Audience Feedback

My group presented our ideas so far for our opening to a group of people who we perceive would be in either our primary or secondary audience (females 15-24, males 15-24), and asked them to give feedback.

Many people, both male and female, liked the idea of going against typical thriller stereotypes by having having a female protagonist, antagonist, AND victim. Using similar graphics to Se7en was also a highly popular idea, as was the use of a handheld camera. However, although using diegetic sound was praised, it was suggested that we use non-diegetic sound together with diegetic sound to create a creepier effect. Our group has decided to follow this advice, so although diegetic sound will be an important part of our piece, non-diegetic sound will also play an important part.

Our audience seemed to understand the plot of our film and opening, so it must be comprehensible for them, although some were confused as to whether it would be a mainstream or independent release. I think this partly comes from the fact that our group hadn't really discussed this ourselves, but once we did, we decided it would be a mainstream release.

So far, our opening seems to appeal to our target audience, so, after making a couple of tweaks, we feel more confident about going ahead with creating our opening. We will try out a test screening when we've created our opening with more people from our target audience to check we're making the right choices, and change anything we feel needs changing once we've received their feedback.

Due to the positive attitude we received, it seems we've correctly judged our audience. This will help us to make our film seem as attractive as possible to them. We know that this age group tend to spend more time than other age groups at the cinema, so cinema posters and trailers are a good way to start. However, we need to make sure we pick out elements that will not make these biased towards one particular gender. For instance, in the posters for the film 4.3.2.1. , the females were made out to be sex objects, which made the film less attractive to females. We don't want to make the same mistake. We also know that this age group (females in particular) tend to be very active online, especially on social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. It would be sensible to create pages on these sites (and other similar sites) in order to promote our film. As for tv adverts, we should target these at certain shows that are popular with this age group. This includes reality tv shows (e.g. The Only Way Is Essex), talent shows (e.g. The X Factor), teen dramas (e.g. Skins), and some comedy programs that tend to attract the younger audience (e.g. Family Guy, Mock The Week). Considering the genre of our film, it may also be a good idea to advertise during similar themed tv shows (e.g. Dexter, Prison Break) in order to appeal to people who particularly like this genre of film.