Question 5

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

We made our opening appeal to our audience through various techniques including editing shots together in a cohesive and concise manner, with a subtle change of pace in certain parts inferring tension to the audience, who will be in the target age group of 15-30.  There are also various ways in which we managed to make our thriller opening appeal to our audience, with five shots being particularly vital to this process. The first shot is the opening shot which is faded in, showing the antagonist preparing for the attack on the child with various pieces of equipment. 

This shot immediately attracts our audience, as they immediately begin to see objects of potential danger and wonder what they are going to be used for and who they’re going to be used by. The shot pans across slowly, indicating that there are a lot of items that the viewer should take note of. The shot is also intentionally close enough to the table that the identity of the killer is concealed, meaning that the audience is almost having to analyse the items on the table to receive any kind of idea at all about who this man is and what his intentions are. This further heightens tension and suspense, and emulates the opening of the thriller Se7en, which features an opening including a desk and various tools and dangerous objects that symbolise death and violence. The second shot used that appealed to our audience the most was the panning long shot of the protagonist walking through the sunlight down a pathway with the wooded area in the background.

This shot clearly suggests to the viewer that the wooded area is where the character is headed, giving the audience some idea that the child is potentially in danger. The sunlight shining through and down on the girl as she walks down a pathway infers to the audience innocence and kindness, making it clear to the audience who the protagonist is. The third shot that greatly appeals to the audience is the over the shoulder shot in which the antagonist can be seen in the far left foreground watching the child desperately run away. 

This appeals to the audience as it instills a great sense of suspense, seeing as the audience at this point is not entirely sure what the antagonist’s plans for the girl are. His calm demeanour at this point is massively contrasting to that of the child, who is clearly panicked and confused. Displaying such contrasting emotions in one shot will clearly appeal to those who meet the target audience bracket, who will be expecting to see exciting and unique shots. Our target audience will also be old enough to understand the implied contrast in fortunes and emotions, despite their being no diegetic sound. The fourth shot of choice is that of the close up shot of the girl’s face after falling, which shows her panicked and muddied after falling, this shot is the first and only shot of the entire opening which clearly shows a character’s face. 

This gives the audience a small and very quick showing of what humungous terror and peril the protagonist is facing at this point. The fifth shot is the closeup final shot where the antagonist finally captures the girl and begins to attack her, which quickly cuts to black. 

Combined with the diegetic audio, this shot gives the audience a large contrast in emotion, as the audio states “we’re hoping and praying that will happen.” This audio is from the mother of the child, desperately hoping their child will return. While this is playing, it is clear to the audience that there is no hope for this to happen. This contrast will likely shock the audience, hugely increasing overall tension. Because of how short a time the shot lasts for, the audience cannot quite establish exactly what has happened and whether the girl is alive or not. This creates enigmas and replicates real thriller productions, which will often shorten the duration of certain shots in order to increase speed and drama.

According to our Vox Pop data, our audience found that the sound had dramatically improved and was more fitting to our thriller. Previously for our rough cut, we used a track with words, which wasn’t responded to well, as it seemed it proved distracting to the shots and the narrative. We substituted this with a purely instrumental soundtrack for our final cut, which was much better received. The montage of voice clips was also a positive implementation that wasn’t part of our rough cut also, on which the audience commented it made the video far more authentic sounding. However one person did comment that the usage of voice tracks ended up being too prevalent and repetitive, suggesting that they would work better with the track had they been sparser and more carefully placed. However, there were few other major improvements listed for us for our final cut compared to our rough cut, meaning according to our target audience we were relatively successful in appealing to them and that we have listened to the feedback given to us throughout the entire thriller opening creation process, and we have fulfilled the audience’s expectations of what a good thriller opening should be.

Previously mentioned thrillers such as The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en are similar to our production because in all three the antagonist remains concealed for a significant period of time through the use of close up shots. All three match the criteria for many successful mystery and psychological thrillers, as our thriller has a realistic setting that is relatable and familiar to the audience.