Evaluation Question 5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

For my evaluation question 5, I wanted to present it audibly by recording it on Sound cloud to show my response. 
I created a script before I recorded myself as I wanted to fully prepare myself and have a clear understanding on how I attracted and addressed my audience. I wanted to specifically include and explore the ideas of what pleasures my product bought my audience, the understanding and help of the 'Uses and Gratification's theory', I also wanted to explore the genre, setting, narrative, media representations, music, titles, editing/film style and the codes and conventions of genre of my thriller.

Script

Looking back at our target audience, I understood my target audience falls between the ages of 15-25. I realised it is crucial to attract, address and assemble your target audience successfully for a film. For example, to meet the correct, successful demand, the conventions used in a thriller should be what the audience expect. From achieving this and meeting expectations the response will be positive and beneficially express successful comments overall.

Firstly, there are many pleasures my target audience can hopefully take from my opening sequence. For example, from our thriller the general thrills conveyed are forced because of the anxious, tense and suspense aspects of the storyline, which build up throughout, this usually alerts people to feel nervous but still seize a thrilling and gripping pleasure. As well as this, the increasing sound effects help drive pleasurable appeals for my target audience as they are engrossed by appropriate and tense build ups.

I felt for this specific question the ‘Uses of Gratifications Theory’ helped me to understand the appeal of popularity to mass communication of our thriller. The study state focuses on the phrase ‘what people do with media’ rather than ‘what media does to people’ highlighted by Katz in 1959.  The theory takes control of ‘Identity’, to ‘Educate’, to ‘Entertain’ and the ability of ‘Social Interaction.’

From researching this theory, I understand the active role members of the audience take on and try and interpret and integrate this into their own lives and situations. Therefore, identity is recognised through sequences as it reflects which values are similar to your own and which role models one aspires to be. I concluded this could relate to my thriller and connect to our actor. In our opening sequence, our actor is in his early 20’s and our targeted audience interest is around this age, therefore audience members can relate to the young adult and seek themselves in him and his reactions to the situation he is faced with. This is also another pleasure in which our target audience can offer from our thriller as they can feel more connected and psychologically relating.

Similarly from this inspirational theory, the idea to educate audience members is relatable as they can ‘acquire information, knowledge and understanding’ from our thriller. For example, as our thriller senses the idea of an individual stuck in a challenging, isolated situation in which he cannot escape easily from. This plot can almost be represented as a game in which he should not give up. This can educate some target audience as they can try and show an understanding of his situation, which can lead to possibly sympathising with him and even trying to portray an escape for him. From this theory it can also educate the acquiring knowledge of understanding and information if audience members have been in the same unstoppable situation.

In our opening sequence, it is essential that we tried to convey entrainment for viewers when watching our thriller. For instance, by the theory covering entertainment it states ‘what you are consuming should give you enjoyment and also some form of ‘escapism’ enabling us to forget our worries temporally.’ In our thriller, we show emotions of frustration, tension, anger, stress, worry and aspects of hope, we presented all these different emotions to help distract audience members from their everyday routines and to concentrate on our thriller. By including this roller coaster of emotions it enables viewers to escape and enjoy the action of our product.

Social Interaction similarly plays a big role into getting our opening sequence spread wider between people as this media product produces ‘a topic of convocation between other people’ this can lead to sparking a debate. The interaction could seek between people due to our mysterious ending and the lack of knowledge of how our protagonist escapes, or if he does.

The opening sequence that I produced is a thriller and conveys most the conventions of a typical thriller. For instance, it involves tension and suspense throughout. Therefore our thriller is not a subgenre, although if it had to be categorized it would be most suited with an action thriller of a hybrid instead of a subgenre. In my opinion, the character ‘James Bond’ mainly influenced my idea to spring and similarly based on research other films have been influential also for my thriller. For example, ‘Saw’,  ‘The Maze Runner’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone’ shared and contributed some general conventions. However, I understand these films are horror movies and shares fantasy aspects; therefore, our target audience starts to become different and share different interests and opinions.

Another key contribute to appealing my target audience would be where I set my thriller. For instance, we located our thriller inside adding an immediate sense of mystery, as our audience doesn’t know where is it shot, adding instant suspicion and this can intrigue the audience. We wanted the audience to feel isolated as our actor feels, therefore we used dim lighting to force this questioning feeling. This is important as our thriller seeks aspects of creativity through the use of props and effects; for example, we used old vintage keys to show age era and creativity, which is one of our audience’s most popular interests and can be pleasurable for some. By including hobbies into our thriller, it immediately encourages, inspires and appeals to more of our targeted audience through their interest in creative subjects. Also, the use of props helped to involve and attract my target audience as they some enjoy violent scenes using weapons, for example, we used sounds of gun shots to show these universal aspects.

