Evaluation: Question 5

Q5: How did you attract your audience?

To attract my target audience for my film opening I did pre audience research where I asked students of my target market questions about Horror films which can be seen on my blog. After questioning them I summarised all of their answers and implemented them into my film opening as it is what everyone wanted to see from a horror film.

Some of the questions I asked are listed down below:

Do you like horror films?

Everyone person I interviewed said yes, which meant I knew that a large amount of teenagers would watch my film as they like horror films.

What are your favorite horror films and why?

The top films stated by the students were ‘The Conjuring 2’ as well as ‘Annabelle’. I then took it upon myself to research these films and found they most enjoyed it because of the gory scenes, tension the scary jumps. I made sure that in my media production I would add tension and jump scenes which would intrigue yet scare the audience.

What is scary about horror films?

Most people found that in horror films the most scary element was people dying within the film, unknown murderers and the scary non-diegetic music. This meant that in my media production I added enigma as it was unknown who took Isla and added spooky, conventional non-diegetic sound while the film opening unraveled.

I decided to start my film with the setting at a house, in which a group of three girls are seated at a table discussing their boredom. However, the two girls at the table are disagreeing with Isla for wanting to go to the ‘forbidden’ gate and she is determined to go. This is a common genre icon where there is a naive young girl who is the curious, show-off and the characters who know something bad will happen, which is seen when one of the girls says “She is so going to get possessed” this gives the audience familiarity as well as a clue that something bad will happen to Isla. As this is unraveling I wanted the audience to be intrigued as to what will happen to Isla if she’s goes through with the dare she set upon herself. Throughout the film opening it is clear that someone is following Isla and we get glimpses of the strange person dressed in black. This causes tension and enigma in which the audience will then feel uneasy. I believe the lead up to the last scene of her being taken away is what keeps the audience intrigued and scared at the same time. The opening scene has a lot of enigma as it is unknown who the killer is and what happened to Isla as she was poisoned and taken away. This will leave the viewer to carry on watching to see what will unravel after. Throughout the full film, the investigation of Isla will carry on and more murders will also occur however each person dying was killed for a reason and are all connected to the killer which is found out towards the end of the film. This will be a shock to the audience as the killer is someone who was there all along and was not considered as the antagonist.

The audience pleasure used most throughout the film opening would be emotional pleasure as people would feel sympathetic towards Isla for getting killed/taking away (it is unknown). In addition to this they would also feel tension and fear which is enjoyed by people when watching horror films, as the unknown person is stalking Isla. Also, in the rest of the film there will be Intellectual puzzles as the audience try to figure out who the killer is as well as Visceral pleasure as there will be more jump scares and sad scenes.  

I did target audience research where I asked a couple of people questions after watching my film opening.