When casting actors for their film, the filmmakers considered the demographics of their target audience, who were under 35, and cast actors of a similar social class. This included casting a 16-year-old to play the mother and a 5-year-old to play her child. Throughout the film opening, they use conventions like low-key lighting and a slow editing pace to attract audiences to the genre of psychological horror. They also included a role reversal with strong female characters and no male figures to appeal to audiences who wanted to see this. The plot of a child going missing in an abandoned house engages audiences through mystery while differing from other films through its lack of male characters.

1. How did you attract/address your audience?

2. When casting the actors to play the characters in our film we had
many things to consider. For example we had to take into
consideration the demographics of our target audience as we wanted
the actors to be of a similar social class and be in the age range as the
target audience. (Below the age of 35) We ended up casting a 16 year
old female to play the mother as she had previous acting experience
and she is around the same social class as the primary target audience.
The young girl we cast to play the child is 5 and she also is of the same
social class as the target audience. We also had to take into
consideration how we would represent different social groups. We
tried to keep the actors perception of this neutral so different people
can relate to them.

3. Throughout our film opening we have clearly met generic conventions
of our genre, for example use of low key lighting to create enigma.
These conventions help us to attract a mainstream audience to watch
our film, inclusive of our target audience. When we did our target
audience interviews we discovered that people wanted to see role
reversal so that there were strong females and weak males as it is very
stereotypical of horror films to represent females in a negative way
and males in a superior positive way. We decided that we wanted
women to be represented as superior to males so we decided not to
include a male figure in our film opening. This unique role reversal will
help attract a bigger audience to watch our film.

4. The plot for our film opening is very enigmatic as the lack of dialogue
makes the audience curious as to what is going to happen for the rest
of the film. In some respects the plot for our film is stereotypical for
psychological horrors for a child to go missing in an abandoned house
and for a relative to go out looking for them in the dark. However our
film has no males in as mentioned before. This makes our film different
to others as it shows that women can be strong without males. This
links into the Barthes Narrative Codes as the action of the child going
missing keeps the audience interested at all times as they wonder what
is going on, therefore remaining engaged.

5. Editing – The editing of our piece is fairly slow paced at the beginning, allowing the audience to get a feel
for the film. This is conventional for horror films as the pace of the editing tends to become more fast
paced as the films storyline develops.
Camera – We decided to use a variety of shots in our film opening so the audience could see from different
perspectives the desperation of the mother. This will attract the audience to want to watch more, as it isn’t
the same in other films.
Sounds – We used tension building music and Foley sounds in order to create an atmosphere throughout
our piece. This would also help to grasp and maintain the audiences attention.
M-E-S – We used realistic costumes in our film opening so that the characters were believable and it would
be easy for the audience to immerse themselves into the action, linking to the escapism from the uses and
gratifications theory. This would help to address the target audience as it also shows the social class of the
characters. The lighting was very low key which is a generic convention of horror, we did this to emphasize
the mothers vulnerability and the child's superiority. We decided not to use make up on our actors as we
wanted them to look as natural as possible to fit in with the escapism our audience members wanted to
find. We also used minimal props as we didn’t want the audience to be distracted from our main storyline
and the action on screen. We decided to set the majority of the film in a derelict house as we felt it was
very spooky and would make the audience wonder why the child was hiding there, keeping them
immerged in our film.

6. The name of our film, Heart of Innocence is a contradiction of the child
briefly shown in our film opening because later on it is revealed that
she has been possessed. The logo of the film has red bloody
handprints surrounding it so it many encourage audience members to
watch it as it is intriguing. The font was also used in American Horror
Story which adds to the scariness we wanted to create.

7.  In conclusion, I feel that through these elements we have addressed our
target audience and tried to attract a new audience. By doing so we are
increasing the amount of people who are going to be watching our media
product if we were actually distributing our film opening.