Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

• Much of the audience appeal within our production stems from the characters and the intertextual references that we integrated within the piece. For example, the antagonistic character, Danielle, has blonde hair, this idea is an intertextual reference to that of the Tarantino thriller, ‘Kill Bill Vol.1’ where we can notice that the main character within that also has a similar shade of hair colour. We attempted to reference this to add the villainous and sadistic side to the female character that we cast. Another intertextual reference that we made was that of the locational shots that were used to establish the scenery and reference the thriller ‘Heavenly Creatures’. This is because the wide open naturalistic locations that are used are also used within our production for the same purpose; to create a feeling of isolation and seclusion for the characters involved in the scene. This would appeal to our younger audience as the film ‘Kill Bill’ is widely known and popular and the recognition of such aspects would appeal to their interests and the familiarity of the genre. Additionally, the older audience that our production may appeal to may also feel inclined to notice the aspects of mise-en-scene that reference those of ‘Heavenly Creatures’ due to the time within which the film was made and also to do with the balletic feel that the soundtrack has (‘Madam Butterfly’) that links to, as mentioned before, the soundtrack that we chose for our own production.

Intertextual references

• Our production appeals to a primarily female audience due to the antagonist within the production being female also. This is challenging conventions of generic thrillers and so this may interfere somewhat with the audience appeal. A generic thriller such as ‘The Third Man’ uses male antagonists to represent crime and power over others whereas films that we researched such as ‘Kill Bill’ use, more often, ‘femme fatales’ as the somewhat antagonistic character meaning that similar audiences would be able to recognise and identify with these aspects making them somewhat more appealing to the chosen target audience for our thriller production.

• On a similar note, the specified costumes that were chosen for the both of our characters featured within our production also aim to attract out specific younger audience. The contemporary wear that we notice Billy’s character wearing appeals to such a younger audience due to the ‘high-street’ fashion that may draw the attention of possibly teenagers and young adults. However, the clothing that the antagonistic character of Danielle wears appeals to possibly an older audience or even a minority audience of lower class individuals due to the simplicity of the clothing and the way that it contrasts that of Billy’s through the lack of needed brands and logos such as ‘Adidas’ featured on the footwear of Billy, our victim. Danielle’s clothing may also appeal to tan audience of which is interested or even participates in many crimes within their own neighbour hood due to the masked face and the young twist on the items such as the black hoodie.

Characters and costume

• The cliff-hanger of our production finds that the victim, Billy is brutally murdered by an unknown (for the audience) character with a blue rope beside the lake location that we filmed our thriller in. This cliff hanger appeals to our audience due to the use of tension and the build up towards this. For example, throughout the production, the audience do not see the character of Danielle closely or even clearly for they only see her within distant shots or close ups of her hands and feet portraying the idea that the character is in fact female. So, when the production comes to the cliff hanger, the tension is built appropriately to draw the audience in and suggest features that may not have been noticed at first such as the intertextual reference to Kill Bill Vol.1 when we see the hands of Bill as he wears the rings on his fingers to sinisterly wipe away the blood from the Bride’s face and Danielle gently places the rope around Billy’s neck, also wearing rings. The way that the cliff hanger of our production uses a fade to black within the edit allows for the already heightened amount of tension within the audience members to continue and entice them enough to want to watch the entire thriller at the cinemas in which it will be distributed.

Cliff hanger

Audience Feedback

Continued…

Continued…For further analysis and research into the target group of our production, I carried out a number of questionnaires on a sample group of around 16-18 year olds, all locating from around Norwich. This is because a sample of this age group and from this area would represent our chosen audience due to the location of the thriller and the age of the actors, both of which appeal to the audience as they can identify and associate themselves with these aspects.We can also notice form the feedback that our thriller dealt with no alarming or offensive aspects through the mise-en-scene, characters or costume aspects which in turn allows for our production to be widely viewed by a number of the audience members and possibly other niche groups as mentioned before.