Question 5

Question 5.  How did you attract / address you audience

Once we had our groups sorted we started thinking of what to make the opening sequence based on and what genre. After long discussions we came on to do a school drama. We choose this genre because looking back at what other groups did in the past they didn’t have anything like this so we decided we wanted a genre that wasn’t used by many and it worked out successfully. Focusing on this particular genre, we had to have in mind the typical conventions of the genre that we had to include in our film. One convention we focussed on is her just waking up on a casual morning doing the things any teenager does in the morning.

This made the genre realistic because this is what happens a lot in this type of genre e.g. high school musical.

We were influenced by High School Musical and also we included it because it’s our daily life style and that’s what would have attracted our audience which is teens and young adults.

Having a build up and keeping the audience in suspense throughout the film was a priority for us.

There are things our audience would have expected from our genre but we twisted it around about so that it wasn’t so predictable like GLEE, High School Musical, Sister Act 2, Freedom writers.  These are all films that are based around the school drama and have teenagers involved.

The elements we used in the whole sequence made the whole point of our sequence successful but from researching the school drama thriller genre we noticed that not only did the audience appreciate the mystery and twists of the films, but they also expect and want to see some unexpected shots and not them casual long shots, so we delivered that to them.

• In the opening shot we see the house from the street and the camera pans through out the front road to the house and from there it stops and zooms into the house this gives the audience a clue that the first scene is set in the house and it makes the audience feel more excited to know what is going on in that house. When it zooms into the bedroom it gives the audience more ideas of what’s going to happen next.

• When the scene is established and the camera pans around the room it gives the audience a kind of idea of what person lives in that room and.

The sound track playing through it makes the audience more curious until we show the actress wake up and that’s when the audience feels more comfortable because they know what kind of person lives in the bedroom and can build some kind of character she is.

• The props in her bedroom give the audience more ideas of what kind of character Nikki is and when she wakes up to get dressed she doesn’t clean any of her mess in her room. The audience feels more attracted to the film wanting to know why her bedroom is messy when she is a female character. They will then figure out that there is something wrong with her but we do not reveal to much in that scene.

• She wakes up and gets dressed straight away at the moment of her pulling on her hoody it makes the audience have idea of what kind of female she is because a girly girl wouldn’t have worn a hoody in the case of going school so the audience then kind of judge on what she is wearing and that’s what we wanted to establish because that addresses to many teenagers of today.

• The soundtrack is played through out the all whole opening sequence, were she wakes up and gets dressed makes the audience see everything she doing as a casual morning especially with the soundtrack. The audience could really relate to this part of the opening sequence because everyone wakes up in the morning and gets ready for school, college or work.

• When she brushing her teeth in the bathroom we see a over shoulder view of her brushing her teeth and this makes the audience feel like they are the actress themselves because the audience can see exactly what the actress is doing.

• The camera pans down the stairs while’s Nikki walks downstairs and this shot helps the audience to follow her daily routine of waking up. Her paste of walking down the stairs gives the audience a clue that there is something wrong with her because if she was all happy she would have come down skipping or in a fast paste so it sets a mood.

• As she walks into the kitchen we show the props in the background of bottles which belong to her mother and this give the audience a straight idea of what kind of mother she is. Its also addressable to the audience because some have parents who have a drinking disorder and they do things that they don’t mean.

• When she opens the fridge and takes out the milk the shot we see is from behind the actress and it makes the audience view her from behind so the audience then sees every move she takes and feel more involved.

• To the shot were she takes out the knife and a close up shot of her crying  

Makes the audience wonder what’s going on but also it makes the audience feel sympathy for her. It’s a way many teens live they hide and when there alone there is tears.

• The long shot of her putting on her bag and saying bye to her mum gives the audience more clues on what things are like in that house. The long shot gives the audience a position of someone that is standing at the kitchen doorstep and is directly looking at her.

The fonts we used for our titles were very suitable for the teenagers because we looked at other films and figured how we could make it similar to theirs to catch out audience attention. Also we didn’t make it to childish because we noticed the difference between high school musical and a Disney film. Therefore the font we went for really did relate to our audience not to childish and too old fashioned.

With the research I did before hand on soundtracks I found out that school drama has more of a jumpy and happily instrumental to it however we wanted to challenge the genre so changed that idea so that the audience are surprised and want more on what we have in store. We allowed the audience not to feel too depressed at the start of the film so we kept it casual because the rest of the film was going to be very depressing but we didn’t want to give that away in the opening sequence.

The plot of our sequence was a way we related to our audience and that’s when we addressed it to the teenage audience. We made the narrative not to predictable other wise our audience would switch off real quick because teens are more likely too switch off after kids. We collected feedback from a random group of teens in our sixth form and they agreed that our sequence is relatable and it doesn’t make the audience switch off quick.

Different shots we applied to our opening sequence to make our film more interesting and successfully it worked out using shots like close up shots and mid shot that caught everything into the screen. Looking at High school musical it used a lot of mid shots and long shots.  I feel that we attracted and addressed the audience pretty good and looking at the feedback we did a great job on making it successful.