At first, we immediately thought that our opening was targeted at teenagers because of the urban environment and the realism presented. The audience for our film was a justified decision, as we looked at the weapons used, and the language used. In our media product, the plot was taken into consideration so there wasn’t too much violence or not enough violence. The violence scene, which we had in our finished media product, was suited more for the young urban audience. Because of the way our antagonist is dressed up with a hoody with the hood up, trackies and having a steel pole shows the threat there is in this area, overall the Mise-en-scene was used effectively to determine the audience. The other scenes were relatively modest and didn’t have that fear factor. The choice was a 15 and as we were doing a psychological thriller, we wanted to keep it more psychological than a horror. We looked at some films in the same genre. For example The Dark Knight which was a thriller/action was based on a delusional criminal and compared him to our antagonist. As you can see below, the audience targeted is 15-24 with the most percent and men’s 62% with female 38% but for our product gender did not matter. We eventually presented our product to the specified age ranges of 15-24 and they enjoyed the mix of sounds when the flashback to the dark location which set the opening up. The audience we chose was also based on our narrative too, with us having no strong language which worked successfully in the opening. The style of our film was quite unique with the flashbacks to shows what has happened and the idea of the office, we could argue the style was just right for teenagers as it was neither too slow nor fast. The characters in the opening was the similar age to the viewers and can share the emotions especially when a character dies. We chose not to have the exact age ranges of the Dark Knight for a number of reasons, one being the genre specifically of our product is psychological thriller, two would be the camera shots used in the Dark Knight opening were so varied and has the out of your seat factor which draws the viewers in as you can see with our 9 shot analysis. Also we did a questionnaire to get a better understanding off the audience with questions like what genre do you enjoy and how often do you watch thriller films. We only interviewed 16-17 year old, perhaps we could of asked younger to get a more open look but choose for a direct analysis and after that, we pretty much went for that kind of age group that would enjoy the film.
Source - Pearl and Dean
Source - 9 Shot Analysis Windsor Boys' Group 1
