Audience

Our target audience for this film would be and older audience who are likely to watch horror films, this may include teenagers as well because this age group do tend to enjoy horrors. We didn't really decide on the target audience at first, we came up with the genre and the audience came with it. Any horror is aimed at this audience because of the scary content so the decision of which target audience to aim our film at wasn't very difficult. When deciding our genre we researched many different films. The two genres that stood out to us the most was romance and horror, so we watched film openings from these genres. Research we came up with is shown previously on our blog but after watching the film opening of 'Gothika' we had a clearer idea of what storyline we wanted to use. This film was the inspiration for our film opening and helped us with the content of it.
'The use of camera work to keep the killer a secret was excellent, the shot when the teacher turns around was quality. I was also very impressed with the use of zoom the way you zoomed in to show the reaction of the teacher before zooming out again was very effective.' - Greg Potter.
This is one of the comments we received from our audience, it tells us that our use of camera work was effective and when he says 'the use of camera work to keep the killer a secret was excellent' this tells us our storyline has been recognised clearly and the meaning that we tried to portray about our secret stalker has been successfully received from the audience.

'I think the music that you have used to build suspense is very effective but not too over the top.' - Rachel, Nikki, Lucy and Helen.
'The soundtrack kicked in at the right time which is quite creepy and creates tension.' - Mirzo.

These are two more comments we received on our final film opening about the music we used. These comments show that the aim of our use of music has been successful, this is because we wanted our music to create tension and according to our feedback from members of the audience we have achieved this aim. The comments also show that the soundtrack we used related well with the genre and created the right effect and atmosphere that was vital for a successful horror.

'The Mise en Scene in this piece is used very effectively, it is not clear at the beginning as the news reader scene plays the part of setting a scene rather than explaining the genre, but the moment you capture even a glimpse of the "Delinquent" it becomes clear that this is a Horror/Thriller movie. This is clear due to the quiet eery corridors where all you can hear is the echoes of footsteps and creaking doors. When we are shown the evil character we know this because of the evil dragging foot walk and out of place white clothing.' - Greg Potter.

This comment is a great response and exactly the reaction we were hoping for. This feedback describes how we used mise en scene, sound and setting to make our film opening a successful and obvious horror/thriller movie. The sentence Greg wrote about our use of eery corridors reflects back to our evaluation on our use of setting and the reason why we chose this setting, showing that we have in fact used a setting that will have the right impact on the audience.

By Abbie Hawkins