Question 5How did you attract/address your

audience?

Audience research

• One of the first things we did to address our audience was produce a questionnaire which was part of our audience research, in order to get an insight into what our audience would want to see in a thriller and the type of thriller we should produce. We asked questions like what type of thrillers do they like, what sort of villain they would like to see, location etc. We also did video interviews with students because we not only wanted to get written responses but verbal responses to. These methods that we used were really effective and helped significantly because we took the responses into account and immediately thought about what were going to do to develop/create a thriller that would suit our audience requirements.

•I think the questionnaires and video interviews we would have been producing something that would not have been targeting the right type of audience and thus making our thriller pointless. In the questionnaires, the majority of our target audience said they would like to see a criminal as the villain although stalker, assassins and psychos was not far behind.

•They also chose action for the type of thriller genre which was a surprise to me because I generally thought psychological would be favourite, and for location it was City which beat out the rest but what wasn’t a surprise was that they expect a thriller to be set in the dark. Due to the responses, we decided to do a psychological thriller at first to challenge the audience but then changed our idea into a hybrid of thriller sub-genes which is much more diverse way of thinking and merged the idea of the villain being a stalker and a psychotic individual.

Some of the responses

As you can see, Forest was one of the lowest responses we received for a location of a thriller but we decided to use a Forest because we felt that it would add more suspense baring in mind we did take their responses into account of City being the best location.

Plot

This is our pitch draft/plot which gave our audience an idea of how and what our thriller will be like and the type of people/things they will see. This is vital because it would help in terms of attracting our audience and they’ll want to watch the film to see what happens to the main character. As you can see the age rating is on it which lets the audience know that its for young teens to young adults because people 15 and over can watch it.

Soundtrack• When making a film soundtrack

is one of the most important things because its what helps engage the audience and sell the product itself e.g. the Titanic soundtrack ‘My heart will go on’ sung by Celine Deon. This was used throughout the film and went well with the storyline.

• We used one song for the title opening and the credits which was Madonna’s ‘Live To Tell’ as that is the title of our thriller and we had 100% agreement on the choice because it had a sort of chilling sound to it which we thought suited the thriller genre. Other sounds used came from the iMAC sound list in which we took and used a sound which built up suspense in between the transitions, helping to attract the audience. But we changed it due to some of the feedback given by students and our teacher.

• We went through a vast majority of songs before choosing the correct one which would relate. Most of the audio used in our thriller was naturally occurring for instance when the antagonist was chasing the protagonist, you could hear breathing. But I think the music we used was very effective because it created suspense which will put the audience at the edge of their seats because they want to know more.

• The final track we used for the ending of our thriller was ‘The Weeknd’- ‘High for this’ intro which I recommended and it worked really well. Mostly because of the beat and the first few lyrics you hear “you don’t know, what’s in store…..” and then it fades out.

Titles & FontsFor the title sequence we used the

font ‘Baskerville Old Face’ which had a creepy looking effect and we also used it in other titles except for the credit sequence. We wanted to create suspense and added a sound from imovies to go with it until the tile fades out from the scene. We went through a range of fonts before coming to that conclusion but some of the choices looked very similar to each other as you can see on the right

Camera, Mise-en-scene, Narrative & Editing

• The location chosen for our thriller which were the forest and a house kitchen which fits well with the thriller genre due to the fact that a forest is a scary place as made out by horror and thriller films and houses are always present in thriller and is where most of the action takes place. A good example of a thriller film that uses a forest is ‘The Blair Witch Project’. This was the main location just like our opening thriller and I think its makes for a good storyline.

Camera, Mise-en-scene, Narrative & Editing

• Also because of the location it all starts to link together as the forest just screams danger. For the antagonist, he is wearing all black which everyone knows connotes death or something bad in general and will immediately force the audience to make an assumption on who's good and who’s bad. Putting everything into perspective, the setting merges it all together because its set in modern day which is good because the audience don’t have to try imagine what life was like back in a time period say for instance the 1950s, because they weren’t there. But for a young audience and possibly and audience older than 24year olds, they can all relate to the current time period.

Black symbolises danger etc.

• For the camera shots, close ups was mostly used, including medium close ups and extreme close ups. These were used in order to draw the audience close and to engage them in what is happening in a particular scene or generally the whole film. They also help to show the emotions /reactions of the character(s) and put the audience in a position to be the protagonist which is common in films, mainly thrillers.

• For example we used an extreme close up of the letter Mandy our main character receives because we want them to see what the letter says so they have to think what it means or symbolises and why the antagonist is out for her. This is similar to the shot used in ‘I know what you did last summer’ when the protagonist Julie receives a letter from her stalker. This will attract the audience due to the fact that its one of the typical conventions of a thriller genre and makes for a chilling feeling because it creates enigma.

• During the editing process we stabilised the shots thus allowing the scenes to flow and the transitions linking the scenes together helped along with the sound to create a sense of suspense and attracting the audience. Editing is the crucial and the film needs to be edited well so it will be thrilling.

. For the purpose of our opening sequence, we wanted it to be a mystery and sort of chilling like a psychological thriller and ensure the audience are intrigued. Also because we’re not really experienced when it comes to incorporating dialogue , we decided to leave it out but it made the opening more effective in doing so because if we had used it our plot wouldn’t have much of an impact. Because we didn’t have our tripods for the main scenes, we wanted to make sure that each shot was stabilised apart from the chase scene and the point of view shots of the antagonist walking behind the protagonist.

POV SHOT

• Because our target audience are young teens to young adults, we used characters who were teenagers in order to attract that particular group of people. One of the props was a blackberry and headphones which the younger generation are getting hold of in today's society. Using these sort of props are effective because the audience can familiarize themselves with that and feel to watch the film more to see what will happen.

In addition to that the costumes that Mandy is wearing is something that young girls wear so straight away the audience knows she's no older than 18 years old and the colours are light. She's wearing a pink jumper which shows her innocence and vulnerability, and a blue jeans jacket which goes well because its something you wear on a casual day and the scene is suppose to be a causal day for her but unfortunate events happen. This attracts the audience as they have in mind that she’ll be attacked because she's vulnerable and unaware of what's around her due to the music in her ears.

Blackberry & Blue jeans jacket