Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 5: Mode of Address

Audience:

The spectators or listeners assembled at a performance, for example, or attracted by a radio or television program.

Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/audience 

How did you attract/address your audience?

We used a number of different methods to attract our audience, we looked at a number of different ways current distributors marketed their films and did the same effectively.
These are the methods we used:

• Facebook
• Youtube
• Poster
• Teaser Trailer
• Rough Cuts
• Student interviews

However, we used non marketing techniques to hook our audience in also, these methods consisted of:

• Narrative enigma
• False Scare
• POV's
• Rock Music
• Soundtrack
• Intertextuality

By using some key slasher conventions this was a way that we could address our secondary target audience.

Facebook:

Facebook proved to be one of our key devices we would use when trying to attract our target audience. The main reason for this is because almost all of our target audience have Facebook and this was a way we could communicate with them. We could put up status' informing our target audiences of release dates and teaser trailers.

Facebook trailer

Useful source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-kanalley/teenagers-social-network-facebook_b_3062227.html

On the right is an example of how we would attract our audience through Facebook leaving our audience to like the video or add any of their own inputs which helped massively when we were releasing rough cuts as they suggested many different improvements.

Facebook gave us the opportunity to communicate with a much wider number of people rather than our class mates which was very beneficial to us.

Youtube:

Our film on YouTube

Youtube is a worldwide known video streaming site as some members of my production team had used the resource previously it was an extremely useful resource to use. In contrast to using Facebook to address our primary audience, we used Youtube to address both primary and secondary, but our secondary audience were able to give us positive and negative feedback from this. 

We wanted to stay connected with as much of our audience as we could which is why we put up rough cuts regularly to keep our audience anticipating on our final cut.

Poster:

Our film poster

Psycho poster

This is our film poster for The Asylum we chose to show very little detail about the film itself. We included an image of the knife and the killer to signify the slasher genre. Also to signify the slasher genre we used a san serif font. As we have looked at previous slasher posters such as Psycho. We also went with the red and black which signifies horror.

With our poster we stuck it up around our school to inform our target audience of our film.

Teaser Trailer:



Our teaser trailer was a key method of interacting with our audience, our preferred reading was that our audience would anticipate what was going to happen next form our trailer to leave them on a cliff hanger. We also provided exposition at the start connoting to our audience of the setting and the background story behind the Asylum. To do this we made new newspapers with new headline addressing points relevant to our film.

Our newspapers were used as a method for our audience to follow our preferred reading as we wanted to create a sense of realism in our trailer. By editing newspapers on Photoshop and applying new images and headlines we thought this was very effective.





Rough Cuts:

Releasing rough cuts helped us out in many ways. Firstly it was key for our feedback but as we were releasing them on YouTube and Facebook, our primary and secondary audience were able to see how the film was coming along.

These are our rough cuts:
Rought Cut 1
Rough Cut 2
Rough Cut 3
Rough Cut 4
Rough Cut 5

We produced 5 rough cuts in total because we had to make so many changes through out the process of reaching our final film. This wasn't a bad thing though because the changes we made improved our film massively. There were things that we didn't need to include and things that we needed more of.


Narrative Enigma:

We used an OTS to hide the killers identity

Just like the film Halloween we used narrative enigma in our opening to hide our killers identity. This gives the audience a sense of fear and anticipation. We used narrative enigma twice to address our audience in the teaser trailer and in our final film. I would say that it was most effective in our teaser trailer because we didn't want to show the killer at all for our preferred reading which is what was achieved giving our feedback.

POV shot as seen in Halloween

POV shot in Halloween

False Scare:

Our false scare

Not just only in slasher movies is a false scare used they are used frequently in all horror movies. However we chose to include our false scare to address our audience. By including a false scare it builds the audience up for a real scare as they are in a sense of anticipation for the scare, for it then to not be the killer (or anything scary) and then as they recover from the false scare thats when you include the real scare to really make them jump.


POV's

Again referring back to Halloween, we used our POV shots to link in with Barthes' narrative theory. This was a way that we could hook our audience and create a real scary character for the killer iwthout even showing his face. We linked in the sound well with this just like Halloween as POV shots can be boring on their own. Our POV shots worked in two ways one was to give the audience the feel that they were the ones hiding for example our behind the bush POV shot. The second POV shot was used as the killer approached the house this was used more for a sense of fear for our audience and anticpation.

POV as the killer enters the house

POV shot behind the bush

Rock Music:

This was a way we could address our secondary target audience a lot better than our primary, because if they are familiar with slasher conventions they will know that rock and heavy metal music is a strong signifier, this was the music we included.



Hetrosexual Viewers:

Following Laura Mulveys theory that audiences are typically viewed form a male point of view, our final film would match this theory. This is a way our male audience could be addressed by the camera lingering on our female actresses body.