attract our audience

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

2. Our audience and film
research
We did several methods of research which included interviews with different social groups and also used a
questionnaire in order for us to understand the positive and negative of viewers opinions upon zombie films. It also
enabled us to understand more about our target audience and we asked about their demographics, from these it
mean that we could include external factors which our audience would enjoy.
Question we asked:
• Name, Age and Occupation?
• What do you enjoy about zombie films and why?
• Is there anything in particular that you think could be added to the zombie genre?
• Do you think the zombie genre is better as a hybrid or on it's own? What other genres would you like to see
incorporated into the zombie genre?
• What is your favourite film within the genre?
• What character types would you like to see in zombie films?
• Is there any specific zombie film openings you like and why?
• Is there any outdated elements in zombie films that you think shouldn't be used anymore and why?
• Is there anything you dislike in zombie films?
From these question we found out that our audience would like to see more strong female characters as well as, a
variation into the character ages and types within zombie films. They also agreed that in zombie film people should
avoid having generic zombie behaviour traits as this ruins the realism affect and wouldn’t be able to compete
successfully with more modern zombie films such as ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ and ‘World War Z’.
With these concepts in mind we suggested an idea which used both of these concept which were prominent from our
research, to then produce our final storyboard draft. After this we pitched our ideas to a group, we then received
feedback on these ideas which we took on board when producing our media piece.
We decided to create our film mainly through the use of the gratifications theory as this mean that we could focus on
our audience as we understood that our audience were going to interoperate and integrate different concepts in their
own way rather than watching passively. For example we transformed several of the zombie character circumstances
so that they end up looking into the character and in turn create a sense of conversation between the zombies and
our audience.

3. Casting
 We choose cast members which were from the same social class background as our target audience, middle class,
we did this because through such demographics as being the same we believed this could mean that our target
audience could relate and understand certain mannerisms. We did our interviews to try and understand more
about what our target audience wants from zombie films we found out that they wanted zombie films that involve
a range in characters variation because they are much more interesting as they cover different aspects of
behaviour. They also felt that there should be a wider range of zombie characters such as children 'old' zombies,
this also meant that not only our Target audience could relate to the characters within my piece, so when we
included such characters we generally presented them as positive so that they stood out and our audience could
understand they we had developed generic zombie conventions of characters through both including typically
zombie characteristics and in their age, as well as including those whom we added as we discovered our audience
would much rather enjoy.
 We also casted actors to whom were of a normal appearance so that they wouldn’t draw any attention away from
the zombies in each scene, so none of our characters were made to look anything special or attractive in order to
allow for the audience to concentrate upon the zombies and the details into their make-up. We took such
interviews and questionnaires from people to understand what they liked and disliked about zombie films in order
to let us adjust our zombie film to suit a wide range of viewers, this research told us that they would prefer to see
scary zombies which actual make them feel scared when watching a film rather then through possibly a hybrid of
genre and including comedy.

4. Plot/Storyline
We plan to attract our audience through using:
 Our films content- The use of enigma within our piece outlines and intrigues our audience as the zombie genre
itself is something to which is fairly new to the film industry and is also a concept which as we ourselves don’t
know anything about, this enabled us to explore and experiment with our story line so this meant we could
incorporate aspects and points from our target audience research into our films plot. Point such as strong
females leading characters we decided to include, however, although these were our main characters we used
enigma and challenged the generic convention of introducing the key characters at the beginning and haven’t
included them within our opening as this will make the audience want to know who this film is going to follow
and will then what to watch the rest of the film.
 Another way in which we plan to intrigue our audience is through the use of constant action as the entire
opening of our film is showing all of the evidence from the zombie attacks. Additionally, this was supported
through the way we edited certain aspects of the zombie attacks, this included having flashes mixed with the
ellipsis transitions, as well as, the use of a static screen in-between the transitions of scenes to create a tension
building aspect, it was from our inters that we understood that more people enjoy a zombie films when they
involve building of tension and panic.

