How did you attract/address your

audience?Question 5

Target audience

• Throughout the pre-production process of our film we decided that our film’s primary target audience would be males between the ages of 18 and 25 with an interest in thriller films and our films secondary target audience would be males and females between the ages of 18 and 25

• During our target audience research we found that males consume more thriller films than females however both enjoy different aspects of the genre. Males tend to prefer the audience pleasures of suspense and crime and female viewers enjoy unravelling the film and deciding for themselves who is the antagonist of the production

Target audience research

• In order to appeal to these aspects enjoyed by the target audience, we needed to create a narrative that fulfilled these audience enjoyments

• To do this, our opening needed to possibly introduce the antagonist and successfully create tension and suspense through reveal some narrative that a crime has been committed

• We carried out one to one interviews during the pre-production process that helped us to find our target audience’s likes and dislikes and what they expected to see in a crime thriller film

Target audience research

• These interviews helped us to find out that we needed to emphasise where the two narratives come together at the end in order to create suspense and set the mood for the whole film

• We took this advice into consideration made over 50 seconds of our film opening showing where the two characters met. We used a number of different shots and quick cuts in this time in order to really build suspense to the end of the opening giving the audience the need to want to see more of the film

Audience pleasures

• There are many reasons an individual may want to consume a film. One of these reasons is that they get experiences they enjoy from watching a film. A crime thriller genre conventionally has two many audience pleasures:

1. Visceral Pleasures – This is when an audience is attracted to the physical effect they get from watching a film; for example some consumers may get these visceral pleasures through ‘ jumping’ or crying at aspects of a film opening. At the end of our opening we tried to create this effect by the antagonist throwing a black jacket at the camera in the POV of the girl who is about to be abducted. When showing our target audience this film afterwards, some did jump at shock at this moment of the opening which shows us that we successfully created visceral pleasures throughout our production

Audience pleasures:

2. Another experience that some target audiences enjoy in crime thriller films are Intellectual Puzzles. This is when the audience gets pleasure from ‘working out’ the mystery of the narrative. Usually in crime thrillers, this occurs when the audience has to figure out who the antagonist is alongside the protagonist or characters of the film. As we only created 2 minutes of a film opening, this was difficult to do however we tried to create this audience pleasure by the audience having to ‘work out’ what the antagonists plan was – we used the pin board as a prop so the viewer would have to work out for themselves that the antagonists plan is to abduct the girl

How TA relates to characters

• We used two characters throughout our production. These were two young adults aged between 15 and 19 meaning that they are around the same age as our target audience. From our research we found out that viewers relate to characters that are of a similar age to them as it makes them think what they would think and do in the same situation. We dressed the characters in clothing that was as brief as possible (black jeans, black top, red cardigan, black shoes) making their outfits more similar to what our target audience would wear – again making it easier for the viewers to relate to the characters

Relate to production

• Conventionally, a lot of crime thrillers are set in a town/city where crime was more occurring. We subverted this convention and filmed our production in a more rural village. This meant that a more local audience would be able to relate to the films setting which would engage their enjoyment better

Conclusion

• Overall, I think we did a good job of using our findings from our research to produce a film opening that would attract our targeted primary and secondary audiences. We did this in many ways from relating our characters and narrative to our audience and creating audience pleasures through elements of our production