Question five of evaluation

1. Question Five: How
did you attract/
address your
audience?

2. How does the narrative engage your audience?
Our thriller has a open structure leaving the audience wanting to find out what
happens in the film, this is an effective way of engaging with the audience because this
way we are able to leave them wondering what next happened. This is done by the
final scene of our actor Catlin lifting up the garage door to reveal Laurie's face resulting
in the audience wonder is there a possible love connection? Is she saving him? Did she
kidnap? All of these possible endings make our audience think.
Our thriller uses the equilibrium technique of one specific character disrupting the
balance, therefor the middle of what would be an entire film is spent trying to re gain
the once well known balance of everything being normal. It is often an antagonist that
disrupts the norm of balance in a film, especially in a thriller and then the protagonist
spend the film trying to take vengeance and balance.
Another way we have engaged our audience is by using an enigma, this means that the
plot is a puzzle and the audience watches the film while trying to piece the plot
together. We have used this by not making it obvious who or even why Laurie has been
kidnapped, we have left this to interpretation. This is an effective technique because if
the audience has an idea in their head about who they think has kidnapped him and
then they are wrong this could be seen as a plot twist.

3. – Another effective technique we have used to attract our audience is by using a cliff
hanger at the end of the opening. The last scene feature Laurie's face still tied up in
the unknown location by an unknown antagonist and then cuts to a blank screen.
This attracts the audience because this leave the audience wanting to know what
happens to him, therefore the audience would want to watch the rest of the film,
this is the goal of any film opening.
Last scene from
our opening; the
cliffhanger.

4. How does your opening
entice your audience to
keep watching?

5. – We keep our audience watching by our including a cliff hanger which creates
suspense in our thriller opening, it also creates a sense of ambiguity by not
knowing what is going to happen. This is a common thriller technique in the film
industry as it adds suspense to your thriller and the audience is left wanting ti
know more.

6. Which aspects of mise-en-
scene will your potential
audience identify/ empathize
/ recognize with?

7. – As we are small film makers we have filmed in local areas such as Brundall train
station, therefore as we are hoping to attract a local audience they would be
able to recognize with the local surroundings. This may want audiences to watch
our film as knowing aspects of our mise-en-scene have been filmed in local well
known areas.

8. How do your characters
engage our audience?

9. – Our audience will be able to engage with our
characters as we have used actors that are a
similar age to our target audience, which is
16-26, therefore this makes our film much
more relatable to our audience and creates a
connection from character to audience.
– Another way our characters are able to
engage with our audience is through costume,
our ‘hitman’ wears Nike shoes and grey skinny
jeans therefore making the costume easy to
engage with our audience. They are able to
recognize the brand and therefor grasp that
they are a similar age through the shoes. This
is because Nike is a very popular brand to be
worn by young men.
Here the audience can see the Nike branding of the shoes worn
by our actor, Thomas Keeble

10. How will your use of
technical codes engage
your audience?

11. – The way we have edified our thriller opening could engage our
audience as we never show some characters face, this entices the
audience and makes them interested to find out who those
characters are. For example our ‘hitman’ never reveals his face
leaving our audience wanting to know the motive behind the
kidnapping and what the character looks like. By not showing his
face we engage the audience to see a more mysterious character.
– Our lighting always being behind our antagonist, through the use
of backlight its prevents light being seen on our characters face.
Therefore casting shadows over his body. We used the same
backlight lighting with our femme fatale character, by using card
head lights we were able to create the effect of only seeing the
silhouette of her body; creating this effect of the audience wanting
to know more about her character.
– Another way we have used a technical code to engage with our
audience is with the point of view shot, this positions our audience
in our victims shoes. This particularly engages with the audience as
they are positioned to feel the same as our victim. This creates a
feeling of more sympathy and interest in our main character.

12. How do intertextual
references attract you
audience?

13. – Our chosen inter textual
reference was ‘Sin City’ from
2005. We based our femme fatale
character off the femme fatale in
the opening scene. The audience
we have chosen to target which is
art house may know this film and
make the connection through the
use of red in one of final scenes.
This connotes suggestions danger
and anger to the audience and
thus engaging with the audience
as it may hint to the plot of the
film.

14. How is the audience
positioned

15. – Our audience is positioned along side the
protagonist through the use of point of view
shots and other camera work techniques such
as positioning our villains in a negative light
through never revealing their faces and being
in constant back light which creates an air of
mysterious and literal and metaphorical
darkness around them.