Question 5

How did you attract or address your audience?

A 15-18 year old girl may be interested in what the character is wearing because the girl in our thriller is of the same age as our target audience. This long shot of the girl moves up so that you can see her face but at this point in the shot it reveals her costume to the audience. We used clothing which is currently in fashion to appeal to our target audience.

This shot shows a dramatic contrast to the make up and clothing of the teenage girl before. This would attract our target audience as it would intrigue them on the narrative of why the girl looks so different in this shot compared to the one before. It also creates an enigma as to why the alter-ego is on the floor and why she is so distressed.

This shot is a close up shot of the makeup of the alter ego being smudged and although it is obviously not makeup that our target audience would want to copy which means an enigma is created for the audience because it is intriguing to them as to why our teenage character is smudging her makeup.

This shot is a close up shot tilting down to show the blood and magazines on the floor of the girls bedroom. The magazines are a major hint to our thrillers plot line and our target audience may be attracted to the fact that there is blood covering the magazines and being smudged onto it because it is unusual and suspicious. At the beginning of our titles there is a shot of a slow zoom in towards the magazines on the floor and this is split with the previous close up shots of blood being dripped onto the magazines. This creates an enigma for the audience while the camerawork of the slow zoom builds tension and excitement.

This shot is a close up of the teenage girls face and similarly to the close up of the alter-ego, it shows the girls makeup. This makeup and hair style may be one that the target audience may find appealing. The sound used is a loud bang from upstairs which makes the teenage girl ‘jump’ and this may attract our target audience because the sound is suspicious. It is also quite relatable in the way that when you are home alone, you sometimes hear noises upstairs and become suspicious of them.

We fulfilled our audiences expectations because we chose a piece of music which built tension through out our opening titles and this tension built excitement for the audience. There was no intense action, however the suspense was erupted when the teenage girl found her alter-ego hiding in her bedroom. We felt that this successfully completed what we had been asked of by our target audience from the Vox Pops which was to have music which successfully created tension and built excitement for them during the scene. 

I think that our thriller has some aspects in common with the thriller film ‘Gone’. Through out the film ‘Gone’ you are constantly wondering whether the main character Jill is mentally ill and paranoid or whether her kidnapper really has returned and taken her sister. This is similar to our thriller because our audience will always question whether the alter-ego is real or whether she is just a hallucination of the teenage girl who may or may not be mentally ill and losing her mind. The enigma in both films will always attract the audiences because an audience watching a film always loves to watch a mystery unfold and try to figure out the ending before the film tells them. 

Music and sound is used in our thriller to attract our audience because the music we used called ‘Creepy music box’ sounds very sinister and has a tune like a children’s rhyme. This relates to the way that our main character is still very young and vulnerable however the images presented by the media have corrupted her and changed her mind. The music is very psychological in this way and makes the audience feel uncomfortable because the music has a sound of innocence while also sounding sinister. 

Editing was used in our thriller to attract our audience by splitting our clips to create scenes where the shots flick back and forth on the screen between two different shots. This allows the audience to absorb what is happening in both shots and not become bored by having just one shot playing for a long time. The shots of close ups and extreme close ups also intrigued the audience because it showed them detail and emotions of the actor.

Mise en scene was used in our thriller openings to attract our audience because we kept in mind that our target audience is teenagers aged 15-18 and we thought about what our audience would wear and how they would do their makeup. The lighting became dark, eerie and intriguing for the audience due to the filter which was added during editing. The props used were magazines which teenage girls typically read and this would appeal to our target audience while the setting was also a family home in a small town and we filmed mostly in the living room and a teenage girls bedroom so the setting compared to our target audience.

The plot we used was very accessible and relatable to our target audience of teenagers aged 15-18. Teenagers are very aware of the way they look and can be very insecure. At this moment in time media has a big influence over teenagers depicting how they should look, act and dress and we used this to create our plot about a teenage girl whose mind becomes corrupted by all the images of women pushed onto her by the media in magazines, on TV and the internet. The girl becomes mentally ill and although this is an extreme and was twisted to match the psychological thriller genre, we still believe that this plot line is very relatable to teenagers at current time because teenagers in modern times are much more effected by the media and the way the media portrays how a person should look like. The 'YoungMinds' website gives a statistic that: "The number of young people aged 15-16 with depression doubled between the 1980s and 2000s". A reason for this could be because the way women were presented in the media greatly changed in the 80s with more revealing images and also the computer programme Photoshop was released in the year 1990. 

Our audience responded to our opening titles in different ways however their were some similarities to what they were telling us. We shows our titles to two girls and two boys who commented on: Editing, Mise en scene, shots and sound.

• Girl 1: Thought that the editing was effective because it kept the viewers eye on the screen looking at the details in each shot. The plot was really relatable and the use of ripped magazines as props was a good way of showing the girls anger to the media.

• Boy 1: The fake blood used looked good however he wanted to see the wounds on the alter ego where the blood came from. He thought that the plot line was more relatable to girls and the bang from upstairs was a bit cliche however the way it was filmed and the ‘alter-ego’ spin made it more unique.
• Girl 2: Thought that the costume and makeup used were very good because they showed a great contrast between the two sides of the girls personality. The close up shots made the makeup more visible and the filter used made the whole title sequence look creepy. 
• Boy 2: Thought that the sound used was good because the music set up the atmosphere well however the extra sounds used such as the creaking door and the bang from upstairs could have been made louder/clearer.