Media Evaluation - Question Five

Question Five – How did you attract/address your audience?

We needed to have shots that would attract our audience to make them want to carry on watching our opening.  This is one of the first shots we see of Becky, the other girl that finds her friend’s body. This would build dramatic tension as irony takes place making the audience want to stop her before she finds the body and puts her in danger. The long shot suggests how big the room is compared to her showing that Scott, the antagonist could be anywhere, with the low key lighting hides what has actually happened. This would appeal to the audience as its showing that someone now knows about the death. Mise-en-scene is used here from the props, such as the table and the chairs to show how she was killed which is the first shot that the audience sees of the whole room, so the audience and Becky experience it together, even though the audience already know about the murder.

This image would interest our audience because of the hidden message. The dark lighting only shows a rope around her neck making the audience want to know who it is and why it is there. It creates mystery within the title as it is introducing the body from the top and towards the injuries which the only one we can see here is the bruises neck from the rope, made me Mise-en-scene of the make-up, making it look extremely violent and sinister just by focusing on the victim’s neck. To get to this shot a fade to zoom was used to introduce Becky’s name as well as let the audience see the victim, so the tension was not interrupted by introducing someone, it just carried on and was merged into the body. You can see the victims white top, giving the first sign of being pure and innocent, suggesting she was killed for no reason, again giving the audience questions to ask increasing suspicion within the opening scene.

We see here the first shot of the antagonist in the corner just by a long shot which is panning across the room. Just by the outline of the person the audience would know that this is the antagonist by the way that he is dressed with his hood above his head and his identity covered. The long shot makes him look like he is cornered, trying to give the opposite stereotype of this person, by looking innocent and scared within the way he is sat, however the way he is sat and that it is low-lighting, it suggests that after we have seen the body he did it. The darkness makes most of the room hard to see suggesting it all being secretive as well as not revealing much about the room. The long shot also shows the scale of the room, therefore showing how it would be hard to find them; therefore mystery is included as the audience do not know what location they are in. The panning shot shows that this figure is hard to miss and that he is trying to hide away from everything. Sound in this is high pitched like violins suggesting this is the peak moment of the opening revealing who the killer is even though we cannot see who it is.

 

The rope is the most shown prop through the opening as it is the first main thing we see which we follow into the room leading Becky into the room as well. The rope is attached to the protagonist’s neck, being the main prop that the audience has only seen which could have killed her. At this point in the opening there is low music playing slowly building up tension whilst slow-paced camera tracking shot is following the rope. Again, darkness is all we see other than the rope, giving clues to how she may have died. With the only lighting off the small torch makes the audience feel uncomfortable as they do not know what may jump out or something that is unexpected.

Here, close to the end is a high-angled shot of the body showing dominance over the protagonist. You see no movement with fast-paced music that shows where she is lying, how she is lying and the injuries she has, from this angle you can see one to her face and the top of her head. Lighting is really effective here as the body is the only thing that we can see with light reflected onto her making her white shirt stand out more emphasising the purity. There is newspaper under her head linking back to the beginning where the word ‘death’ was shown, giving the audience a clue about what could have happened to her and how she may have been linked to some news or other questions that the audience may want to ask.
These type of shots appealed to the audience as it gave them half a clue to solving what actually happened to her, as they can see the victim they will fell they will get the full explanation of what has happened, however they don’t therefore making them want to watch more to see if there are any shots which show more of what has happened to her.

From the questionnaires that we asked of what people like to see in a thriller which was:

·         Action

·         Tension

·         Action and adventure

·         Fast paced shots and music

I feel that after seeing our thriller we have managed to achieve these conventions that people wanted as certain parts in the opening had peak parts where a lot of tension was created. Our narrative included action when the protagonists friend got taken but we didn’t see where to and why so it gave the audience more problems that they wanted to know the answers to. Tension was created from the beginning with the help of the music by making a build up to seeing the body, following the rope, showing the injuries and hiding identities to keep the secretive theme continuous throughout the opening. We also used fast-paced music in the climax of the scene to reveal the body as well as show the injuries, with short snappy straight cuts to emphasise how many injuries she had. The opening ended on a fast-paced part with all the photos being shown therefore ending on a cliff-hanger with lots of question that the audience want to ask.

Our audience responded to our opening well, they did like the shots that were included and how the tension built up in some places more than others. The audience liked the name of our thriller as they chose it and it got mostly voted for, therefore it had a name that interested them. The audience said they liked the storyline as it was interesting however certain shots they wanted to see more, for example, the killer and more of how the death happened. They did say shots were blurry so if we were to do it again we would use a higher quality camera to get the full detail to make it more interesting for the audience.  

