Evaluation 5- How did you attract/address your audience?

How did you attract/address your audience?

When considering the numerous storylines which we could have included in our opening thriller sequence, we decided that the most important aspect was to ensure that we included the typical conventions of a thriller in order to meet the thriller criteria. This therefore ensured that we would meet the needs of the audience interested in the thriller genre, as they would expect to see certain conventions, even if we were creating just the opening sequence. We therefore had the aim of drawing out the suspense and having high levels of tension in order to engage our audience and make them wonder what is going to happen next. We aimed to use a wide range of camera angles in order to show our character from different angles and aspects, so the audience could have a clear insight into what exactly was happening in each frame, meaning that we avoided repetition and each frame gave the audience something different to keep them interested and engaged.

I asked a range of my peers and family members to say what they liked and disliked about our final opening thriller edit.

 

Here I have summarised my audience feedback from the final edit:

Listening to audience feedback after each edit allowed for my group and I to tailor our opening thriller sequence to what our audience wanted in order to produce the best opening thriller sequence we could. This should allow us to attract an audience by including a narrative enigma, and an interesting storyline which included conventions of a thriller to engage our target audience. Our actor's real age is 18, and so his character fits perfectly into this our target market age bracket, making it more relatable and enabling the audience to identify with our character and attract audiences. However, it must be noted that the majority of people this age are not rapists or murderers and so it is an unlikely characteristic of this age group.

 

According to audience feedback, overall our opening thriller sequence really engaged and excited the audience, which is a huge relief. In regards to sound, we used this to enhance each frame. Throughout the opening sequence, we had non diegetic music which was very eerie to set the atmosphere to attract the audience initially. Then, ambient sound was something the audience identified as doing well, such as the shower sound at the beginning which could suggest that our character was obsessed with being clean, or that he has just been involved in a strange act with a girl and so he was cleaning off the evidence, all of which are questions which should be going through the audience's head. The voice recoding was also successful at addressing the audience as it enforced the name of the next victim- Daisy, adding even more tension to the narrative. A slight negative of the voice recording was that it didn't match our actors voice exactly, the timing was slightly out, but it isn't too noticeable and our audience didn't notice this. This is something we concluded as a group.

The audience commented on the seamless editing- how professionally the footage had been put together. The black and white effect on the footage creates an eerie feel for the audience, presenting the storyline as being 'dark' and having connotations of death and suffering. The black and white idea was from research and questionnaires completed before the filming of our opening thriller sequence, all of which helped to attract the audience as that is what they wanted to see. As well as this the wide variety of camera angles also engaged the audience significantly, as a different shot and fast paced editing helped to keep the audience from getting bored, as something different is presented throughout each frame.

The audience commented on how difficult it was to chose something for my group and I to improve on. However, if they had to choose something, it would be for the production company titles to be improved, as we used a video and didn't use Adobe After Effects. This could have made our opening look slightly more professional, however my group and I were happy with the look we achieved.