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

We attracted our audience by introducing many different ideas that they could of possibly wanted to hear and see within our thriller or a typical thriller film. As part of finding out what I could include in my opening sequence, I had to explore ways of which to attract the audience and how I would go about doing so. In order to help me, I looked at the work of successful thrillers of the same target audience as ours and took inspiration. I also made many different questionnaires and this helped with our research and this helped us cater for the specific public and find out what people of certain ages wanted in a thriller, therefore helping us decide on a final opening sequence.

From the questionnaires and the research from the other films I looked out I found that the concept of gore and murder was very high and popular with the audiences and the film industry. The conventional killing weapon was a knife so we decided to include this into our thriller. I also found out we could possibly use profanities and alot of gore. By looking at successful thrillers and taking inspiration from them, I was able to generate unique ideas and as a result of it I came up with ideas that I felt would attract the audience that I wanted. I was able to do so by adding young characters around the age of 15-18, therefore making them a big part of my thriller as the audience that I want to attract were young teenagers. This made the audience get attracted to our thriller, as we took into consideration their opinions ad their age and they felt that they could relate to the characters, this was an advantage a they then were able to get more engaged with the thriller.

I created a questionnaire which helped towards get the audiences opinion so I could adapt it into my opening sequence and therefore it would be more successful, as if the audience have their say in what goes into it, they will be more willing to want to watch it and then tell their friends about it. This means I would gain more views, which leads to more people talking about my final product so that we can achieve what a good reaction from our audience. The more views I had on my blog, the more likely I was appealing to the audiences of my age and that they showed an interest in my final opening sequence. Around 20% of people thought that the thing they wanted to see most in a thriller was suspense, and by adding thing such as low key lighting and realistic characters, then this would of attracted the audience as they felt like the thriller was real and that they were part of the film.

Researching through the age certificates and the BBFC allowed me to get a clear understanding of the do’s and don’ts of which I could include into my opening sequence that my group and I were working on. This therefore determined whether the final product was successful or not. The BBFC gave us examples of the appropriate age certificate for our film, and the successful films of around the 15-18 certificate, and when analysing them we saw what the public though by its profits and this obviously meant a successful thriller film. 

I also attracted the audience by the iconography we used and this included a knife as part of the iconography and I got this idea from scream 2. I used a knife as I felt this was a widely used weapon that was conventional to a thriller and would portray fear and tension to most of my audience. By gathering this primary and secondary it helped to assist my group and me with an outline as to what targets I need to meet in order to gather our audience and attract them into watching my final product so it is then successful.