This document discusses how the film attracts and engages its audience through various techniques. It uses flashbacks and a disequilibrium in the narrative to raise questions for the audience. It ends on a cliffhanger revealing the antagonist's face briefly to create intrigue. Technical elements like low-key lighting, diegetic sound, and fast editing are used to draw focus and create suspense. Intertextual references to films like Inception and The Dark Knight are meant to appeal to the target audience. The audience is positioned in both the protagonist and antagonist's perspectives to allow them to choose sides and feel engaged.

1. EVALUATION Q5: How did you attract/address
your audience?

2. How does your opening entice your audience to keep watching?
Our thriller shows our skill to engage and attract our audience effectively, we demonstrate this ability in
various ways. For example through narrative, mise en scene, technical codes and characters.
Firstly, one way we attract our audience is through narrative, through techniques such as we use flashbacks
and challenge the concept of an equilibrium. We use flashbacks to enhance the narrative and give the
audience some surrounding knowledge on the character, creating a more relatable relationship between the
two. We use a flashback of Josh running frantically which then switches back to him rolling his head around,
what this does for the audience is raises questions engaging them and immersing the audience deep into the
story and the character.
This is a screenshot taken from our
film ‘Torpidity’ displaying Josh
sprinting, at this point the audience
doesn’t know why he is running;
whether it’s away from someone or
after someone. This immediately
instigates a variety of questions in
and around the character.
The flashbacks purpose is demonstrate that there is a clear history between the two characters and that their
history is dark, this links in with our use of a disequilibrium due to the fact that the power relationship between
Josh and Tom is already unbalanced. The significance of use using this narrative technique is that it shows the
characters have passed history, thus raising questions and engaging the audience. The more that we engage our
audience and make them ask questions the more they want to keep watching.
Another way in which we entice our audience is by ending on a cliff hanger, we see Tom’s identity for the first
time at the end of our sequence, his face lit up by diegetic candle light, he then blows the candle out instigating
the beginning of our thriller. By revealing Tom’s identity for a split second it keeps the watcher engaged and
enticed as it creates tension and suspense because of the mystery. In addition to this, the significance of only
showing his face for a couple seconds breeds a sense of ambiguity into our film. Also, in terms of mise en scene,
the use of candle light creates a warm and raw feeling as rather than it being a sharp artificial light it’s a soft
candle. Furthermore, the candle coincides with some of the general conventions of the psychological thriller
genre as it only lights up a certain part of Tom’s face.

3. How will your use of technical codes engage your audience?
Although I am drawing on this certain screenshot various times, I must comment on it again as it is an
extremely significant and important shot. We purposively use very low key, soft, chiaroscuro lighting in
this shot as it draws focus onto Toms face and identity, which was something that we wanted to focus on.
This is because up until now in our thriller opening we haven’t seen the antagonists face, so when the
audience do we made sure they focused all of their attention on his cold expression. Furthermore, the use
of a low angle shot puts Tom in the power position, this coincides with how we portrayed him in the
pervious sequence.
Another technical code we used to engage our audience is sound. In this certain shot we silence the
underscore and focus on the diegetic sound of the candle being blown out, the reason for this being that it
creates suspense as the audience notices that all non diegetic sound is gone. The significance of this is
that it draws attention onto Tom’s character as he fills the shot and the soundscape. This also ties in with
the representation we wanted to create of Tom, that he is dominant, so we displayed this by making him
fill the shot and sound.
Another technical code we used to engage the audience is editing, we used fast paced cuts to create an
adreline pumping sequence. We used this in the tracking shot of Josh sprinting, the use of fast paced
editing and flashbacks creates ambiguity and mystery. It also raises various questions such as, ‘Why is he
running?’ ‘Who is he running from?’. By using this style of editing it engages the audience and immerses
them into the film.

4. How do inter-textual references attract your audience?
In terms of similarities to other films we have many, we took inspiration for our camerawork,
lighting, sound and mise en scene from various films and TV shows. One example is the film
Inception, we took inspiration from the close up of Leonardo Di Caprio opening his eyes. We
recreated this key piece of camerawork as we feel it created a sense of disorientation and ambiguity
as the audience can only see the characters face and not his surroundings. Although we took
inspiration from it we didn’t copy it, we took our own spin on it, in terms of lighting we made sure it
was low key lighting which would compliment the feeling of disorientation and mystery from the
actual camerawork. As Inception is an extremely popular film that targets the same age group as our
film, by recreating this shot we felt it would appeal to the audience and create attraction for our film.
Another film that we took inspiration from that would attract our audience is ‘The Dark Knight’,
Christopher Nolan’s second instalment of the trilogy appealed immensely to our target audience so
we felt by referencing it in our film would be very successful. We took large inspiration from the
interrogation scene in ‘The Dark Knight’, which I have referenced several times before in my blog
posts, we recreated that scene in ‘Torpidity’. We referenced it in the sequence where Josh is in an
unknown room with very low key lighting riddled with fear and uncertainty, this sequence is very
effective as is creates immense suspense and tension.

5. How is the audience positioned?
In terms of which characters shoes the audience are placed in, we chose to put them in
the shoes of both characters, this would allow the audience to choose sides and make
them more engaged in our film. Initially, the audience are largely in Josh’s shoes, as we
see flashbacks of him, the camera also seems to follow him presenting him as important.
Josh dominates most of the screen time which would normally depict him as dominant
and in power, however Tom’s character is the superior one in the opening sequence by
not appearing on camera. The position of the audience switches to Tom through the sue
of the POV shot, of him following Josh. The significance of this is that we are supposed
to feel worried for Josh as we see Tom coming up behind him. We then switch to Josh’s
POV, this increases the films appeal as it gives two different sides to the film, the
audience is allowed to feel sympathy and anger too which ever character they want.