Evaluation Activity 4 (Ciara - 4354)

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our film opening would be people over the age of 15, in particular, those within the age of 15 to 25. This is because the characters in our opening are in the same age bracket. 

AGE AND GENDER OF AUDIENCE:

In our previous research, we had two possible certificates for our opening, 15 and 18. However, after filming we decided that our film opening would have a certificate of 15. This is because it hints at violence and danger, but isn't brutal enough to be an 18. 

From my past audience research, I interviewed 2 females aged 17 and two males aged 16. Their feedback allowed us to understand what is popular, which would be similar for most teenagers. I found that the main aspect we needed to focus on was creating tension. By doing so, we would successfully grip our audience, which is what they are looking for in a film.

As you can see, I choose to interview both male and females in order to find out if there are any difference between the two of them, and if our film needed to cater for a specific gender, rather than both. However, their answers to our questions were surprisingly similar, therefore we know our film would be suitable for both genders. We ensured the conventions of our thriller opening were versatile as we used both a female victim and a villain. 

SIMILAR THRILLER FILMS? 

'House at the end of the street' has a female victim, similar to how our film does. This conforms to the stereotype of a female victim being vulnerable. As shown in the above, we can see both characters are scared of their current situation. 

We decided to use another female character as our antagonist, which challenges the stereotype. We felt like this would be more interesting and entice a wider range of people to watch our film. 'The Hunger Games' similarly uses a female main character, but one who is strong and confident, which also breaks the stereotype of females being powerless and exposed. Furthermore, we thought using a knife as a prop would also engage the audience more- we got this idea from 'The Hunger Games' as you can see above.

HOW WE TARGETED OUR AUDIENCE:

After taking into account our audience research feedback, and finalising the age rating of 15, we were able to create a list of key features that we needed to include in our opening. This list was made during pre-production and was used during production and post-production to ensured we would meet the expectations of our target audience. I believe this was a successful technique to ensure we included everything that our target audience hoped for.

In terms of technical components, we targeted our audience by creating characters similar to themselves. This was done through the use of costume. Our protagonist is wearing jeans, trainers and a jacket, which is typical of a girl of her girl. This allows the audience to build a connection with the character and engage them more in the film. As well as this, jump cuts were used to keep our audience on the edge of their seats, which was one of our factors on our checklist. This way we wouldn't loose their interest and grips more them.

EXAMPLES OF OUR TARGET AUDIENCE:

We also settled with the fact that our film would be an independent film, therefore a certain group of individuals would watch it. For example, they would possibly have a particular individual style and hobbies.