Question 4

It's important to have a target audience when creating a film or you may end up with a film that appeals to no one and sells poorly as a result of this. For my film the target audience is older teenagers and young adults aged between 15-25. I chose to target this group of people as they are the people I'm surrounded by on a daily basis so it would be much easier for me question them and find out what they like to see in films. This means I can address their needs and wants and successfully create a film that suits them. As I myself fit into this age category I have much more knowledge and understanding of what works and what doesn't. If I chose to target another audience, middle aged ladies for example, I would have a very limited understanding of what this sort of audience likes and it would be harder for me to find out.

I made sure the narrative of the film met what my target audience suggested they wanted to see. I learned through the questionnaire that my target audience like to see thriller films set in isolated locations which helped me decide to set my sequence in the middle of a forest. I asked my target audience what their favourite thriller subgenre is to help me find out what type of thrillers my target audience like to watch. I learned from this that psychological thrillers are by far the most popular. Psychological thrillers usually feature a mentally unstable antagonist so I used this information to decide that I wanted to make the antagonist in my film appear mentally unstable and deranged.

I asked my audience what gender they prefer the victims to be and around 80% said they prefer female victims. I used this information to help me decide that the antagonist should be male and the innocent teenagers and victim should all be female to give my audience what they want.

Through the use of mise en scene, specifically costume, I made the presented as innocent wear similar clothing to what my target audience would wear in order to make my characters more relatable. The teenage girls are wearing leggings and jumpers which is what the females in my target audience would most likely be wearing in the same season. This makes my audience feel more sympathetic towards the characters as they see that the people being targeted are just as innocent as they are so don't deserve to be harmed. The antagonist always has his hood up in order to keep his identity hidden like my target audience said they prefer. I also used iconography in the form of a knife to meet my audience's expectations as in my questionnaire a lot of audience said they like knives to be what the antagonist uses as a weapon. Once the antagonist had been spotted by the victim I utilized fast paced editing in order to increase adrenaline. I also did this as my target audience is young and therefore more likely to get bored and distracted if the pace of the film remains slow. I also used a reaction shot of the victims fear when she sees the antagonist in order to convey to the audience how scared she is. In my questionnaire I discovered that the tension created by thrillers is a large part of why my audience likes to watch them so in order to increase the tension in my scene I used slow, eerie music as a form of non-diegetic sound that helped increase tension. As my audience likes isolated locations I utilized an establishing shot of the forest to highlight where the sequence is set.