Our thriller opening was similar to ‘Psycho’ as the killers identities were hidden and the victims were women. Stereotypically the victims are usually female as they seem weaker, where our thriller did support that. Like ‘Psycho’ our thriller had a long opening before they saw the body building up the climax scenes both with dramatic irony to build up a lot more tension.

The use of music helped to attract our target audience as it made the scene fit together. We edited in a soundtrack of many different things such as violins and screeching’s added together to have that eerie sound of an uncomforting environment, building up a crescendo. With fast movements, when the girl got grabbed the music increased to build up that climax.
Between separate shots, there were a range of jump cuts and straight cuts which we edited together. The effects that we used were fade to black at the end to make it a smooth ending where our title ‘Innocence’ came up, however when the fast paced images came up at the end flashes of white and a fade to white came up to make sure the audience are aware of what had happened to the girl, it also helped link images and shots together to make sure continuity was in place for our thriller opening as well as making it look well-edited and lifelike.  
Props used helped us tell the story of what happened without any dialogue needed, especially the rope when it was dark lighting. Linked to lighting it helped us focus of specific shots which were more important than others, for example, the injuries, the antagonist and when Becky walked into the room making them stand out and for the audience to realise that it was a clue, for example the rope or an important part of the opening.
Costume helped attract our audience as we wanted to make it look lifelike and that it was genuine people, especially when Becky walked in, she looked like a normal girl in an extraordinary place, like Scott looking like a normal smart man with a hidden identity that killed an innocent girl, which the audience could tell because of her white top however her red shoes signifying blood and death.
The location was an isolated place adding mystery and suspicion enhancing what is going to happen inside and to the characters. 
Finally, the plot we created was something that we wanted to do something new, to ensure that our young target audience would enjoy watching something new that they would begin to enjoy. We wanted to audience to be confused at times to make them want to carry on watching it therefore would be interested throughout the film just by seeing the opening, therefore the conventions that we used we wanted to ensure it would be right to make sure our audience would be able to understand and relate to what the characters looked like, for example, modern, and that they are of the same age therefore it would be something that they are attentive in as they haven’t seen other thrillers that would be the same as ours.

Firstly, to find the correct audience for this thriller we needed to do some research of who would enjoy it. Before we decided on any ideas we made a Vox pop to ask people what their favourite thriller was and why they enjoyed it, also including if they were to make their own thriller what they would include in it and why. We asked the last question to see if it helped us with ideas so based on their answers we could come up with ideas that would make those types of people watch our thriller.

To also help with deciding what audience we would aim our thriller at, we looked at other thriller films like ours and what they would include, such as the types of weapons, and the shot types to give the sense of reality, so we could see if we were going to include any of what they had and see the age ratings as well as a specific audience that this would be aimed at so it would be niche audience however still could interest a lot of people if they watched something that they would not usually watch. For our vox pops we aimed it at people aged 16 and above to see if they liked the idea that we were going to go along with, which was successful, however most of them were male so we should have interviewed more females to see their opinion on our idea. Yet, when the opening thriller was created we did show females and they said they liked how our thriller was created and would be interested in  watching the rest of it, however mostly aimed at males. Interviewing our age helped us to see if the ideas that we had were the same ones that they had, making sure that our thriller was going to be successful.

From our audience, we asked question such as 'if you were to make your own thriller what would it include?’ The responses that were given:
Create suspense and tension
Explosions and car chases
Chase scenes, guns and fighting

From the responses that was given it shows that people who watch thriller genres know the typical conventions of what happens in thrillers therefore know what excites people to want to carry on watching the film.                               

2) The next question was 'what’s your favourite thriller, why?’
Fast and Furious - includes chase scenes
Psycho – the tension
Silent Hill - A lot of good characterisation.

3) The third and final question was 'What does you like to see in a thriller?'
Things that create suspense and tension
Action
Action and adventure 
Action - fast paced music

Just from asking them three questions we found out a lot of ideas that we can use to put them into our thriller. For example, it being fast paced with a lot of tension. We got a lot of successful responses to help us which gave us a lot of ideas of how we can meet the choices of what people look for in a thriller. As we found out from our audience, our thriller needs to be fast paced with a lot of music to help set the pace as well as terror of the film. People that we asked wanted something that was unexpected which would give thrill making it more enjoyable as it wasn’t a common expected convention, such as a crash or a loud bang, which is popular in thrillers.