teen horrors is mostly aimed towards males and females aged around 13-19. the genre title gives away the target audience. the people who will be interested in horror films will enjoy films which they can relate. the objects that influence the people to come and watch the films are done through smart techniques such as props and langauge. they also use age certification, and emotion to highlight the teenage demographics involved so they can relate to the audience. Keeping the audience engaged can be done threw social referencing. In the film Scream, the opening scene is of a teenage girl making popcorn, the girl making popcorn is a general thing any teenage girl would do when they are alone at home and so this is a clever technique to use. the phone starts to ring and the girl picks up the phone.

Analysis of opening sequences

The opening scene of Jennifer's Body contains various codes and conventions of the teen horror genre. The locations are a gloomy isolated house and prison – typical of the genre. We can hear an eerie un-diegetic sounds which conveys the theme of the film instantly. In the first shot we see an attractive teen girl in her room, the props in this tracking shot of the bed emphasises that the film is for a teenage audience, for example the fallout boy posters above the bed, pink bed covers, pink lamp.

We then see a hooded ghost like figure in the window, from this we know that the genre of film is teen horror. This shot then leads on to a blonde girl in a prison, from the first close- up shot we can see noticeable scars on her back and shoulder, this emphasises the violent and psychopathic theme.

The girl is lead out to the playground and into the canteen; a support officer stresses the girl. After this we see the girl kick the officer with force causing bloodshed and commotion in the prison, this conveys the violent/aggressive theme again, by this, we the audience will automatically want to see more.

The opening scene of Scream starts of by a phone ringing with a scream in the background, the title of the film is also shown in red blood font, this instantly conveys the genre of the film. In the first shot we see a young attractive teen girl, when she answers the phone we can see her in high key lighting to show her innocence. she hangs the phone up but it rings again, a close-up of her face is shown to show her scared facial expression. She answers the phone again but this time she shows anger and shouts down the phone to the caller. this is to emphasise the anger but scaredness of the girl.