EVALUATION ACTIVITY 5AT T R A C T I N G / A D D R E SS I N G T H E A U D I E N C E

By Ryan Smith and Kieran lowen

THE GENRE CONVENTIONS OF THRILLERS

When we were creating ‘Hidden’ we had to take into account the codes and conventions of a thriller to make our opening as good as possible. We decided to make hidden a Psychological Thriller because of atmosphere, tension and enigma created. We used a lot of NVC especially when the antagonist was in a spot of bother. This is good as it is used in a lot of thrillers when there antagonist is about to kidnap the protagonist for example and something goes wrong. We used NVC to add tension to our opening and as a psychological thriller we wanted to get into our audiences mind, keep them on the edge of their seats and keep them asking questions such as; ‘Who is he?’ ‘What is he doing?’ etc.Our Location isn't your typical Thriller setting of a haunted/abandoned house or in the city, its set in a secluded environment in the countryside. Although this isn't accessible its good as it has no-one near there so if something was to happen, no-one would know. Also its unfamiliar to our audience so it could make them ask more questions.

THE GENRE CONVENTIONS OF THRILLERS CONTINUED…

In terms of sound, we chose music that we would expect to hear in a thriller. The music we used is quite eerie and weird, we also used a few sound effects called ‘Hollow wind’ and it built up tension and let you know something is going to happen. We also used a voice recording of a child disappearance as it lets the audience know that our antagonist has done it before and with our flash back you can tell the antagonist has done it before.Out editing also followed what is expected in a thriller, we used long takes and continuity editing to help our opening flow, using fades as we changed shot. We used many camera angles in our opening such as; Close ups, high and low angle shots, establishing shots and many more. This is to help build tension and keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

AT TRACTING/ADDRESSING THE AUDIENCE

We used popular social networking to attract and address our audience. (E.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.) This is because our target audience is teenagers and young adults (as our film is rated 15), and most teenagers or young adults would have at least one of these social networking sites so we can connect to many people around the world. Most of our promoting was through twitter as we believe it is the most frequently used by teens. This gives our audience a way to follow us and keep up to date on our film news etc. On our YouTube page we have promoted our thriller opening and trailer to give the audience a sneak peak of our thriller. We used Facebook as a like page and this wasn’t as successful as we thought. We also used Instagram to put up pictures of our progress.

SIMILAR F ILMS THAT INFLUENCED US.

Our main influence was ‘The Lovely Bones’ as it kind of has the same story line. The antagonist in that is similar to our antagonist as in lovely bones he was cunning and planned what he was going to do which our antagonist does as well. Also our antagonist is someone who you wouldn’t expect and we have tried to do this as well but as our setting is secluded its was hard to show which was influenced by ‘The Lovely Bones’ as we thought a secluded location would be more effective than a built up area. We looked at the antagonists costume shown in the picture and we thought we should make it more mysterious to keep the audience wondering what the antagonist looked like. Also we took into account the protagonist in ‘The Lovely bones’ as she was young and we wanted to use this in our thriller so we tried to make our character look young. This is because young people are innocent but cant defend themselves.

POSTER ANALYSISWe put the actors names at the top of the poster to attract the audience. The font used is creepy and weird which sums up our thriller.

This is a picture of our main character, we thought this was an effective effect as it keeps his identity a secret.This is the boiler plate for our poster to let our viewers know who's in it and who done what.

The font of this writing looks like splattered blood so we chose red to represent that. Its also a weird font which could show that our thriller is psychological.

The contrast between black and white in our background shows mysteriousness and helps keep a hidden identity.

This is the rating of our film, we chose 15 as there is a use of bad language and teenagers visit the cinema a lot.