Evaluation question number 5

How did you attract/address your audience?


We attracted our target audience with many tools, such as sound lighting and mis en scene. During postproduction I looked and listed all horror films which appealed to me personally, and tried to note down all the things that made me like it so much. As I found the main reason for my interest in the films where a good story line interesting and interesting characters. I also looked at films which were a great success in the film industry and also tried to make note of what made them so successful. Films such hostel, saw and final destinations were successful mostly with their target audiences because they knew exactly what their target audience wanted to see and what they expected in the beginning. I found someone dying or suffering in the beginning is a key convention which we just had o follow, which is present in a good 90% of horror /thriller films.

We then took all these notes into consideration and our hardest to add them into our film for it to appeal to our target audience too.
First of story line: we came up with at least 5 ideas before we came to the conclusion of having detention as our final story. Our first ideas were good however not good enough which was shown in our feedback. We came up with our final idea by trying to include as many interesting films as possible. We also changed and put a lot of thought into our characters, especially focussing on their weaknesses and strength so their way of death would be effective but most importantly made sense.
By doing this we received a lot of positive feedback even doe 10 percent of that feedback was mostly telling us things we should improve on.
When we got to post production this allowed us to know exactly how our characters were going to look act, and the way which rooms would look. (Mis en scene)
This would have attracted out audience, because the mood is very aerie from the beginning with the flickering light and everyone minding their own business, in this damp, dark room. The camera work also played a big part in attracting our audience. As I saw in many films that simple camera tricks or techniques created a mood or want for more. As I was in charge of the camera I tried to watch as many film openings as possible and see how they moved to their establishing shots. I viewed many such as close ups which gradually zoom out, pans, still shots and many more. Over all I saw many but I saw a technique which I found very effective. It was the camera panning down from a high angle and moving to the focus of the scene.
We interpreted this n our own way by having a black screen which faded into a flickering light on the ceiling(high angle) and then gradually moving down, however we didn’t do a straight cut to the kids in the classroom, from our panned down we panned across the classroom in the same shot. I had done this in a very slow manner to build the anticipation to see what is on the screen. I think this would attract our target audience as the pans could cause either eagerness or fear of what is to come on screen. Overall I was very proud of the first shot of the film.
In our film we had no speech, or onscreen sound. We thought the film would be effective and would look and sound better with a soundtrack. The music we used is very slow and rises at certain moments but very rarely, this was done to keep the beginning subtle and not too over the top. This was to keep big anticipation and heavy music to the end where it is more relevant. This was also a way in which I think we attracted ad addressed our audience by keeping them interested in the film. We took things from other films, such as surprises endings which would attract our audience as surprise endings are present in a lot of the films they would have probably already have watched. We also included films of vicious never ending circles, as the deaths only actually end when everyone is dead, no matter how much the victims try. However this was slightly twisted as the films we saw with never ending circles usually end with something sudden like someone popping out of nowhere. However in our film the geek hands the dark figure a book, and we are unaware whether the rest of the pages are filled with other victims or just blank. This causes suspicion which would again attract our audience if we wanted to make a part two of our film.

In the beginning of our film, we have credits which are red are slightly glowing. We originally wanted to have some kind of sharp writing which resembled scratches. Although this was not achieved we still had a similar look simply by using capital letters, in red to obviously symbolise death and blood. This would attract our audience in the beginning, by already knowing what to expect. Thanks to the colour of the letters and all of the things which are associated with that colour. Overall I think we done well while doing this but we could have improved on the lighting in the last few shots. As we indented to have a kind of dark atmosphere however it was a little too dark.