How did you attract/ address your audience?

The mise-en-scene has to be appealing to the target audience whilst also making sense within the scene. For example, the setting of the opening of my film had to be appropriate and relevant to both the storyline and the horror genre. As my film was targeted towards people aged around 20 to 40, the mise-en-scene had to represent a more mature theme. This is because otherwise they may be put off and believe that its aimed towards a younger audience. I wanted my film to be slightly less straight forward for the audience, meaning they would have to think about what what was going on. I did this by limiting the amount of dialogue that was present in the opening, so that nothing was really explained. These enabled the audience to stay engaged with the film.

In most horror films, the lighting would be very low as darkness generally connotes scary content. During the opening of my film, I made sure that I filmed my shots during early evening when it was fairly dark but still light enough to both make sure it would show up and also to lighten the scary content and make a little more light-hearted. This meant that it would be able to attract a wider audience that includes people who may be more interested in horror films if they were slightly less scary, so by increasing the lighting it allowed this to happen. However, the production logo involves darkness just being lit by a candle which allows the audience to clearly see that the film is going to of the horror/ scary genre.

In the feedback form that I sent out to various people, I asked a question that I thought would help me answer this question. I asked them how the opening of my film attracted and appealed to them if at all. The younger people I asked around my age said that they enjoyed it enough for it to engage them to want to watch the rest as it ends in suspense. However, they did say that it probably wasnt aimed directly to appeal to them due to the lack of younger actors and actresses present in the film. This then indicates that the film is aimed towards an older, more mature audience who are able to relate with the characters perhaps. Many of the responses to the separate question I asked, who do you think the film is targeted at, said either young adults or middle-aged people. This follows the original audience that I set out to target from the beginning.

With reference to narrative theory, Propps theory is that there is always the same types of characters in every film. However, my film seems to have missed some of these characters. This may have been because the opening of my film is supposed to represent a montage effect in that its bringing the story up to now, where it would continue more slowly. My film is mainly focussed around the murderer and is all from his point of view rather than the victims, as it usually is. This means that so far in the opening, there is yet to be a stereotypical hero, but simply just a villain. Moving on the Todorovs theory. He states that every narrative begins with an equilibrium in the sense that the setting is all normal until an outside force comes and ruins it. This can vaguely apply to my film as the victims of the two murders in the opening sequence are living ordinary lives and I believe this is clear. However, it isnt long into the film before we see the murderer and that is when it stops being normal.