Evaluation Question 5

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

There are many ways we tried to attract our target audience; predominantly through the genre of our sequence. Thriller/Horror films are becoming increasingly popular amongst younger viewers so we thought it would be a good idea to look at the forms and conventions of these types of films. They generally consist of:

• A typical villain, lone psychopath
• Lots of murder victims
• Dark lighting, eerie music
  
• Suspense and enigma created from asking questions - enigmatic narrative
• Usually one person surviving, the villain is defeated

We knew we would have to stick to some of these, and break others, to create an enigmatic feel. It is through this idea, of repetition and difference, that we structured our sequence.

From researching this genre I found that typical fans of Thriller/Horror like the feelings of fear and isolation throughout the story. We tried to play on these fears by creating a shocking end to our sequence [when we realise he is the killer]. By doing this, we are advancing the 'Emotional pleasures' some fans get from watching these types of films. We specifically wanted them to feel a sense of fear/shock/disbelief when the audience see him take the knife from the drawer and when he glances in the mirror before he leaves.


[We got a few comments about how this scared some people during the screening, so it worked!]


We attempted to make a narrative enigma, whereby the audience’s questions could only be answered by watching the rest of the film; the mystery of the unknown is what captures their attention. This is an example of an 'Intellectual pleasure'. We tried to recreate this feeling amongst the audience by including a lot of montages of newspaper articles, again to create that sense of enigma. The audience read about the killings and try to piece all the information together just in time for the climax, and so are constantly trying to anticipate what will happen next.

We used a classic narrative structure, set as a continuous sequence, to convey the realism of the piece. Our intention was to create a believable sequence, whereby the audience are able to suspend their disbelief and get involved with the action.

All of these techniques seemed to work because 33 out of the 34 people we screened to said they would like to watch the rest of the film to find out what happens next!