Evaluation: question 5

How did we attract/address our intended audience?

What aspects of the opening appeal to the target audience?

Our production company 'Wild  Horses' have produced other British films such as 'Archipelago' and 'My Brother The Devil'. Wild Horses have produced many low budget British films, which have been successful, if our target audience recognise this production company, they will probably take more of an interest. 

The name of our film 'The Last Detail' suggests that the film involves a missing piece, which needs to be worked out. This title will attract our intended audience as they will be interested in finding out what exactly is meant by this title, as it suggests some sort of mystery and tricky plot.
Our chosen location is a traditional library, the library is an building which seems to have a lot of history. This will appeal to our audience as it seems quite creepy. The fact that a library is supposedly a quiet place is significant as clearly something is unusual about this library, which is why the opening is set here, this should engage an audience who are keen to find out. The quiet location will also build tension as the audience will be focused on the actors movements.
The mise en scene in the opening involves books, and traditional looking furniture such as the old stair case which is featured in our opening in a close up shot. The old traditional furniture should appeal to our intended audience as it will create a creepy and historic feel. The books allow us to include camera shots of the antagonist watching the protagonist through gaps in the books, which is a well known shot and will appeal to our audience who  may have seen this type of shot in other thrillers.

Our main actor is a middle aged male, this will appeal to some of our target audience, as they may be of a similar age, and therefor relate to him. The mysterious character in the opening is a female, which means it will appeal to both male and females. The protagonist is a librarian which some of our audience can relate too, as they will be of a legal working age, and may have the same profession.

We filmed an interview with a member of our target audience asking them about what aspects of a thriller opening appeals to them. This is what they said:

After hearing what they said, we then asked them to watch our thriller opening. We then interviewed them for a second time. This time we asked them what aspects of our opening appealed to them. This is what they said:

We also filmed an interview with another member of our target audience and asked them what they liked about the opening to our film. This is what they said:

                              Role of rough cut feedback?
We received feedback from a media studies teacher on our rough cut of the opening. We were told to improve we need to focus on changing the font style, adding an appropriate soundtrack and inter-cutting some scenes. We took on board this feedback and searched on You tube for mystery thriller openings. From  the research we found that the fonts were usually just black or white, and were slightly sharper, therefore we changed our font colour from red to white, and chose a more suitable and similar font style to other successful mystery thrillers. Our target audience are people who are interested in this genre, and they would be more interested in our film if they see a suitable font and recognisable theme. Using Final Cut Pro, we then edited our film more and cut our longest scene, placing clips of the antagonist watching the librarian in between, this created a sense of him being watched, in a more intense and unnerving atmosphere. This will appeal to the target audience more than it would have before, as it is less boring and more mysterious. We then created a soundtrack using Soundtrack Pro, we made sure it had a mixture of volumes and pitch to create an unsettled feel, representing how our protagonist felt.

How have we reached out to our audience?

We have considered that our target audience will be both male and female, and will be old enough to use social networking sites, so we have taken this opportunity to reach out to them and create awareness of our thriller. Our thriller is also posted on our blog. 

We feel that social networking sites are extremely popular at the moment, and a straight forward way of publishing our film and getting it out there.

I posted a tweet on my personal twitter account, linking any viewers to our film.





I have posted a status of Facebook promoting our film. Posting our film on Facebook received a very good response with lots of positive feedback.

 I have posted our thriller opening on our Facebook page to promote to film and give our audience a taster of what the film is about. As you can see we have had good positive feedback.



This is a comment a member of our target audince posted on our Facebook page.





We have also reached out to our target audience by having a cinematic release at 'screen on the green'. It was a very sucessful release and our audience really liked our film. Here is the opening to our film on the big screen!

Our main actor.

We filmed an interview with the main actor in our film Sam Williams who plays Yusef Hough. We asked him about his busy hectic promotional schedule and how he has been promoting the film.