5. Name
 Another way in which we intrigued and attracted our audience was through the use of our titles.
The main way we used titles to attract our audience was through the way in which they both
entered the scene and then left the scene. The appearance of these titles we believed to be a
crucial contribution towards us creating an effectively convincing opening, several of our titles
appeared through the intermittence of static screens, we did this because it helped each scene to
flow well into one another without making the titles feel to fake and inappropriate against the
background footage. The majority of the titles faded in and faded out after a short period, however
our films title, ‘Immunity’ didn’t appear until the end when that was the last thing the audience
would see. We believed this to be a creative use of title to intrigue the audience as throughout the
opening each action had been building tension up to this climactic point where all you can see is
the title of the film, we believed this to be both impacting and creative for making the audience
want to watch more.
 Additionally, we choose a font which could stand out against the ranging of different lighted
background, so that although the audience could clearly read and see the titles they weren’t so
distracting as to take the attention away from the footage.

6. Setting/location
 The use of such settings as the park means that the audience can relate to such scenes at it is a
common location to which they can identify themselves with, especially as our target audience are
from a middle class background this would grab their attention
 Through the use of these settings it has meant that our film opening creates the sense of not only
the concept of realism but also controversy escapism as they watch a location they can relate to
with this crazy virus and how these zombies change and turn their world up side down. Not only
this but it also educates the audience into how these characters feel as their actions completely
change when the zombies come into contact with them, and suggests how the characters later on
in the film will have to change and adapt in order to survive, this makes the audience interested
and want to know who and how the characters are going to change.
 We in turn used several settings which are unclear and could be interpreted in many different
location, so rather then relating zombies with a specific type of places within our piece we decided
to makes several of our shooting settings vague so that the audience could not only be affected by
the concept of escapism but also impacyted by the affects of enigma.

7. Genre
 We choose a genre which could guarantee a successful return in sales and audience as this genre doesn’t release as many
film our annually in comparison to other associated horror genre including thriller and horror.
 There are several aspect of a generic zombie film which we used immediately in order to draw our audiences attention such
as the iconographic appearance of blood throughout the opening, although several of our interviews showed that some
preferred less gore in zombie film we decided that our piece in order to guarantee some success we would keep to certain
conventions like the use of blood as we know these have been successful in other zombie films.
 We additionally, included a generic piece of narrative from the zombie genre of including reporters as we believed that
having such narrators it introduces the concept of the panic and disaster of a zombie apocalypse through something our
target audience could relate with. From our interviews with our target audience of males over 35 we discovered that they
enjoy watching the news on television as they enjoy both the factual information and seeing the physical evidence, which in
our piece we also provide.
 We also choose to include another generic part of a zombie film which was having lots of action and sense of danger, we
decided to do this because it meant that we could create a sense of building up to a climax when the film finally cuts off and
all you can hear it a loud heart beat. Through having action through it clearly keeps the audiences attention on the screen as
there is so much going, so much that its almost disorientating, this disorientation we hope to suggests this as being a
reflection of both the philological mind set of the zombies now that they’ve been infected as well as, the corruption of the
planet as this virus takes a hold of everyone and turns things upside down. So in relation to Barthes code of action we can
see that these uses of generic convention like inclination of events means that the narrative could be advanced and inferred
differently from there reporters, and help in creating a more enigmatic introduction to our pieces storyline.

8. Advertisement
 As a key part of my marketing in distribution I would calculate my advertising carefully such as
through YouTube, this is because YouTube is an extremely popular website which people all across
the globe use, both businesses’ and members of the public. It’s through YouTube that I think my
film opening will truly get people attention as went hey see the advert for it on YouTube they only
have to click and it automatically sends them directly to its reciprocating trailer, it’s through such
simple access as this that people will notice and want to watch my film on a high demanding basis.
 Another way my piece may be advertised is through such magazines as Empire and Film where they
specify in promoting and talking about different, new films. This I because through the research we
did about our target audience we understood that they enjoyed reading magazines and
newspapers on a regular basis so through advertising in a magazine means that our audience will
find our film next to some of the other professional mainstream films, but some of these films
might have the same target audience as ours and might deterrent people from watching ours and
instead watching another zombie film, but as we choose a film from such a rare genre the
probability of this is extremely low and hence competition would be a serious probably for our
piece.