Evaluation Question 5

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

How we improved our work after our rough cut feedback:

During editing, we received rough cut feedback from our peers and teachers. The group as a whole liked our creativity and use of split screens. Our teacher, Rebecca, thought that to improve our work we should create tension and an atmosphere full of suspense, this is crucial in thrillers. To do this, we were advised to introduce Layla with shots on her own, using cross cuts, before both Layla and Ami appeared together on the screen.  

Rebecca also made sure that we remembered our thriller shouldn't be humorous as the ending of our opening scene had the potential of being funny. 

Some people suggested the use of foley sounds at the opening of our film to help create tension and to set the mood. The framing of some of our shots meant that Ami’s head was cut off so it was suggested that we check the framing of our shots too.

Here are some examples of bad framing from our rough cut. 

The feedback from our rough cut was extremely useful. We were happy that the group appreciated our use of spilt screens and took into account all the advice we were given.

At the point of our rough cut, we hadn’t added any sound. When we did we made sure we used the sound from our original recording to help with the atmosphere. The recordings had picked up the sound of animals, cars, Layla’s shopping bags and footsteps. We also added the diegetic music playing from Ami’s earphones.

To prevent the ending of our opening from being humorous, we cut the clip before Layla’s walking stick was close to Ami’s head. During filming, Layla was worried that she would hurt Ami so she slowed down before the walking stick was close to Ami – this meant that the shots were clearly fake. Therefore, by cutting the shots before this happened, we prevented the film from being funny.

We adjusted our spilt screens to make sure that Ami’s head was always in shot, this made sure that all of our shots were relevant to our opening.

Therefore, the feedback we received from our rough cut was extremely useful as it allowed us to make changes to our work and find out what appealed most to our peers.

Appealing to our target audience:

The target audience for our thriller is 16-25 year olds. We had to consider what would appeal to them while filming and editing our thriller.

The fact that our film is low budget means that it is filmed in the same areas as the cinemas it will be released in. This was the case for ‘My brother the Devil’. Therefore, as our film is based in London and the opening scene has shots of Victoria Park in East London, the film may appeal to local people. It would also help the audience to relate more to the film and may help to attract a greater audience. Below are some pictures of the area we filmed in.

The opening scene includes a young male which may attract more males as they may feel like they can relate to the character at the beginning of the film. 

The use of sound is very important for attracting our target audience, we used the song ‘Let’s go’ by Calvin Harris ft. Ne-yo. This song will have been heard before by those of our target audience, especially because it has been played a lot on radio stations. Therefore, the use of this song in our opening will help to engage our audience. In the video below, you can see that some members of our target audience didn't recognise the song and would have liked a different song.

We hoped that the film name would attract our target audience as it is unusual which may mean that more people are likely to want to watch it. However, when interviewing two 18 year olds, they mentioned that the name of the film was too cliché. 

Reaching our target audience:

Here is the Facebook page I made for 'Young Eyes'.

To reach the target audience I have used two social networking sites; Facebook and Twitter. The first reason for using these sites is that our film is low budget, meaning that billboards and television adverts would not be affordable. Another reason for using social networking sites is the majority of 16-25 year olds use them. This would make it easier for the film to reach more people and could increase the advertisement through word of mouth.

Young Eyes Twitter Campaign.

These sites are often used for film advertisement as they are easy to access, I added information about the release date and behind the scene images to help attract our target audience.

Using these sites has helped to increase the YouTube video views and has given our target audience the chance to give feedback on our film.

The Screen on the Green Cinema.

Our cinema screening for Young Eyes was on Monday 25th of March at The Screen on the Green. This allowed us to receive feedback as our thriller was watched by 16/17 year olds. Our thriller will also be available on DVD copies allowing us to show friends and family who may have not had internet access.

Our thriller has been uploaded to both Youtube and Vimeo.

The video above shows some feedback from two 18 year olds after watching our film.