Evaluation Question Five

5. How did you attract/address your target audience?

In our media product we attracted our target audience in a variety of ways. For example, the narrative that we created appeals to both males and females, as the action would appeal to males and the undercurrent love story would appeal to the females within our target audience.

We created an open narrative that actively engages our audience, as the uses and gratifications theory suggests that contemporary audiences are not passive. Therefore, in order to attract our target audience we had to get them to engage in our media product, as according to this audience theory they would not watch our film if they were passive. To do this we included some of Barthes narrative codes within our opening; for example the hermeneutic code (we created questions within our audiences minds to keep them hooked and to encourage them to piece together the story line) and the semic code (we gave our audience details about our characters, e.g. Mia is 'smart' and 'attractive', so that they can actively build up an understanding of the character).

Examples of the hermeneutic code in our opening:

Moreover, the construction of our characters also helped us to appeal to our target audience, as by using actors of a similar age to our target audience our opening would appeal more to them as it would be more reminiscent of their own lives and therefore, it would be more scary for them. Also as shown in evaluation activity two we tried to represent our target age group as positively as possible within our opening to attract them to our product.

Still from our film which shows the age of our actors

The camera shots that we used within our opening also mean that our target audience can easily identify with our main character, as the use of Close Ups (CU) encourage identification with the character because they take the audience into the mind of the character. For example, the final shot of Horatio watching the pictures.

Still of the final shot mentioned above

The location that we used would also appeal to our target audience, because it would be reminiscent of their everyday lives.

Still of Horatio in school

Furthermore, when I was conducting my research it became obvious to me that part of what created the eerie atmosphere in most psychological thrillers is the music/soundscore (as shown in the opening two minutes of 'Blue Velvet', which consists solely of titles playing over a piece of blue velvet that moves dubiously onscreen, yet it still manages to create tension because of the music used). Therefore, we knew that to attract our audience we had to use music that created suspense and that heightened tension at the right moments (for example, when Horatio is typing up the article in the newspaper office the music becomes more intense than it was at the start). The copyright free music that we chose to use encourages our audience to feel suspense as it actively engages them in what is going on onscreen so that they want to watch more and therefore, attracts them to our media product.

We held a screening for our media product to see if we had successfully attracted our target audience and then asked them questions on what they had watched. Here is what they said:

From our audience feedback I feel that we successfully attracted our target audience.