Hello and welcome to my blog, this is for my slasher film opening, Liar. The blog includes all research and notes. Enjoy!

Wednesday 26 March 2014

Evauation Q5; Audience

This is one of the evaluation questions for our film opening. "How did you attract/address your audience?"


For our film opening we decided to go for a more post-modern twist on a horror film, rather than a stereotypical structure. We did this by choosing to use intertextuality, by making the very first opening scene a film within a film, which the audience does not realise until about a minute in when this scene is interrupted, and the real film is revealed with the main character scream queen's phone ringing loudly as diegetic sound over the other film. We thought this may attract a wider audience as it is countertype to the usual film opening and is unique. We thought it gave a post-modern appeal which may attract an audience of 15-20 year olds. However we did also partly stick to a stereotypically "cheesy" storyline found in most horror films, as we used the idea from Scream of the killer ringing the screamqueen, and also a convention found in most horror films of the scream queen running to find the killer before releasing he has dissapeared. By using these stereotypes in our film opening we did find comments from audience feedback on this, and it was espescially the younger, teenage audience that picked up on this. After getting this feedback along on our rough cuts, along with other comments,  we decided to cut and edit the scream queen's action scenes of running through the house, also adding diegetic sounds and transitions. We did this to make it to create more tension and suspense, and making it seem more realistic to the audience.

In order to test whether our film opening would appeal to an audience of teenagers to young adults, we devised a feedback form in which our audience filled in after watching the second rough cut of our film opening. Part of the feedback sheet was a section which asked, "For an audience aged 15+, do you think, overall, this works for an audience your age?" We got back about 60 of these feedback forms, and successfully 100% of feedback answered yes to this question.  Other questions on the feedback form were questions such as "What did you like/dislike about this film opening and why?" As the majority of the audience commented on the same conventions that needed to be improved, we took these into account and developed the footage around these comments. As a whole the audience feedback was positive, and the majority of the audience could identify which media products and horror films we got our ideas from. This was a success as they guessed correctly that most of our ideas were adapted from Saw and Scream.
As our primary target audience was aimed at teenagers, we used representations within our film opening to fit in with modern teenage life. For example the scream queen used a teenage code of language, using terms such as "Oh my God", and "What the hell". We also chose to use an Iphone for the scream queen's phone, as this is a modern piece of technology that a teenage audience could relate to. For the character's representation of clothing, we chose quite revealing pyjama shorts, and a tight strappy top, to signify the scream queen being sexually active, but also to create the male gaze theory.

2 comments:

  1. the video is quite good, tho' you'd benefit from re-reading my guide. rather than creating another video, you could use YouTube's annotation tool - what you're missing really is how you've used shot framing and editing to manipulate and steer the audience's response: how have you positioned a character as one to sympathise with/root for? You've done this by PRIVILEGING her point-of-view, and focussing the action on her

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  2. also...you cite the male gaze theory, so think about your fem aud too: is there any element of romance perhaps...
    plus (minor point): its usually 15-24, not 15-20

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