I found the narrative could also play a big role for reasons of how I attracted my audience. For instance, our thriller is based around a male protagonist with a very simple lifestyle and he is fighting to save his sister, as well as himself. However from trying to save his sister he has to deal with challenging consequences. Our opening sequence shows the actor trapped in a cell with keys enclosing around him and one padlock to try and escape; although time is short. From our story line consisting of an ongoing chase of emotions, action and thrill, we feel this would appeal to many viewers as there are so many feelings shown, each person will feel a connection or communication at same point in the film.

I wanted to cover media representation through the different social groups I am appealing to as I feel this attracts viewers. Gender and class and status are most suitably communicated and portrayed to audience members. For example, our character wears a clean, neat suit conveying his appreciation to high status and class and his superior actions. Similarly, the use of props is highlighted as we see in the opening sequence there are a numerous number of keys and a one padlock. We quickly see the protagonist realises he needs to find the correct key to escape from this dangerous situation, this shows he has been through a journey of good education as he intelligently works out the mission he has to complete. Therefore from focusing on the social classes represented, it helps us to attract our audience as some of our targeted audience can relate and compare their similar classes of society.

I wanted to include my thoughts as if the main character in our thriller would have been a famous, inspirational actor; my group and I believe the successful Dylan O’Brien from the Maze Runner would be most suited for the role. O’Brien demonstrates a secure captivating understanding of his role and how to act and respond in the challenging situation he is faced with.

In our opening sequence, we didn’t use any background music as we didn’t want to distract the action shown but we felt including different sound effects of gunshots and doors opening would be more effective. We also agreed silence can as powerful if not more to build tension and accurate suspense, quoting ‘silence is the most powerful scream.’ Also silence is considered of big impact especially to add tension to the scene. We increased the volume of our sounds to captivate the audience more and engage them with the reality of our sequence. We purposely wanted the sounds to be non-diegetic, as this would allow our targeted audience to start to question. By the audience questioning our sound choices, it attracts them to watch more as their curiosity and mystery will successfully build.

For our titling sequence, we produced information about who presented our thriller, which production company was involved and which star name was shown. We understand the risk of using a non-English title and studio as this can sometimes subvert to appealing and attracting our targeted audience. This is because young adults want to watch a film in which they feel and connection to and not one associating with foreign aspects. However, it can be a positive reflection as some of our target audience like the new, spontaneous attraction and challenging a unique, new language. The titles were presented in a clear manner to appeal our targeted audience, as if our titles were complicated and messy it could confuse viewers and give negative vibes.  A pure black canvas background was used with white bold writing in the center of the screen allowing it to be easy to read, attractive and clear.

We used quick cuts and rapid transitions to heighten the intensity of our exciting, thrilling and suspenseful thriller. By editing the shots to be quick, it makes audience members creep to the edge of their seat and this can appeal to our target audience as many quote ‘they enjoy the feeling of being on the edge.’ The style of our film is generally a fast paced convention but effectively builds increasing tension throughout to build a successful climax. Tension, suspense, frustration and enjoyment are all a major part of our target audience’s emotions and feelings and by making quick cuts and fast pace movements it appeals to them more easily. However, some aspects of our thriller are slower and decreased to even out the balance of our film and to allow our audience to breathe and take everything in that’s happened. I felt our thriller would only be successful if our editing skills and techniques are clean and detail is attended.

Lastly, I felt the need to remind myself of the typical conventions of a thriller. For example, low-key lighting, rapid cuts, scenes of violence, tense and suspenseful music, a villain or hero and diegetic sounds of breathing. Personally, my group and I used genre conventions, such as rapid scenes of fast paced action, a suspect of a protagonist showing aspects of diegetic sounds of breathing and violence. Firstly, my thriller shared similar conventions with the film 'Saw'. Although, I understand Saw is a horror but both films deal with unstoppable situations by selecting people who are guilty; this is similar to my thriller as both characters have to address a mind game.

Similarly, the film ‘The Maze Runner’ also shares similar conventions to my thriller through ideas of facial reactions and uncomfortable, difficult situations. However, in the scene from 'The Maze Runner', our genre conventions challenge theirs as there are many different characters filling the shot, although in my sequence I only include the focus of one character. Also my thriller challenged some genre conventions, for example, I didn’t include background music and low lighting because I felt it can still be effective without and didn’t need it.