Evaluation question 5: How did you attract your audience's attention?

My group attracted our audiences' attention in various different ways through the use of our media product. We made certain that we considered factors from the previous question in relation to who our audience is and also general aspects of the film world; taking into account what makes a good film. There are different conventions of the thriller genre used in our opening. This is effective in attracting our audience as it allows them to identify it as a mysterious and conspiracy thriller which instantaneously engages their human instincts to solve problems and uncover truths. As well as this, other features of our film such as; characters, locations and narrative are all utilised to attract our audiences' attention.

How does our thriller hold the audiences attention?

An abnormal situation as an instant opening

The first visuals for our audience is a blooded character strapped to a chair partnered with a pulsing heartbeat in an abandoned looking setting which instantly engages the audience where they begin questioning different things in relation to our film. Examples of the enigmas sparked within our audience are; how the character got there, why the character is there, who has placed him there, and what he has done that has resulted in him being there. This shows that we have immediately attracted our audience through exploiting their human instincts to question and solve this type of scenario in order for them to have full knowledge of the circumstances of the situation.

However, on evaluating the visual content of our film, I believe that through a compilation of multiple shots of this character strapped to the chair from a variety of different angles, accompanied with cinematic booms for each shot, we could have supplemented the attraction we have on our audience with impact so that their intrigue is to an even more heightened degree. This would be something to consider if we were going to remake our film or could work as an improvement for future work.

McGuffin

Another technique used to attract our audience is the immediate introduction of the McGuffin which is the envelope in our media product. Similar to the very opening of our film, this conjures up different enigmas about our film. The audience automatically question what could be the content within the envelope, why the envelope is relevant, who is "VOODOR," and what the motives are of the person who has the envelope. This attracts the audience as they become involved in the film and are beginning to follow the envelope in relation to what effect it has on the character who is given it in our opening. Furthermore, the fact that in our opening the character who is given the envelope views its contents but the audience do not get to, makes them eager to find out what the contents are and instantly provides reason for them to continue viewing our film.

Locations

We attracted our audience by using well known locations such as Canary Wharf. The audience are interested in locations such as this as it gets them thinking about different factors such as formal business being conducted, and the massiveness of the buildings envelopes the audience while present on the screen where they can feel overwhelmed. Also, based on research on thriller genre and of our audience, it is clear that the use of modern, urban settings such as this in thriller films works as a success where the thriller genre is the most known genre to utilise Urban settings such as this. Furthermore, using well known places such as this allows the audience to clearly identify the location of the action as they are most likely to know that Canary Wharf is in London.

Characters

Based on our audience research, we knew that our main target audience was predominately males and thus the three opening characters within our media text were all male; with a planned introduction of a female star later on in our film to appeal to a wider audience with love interest as well as sex appeal, and thus exploiting human nature. However, focusing on the majority of our audience which are young adult males, we attracted our audience by introducing three different male characters and this would attract our audience because there is a strong chance that the people making up our audience could relate to one of these characters and as a result attracts them to watch the rest of the film.

 

Movie Night

At our school, me and my group held a preview night where we gathered a congregation of students to watch a blockbuster film although we showed them our opening before the film started in order for them to give feedback about what they thought. However, we saw this as an opportunity to attract our audience to our film where they begin to question if we will be turning it into a full piece of media to produce, exhibit and distribute.

Social media

We further used social networking to attract our audience by uploading our film to different social networking sites used heavily by our young generation. This helped attract our audience as they were able to view our product without going to great extents to do so as we placed it on sources that our audience members are most likely to use in everyday life.