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

Primary research was essential to my production because this allowed me to have a greater understanding of the thriller genre, this helped me to develop our own thriller film and know how to appeal to our target audience.

There were many stages included in developing my thriller opening, the first being research of existing thriller. I researched mise-en-scene, the conventions, cinematography, the history of thriller films, sound, research into age certificates and the BBFC. This is where I developed my understanding of the thriller genre, learning how different aspects effect the audience differently, and what effects they have, for example a high angle camera shot shows that the character is inferior in the scene and vulnerability whereas a low angle shows that the character is superior. The second stage was research into the narrative theories, the narrative theory we followed was Todorov's. Todorov's theory is not about the characters but the narrative and that they evolve around an equilibrium and disequilibrium, there is a state of equilibrium, a disruption to the equilibrium, recognition of disruption, attempt to repair the equilibrium followed by the restore of the return or the equilibrium. My research assisted me a lot in the planning of the opening as my understanding of the thriller genre developed. From the research into sound I heard that non-diegetic sound tracks have a great effect over the audience, having a big influence on how to the audience feel at that time, for example a suspenseful sound track would put the audience in much more suspense rather than a scene without it, as it puts the audience in anticipation to what the sound track is building up to. I also carried out research into the cinematography used in the thriller genre, I looked at the clip from SAW, from this I found out that "point of view" (POV) camera angles gave the effect that they are the character allowing the audience to build a stronger bond with the character, therefore if you do the POV camera angle for the victim, the audience can begin to feel the fear of the character, making elements like suspense a lot more effective. Due to this I decided to add the use of POV angles in order to appeal to the audience more, a benefit of the research. During the planning of our thriller opening I decided it was best to carry out some primary research, I did this in the format of questionnaires, this was an important stage in the  planning as this gave me the opinion of the target audience on thriller films and let me know what people like to see in thriller films, this included which setting they would like to see and what characters they would like to see. The results I received were that they preferred anonymous killers and a forest setting. From this I based our thriller opening around the results of the questionnaires and it also helped us develop ideas that we already had, benefitting me greatly. This helped me develop the narrative as I now knew what the target audience preferred when watching thriller films, which meant I could incorporate those ideas.