Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?



We spent time together and sat down as a group to determine our target audience for our thriller film. After some thorough research into the genre, we finally came to a conclusion. Here's what we did:

1. Brainstorm - Before deciding on any specific aspects of our film, we first had to come up with a plot so that we had a basis for our project. As a group we each had our own individual input into what we wanted our film to be about. There would be times where we had similar ideas which would mean that that particular aspect of the film would be included, and also times when contrasting ideas would lead to research in order to determine what would work best in attracting our chosen target audience.
2. Research - Once we had a rough idea of what kind of thriller we were going to shoot (crime, drama) we then researched into this very specific genre. The film we found that best gave the effect on its audience that we aspired to, was 'This is England' by Shane Meadows. Although not your classic thriller, its gritty feel correlated perfectly with the idea we had produced as a group.
3. Associations - We then researched further into this film alone. We looked at different reviews from users of the website http://www.imdb.com/ in order to determine why they enjoyed the film and what they felt could be improved to make it that little bit better. As well as this, we also looked at what other films the same audience enjoyed, and looked into what made these different films a success.
4. Decision - After a long and thorough research process, we eventually came to a decision on who our specific target audienece would be. We wanted to attract a younger audience (15-30), prodominantly male. We also felt that a British audience would be more interested than others.
5. Production - We then began to incorporate the different elements of the research we had found into the production of our own thriller.

Finding your audience is one thing, but the key part to a successfull production is ensuring that you attract that audience. We therefore had to base each and every aspect of our thriller around this target audience and what best suits it.



We deliberately chose characters who are easily relatable to the younger generation in todays society. This meant that their look as well as their actions had to be much similar to what we see in everyday society. We based our characters around those from 'This is England'. However, not too much detail was needed to go into the characters purely because we only shot two minutes of footage and so not much is given away about each character. To see full character profiles click this link: http://charlieclarkemedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/character-profilescasting-decisions.html





We felt that relating the camera work to the general feel of the younger generation in modern day society would enable a successful project. Therefore we chose to use a large quantity and range of shots as well as a mixture of transitions so that a wild, jumpy feel was given - correlating to the lifestyle of many youths in todays society.
Close-up shots were also vital for us in attracting our target audience. Close-up shots allow the audience to identify with the character's emotion, which in this case could be similar to those of their own due to the relatability in age. However, in our thriller we focused or close-ups more on objects than characters and so our extreme close-up of a wallet was the significant shot. Youths of today all wish to have money and a lot of the time this is to aid their drug use. The audience can therefore relate to the theme presented with this shot.
We also had the camera work as quite shaky at various points in the film in order to symbolise the disorientation and confusion that many youths feel through their adolescence. In a more detailed evaluation, the confusion surrounds the life of a youth experiencing difficulties with their sexuality - a key theme in our thriller.




We decided to challenge the conventions of the thriller genre with our soundtrack to an extent, whilst also ensuring that the eerie/mysterious feel that many thriller soundtracks give off, remained. We wanted our soundtrack to contrast with the camera work. However, we needed to make sure that the soundtrack proved fitting for our chosen target audience. We again researched into films that we saw as similar to our own and after some research into music used in Shane Meadows later films 'This is England 86' and 'This is England 88' we saw that he used a similar technique. We felt that by slightly contrasting visuals and audio, confusion would be present amongst our audience because of the juxtaposition between the fast cutting camera work and the slow, mysterious, non-diagetic sound. This unusual approach would be sure to hook them. After a thorough search we finally found what we thought was the best piece of music to compliment our film. Although quite soft in tone and rythm, the music still has an eerie feel to it - fitting suitably with a conventional thriller soundtrack. The track name is 'brandish' - it was downloaded from the website http://www.mobygratis.com/



The harsh reality of our British modern day society is that a lot of youths spend much of their time on the streets. As a group we felt passionate about this and therefore chose to reinforce this assumption and stereotype of our youths. The first part of our thriller opening is set in a location much similar to what many see in reality, this again allows them to relate to our film and get more from their consumption as a result. Our opening would suggest that much more of the film will be set in similar locations and as this setting is now relatable to our audience, they would be intrigued to watch the rest of the film. The public toilet in which the second half of our thriller is filmed is very 'grubby' this suggests vandalism - another connotation of the youth society of today. All of these stereotypes that we have addressed through our location enable our audience to relate to our film.



I conclusion, we carried out useful research into what we saw as our specific target audience and used this research, along with further information we had found, in order to make our project as successful as possible - we knew that several aspects would need to be focused on in order to achieve this and we worked to cover all of these aspects, both in our shoot and our edit so that we could have a good chance of doing this.