Evaluation question five –How did you attract/address your audience?

Emma Irwin

Research into audiences for other thriller films

• We did research into the different audiences for different films. Because our film is a thriller, we did research into other thriller films that were very much like ours. For instance, our film is like ‘Secret window,’ and ‘Black swan.’ We thought this as they are both about the protagonist going crazy and think that they are seeing things. Our film is very similar as the protagonist in ours thinks she keeps on seeing a dead nurse and her dead boyfriend everywhere. We included the iconography of thriller films such as blood to help the audience understand what genre our film is.

Secret window• The certificate for ‘Secret window’

is a 12. We looked on the BBFC website about what makes a film a 12 certificate. We thought that having a 12 certificate film would allow the audience to be a wider range of people. Because ‘Secret window’ is a popular film, we thought that taking ideas from it – such as the typography on the title sequence would help the audience be able to link our film to it and begin to understand the genre of our film.

Black swan

• ‘Black swan’ is a 15 certificate. We thought that making our film a 15 would minimise the target audience. We researched into the tension used in ‘Black swan,’ and the music in it to build the scene to a climax. Impact cuts were used to scare the audience. This is a convention of a thriller genre and would still be able to be put in a 12, so we used the idea. As well as this, the lighting in the film was dark in places to foreshadow that something bad will happen. We liked the idea of this for the memory scene as it also juxtaposed what was happening and added to the mise-en-scene. And also in her bedroom because it created a grim mood to the film.

Have you reached your target audience?

• We did research into the BBFC website to understand what conventions of a 12 certificate we would need to use to attract the target audience. We also linked our film to other well known thriller films to gage the audience’s attention. When we released the plot to our film, we released a questionnaire to ask the audience some questions about what they thought our film would be like and what we should include. We asked our target audience and also other people who might want to see our film what they would like to see. We took the advice from the questionnaires and thought about the sounds and editing we should use in our product. As you can see, there is a wide variety of ages from 15 – 30. This was very helpful to us as it was beneficial in helping us understand what they were all expecting to see from different perspectives. From the advice we were given back, we had a wider understanding of what would appeal more to our audience.

What did we take from the audience feedback?

We used the idea of fast paced editing including impact cuts at the end of our product. We agreed with what the audience said as it helped build the tension of the film and finally build to the climax. We thought using the editing techniques that the

audience thought were appealing for our particular genre would be a benefit as they

would understand what genre our film would be. We also asked the audience about what sound and music should be featured in our film. The main theme was dramatic or something to build tension. We agreed with what the audience said. As well as this, we researched into films such as ‘Psycho’ which has very iconic thriller music to build up the tension. We needed eerie music to build the tension and dramatic sounds and music for impact cuts. We included a heartbeat sound effect that was part of the iconography for a thriller genre to make the audience feel closer and more connected to the protagonist.

Second audience questionnaire

After we had completely finished our film and uploaded it to YouTube, we shared it on social media sites such as Facebook to allow more people to watch it and also to get feedback from a variety of different audiences. We asked them about what had been successful and what improvements we could include to make our thriller better and more enjoyable. Again there was a range of different people’s feedback all from different ages from 12 – 18.

Audience feedback for finished product

• In the first lot of feedback we got, one of the improvements was to make the story line easier to understand. We took the advice and from our second lot of results we got all YES for the question ‘do you think our story line is easy to follow?’ This shows our improvement. Overall, I think that our film was successful and reached the audience’s expectations.

From the questionnaire, the audience clearly understood what genre our film was. We used the iconography for a thriller film and also used fast paced editing to add to the mise-en-scene. According to the audience about what went well, they said it was easy to follow, made sense, there weren’t too many characters to concentrate on and the sound in it helped give the product a good thriller effect. Overall, we took the feedback from our first questionnaire and used it to make our film look scarier and more of a thriller.

What was less successful about our film?

• There were also some improvements that the viewers suggested. Some of these suggestions were to explain the nurse’s part more in the film, include some more sound effects to build tension and to possibly shoot some scenes at night to create a better scary atmosphere. I think that these are all reasonable improvements, and if our film was continued further, we would definitely aim to incorporate the ideas and improvements into our product. Other than that, I believe that our film was successful and met the target audience’s expectations – considering it was only an independent film.