How did you attract/address your audience?

We were able to address our audience by the genre of the film. We thought that by making a teen drama film, it would attract teenagers to come and watch this. We therefore used a lot of varied shots to imitate the way people think, in a disconnected and disorderly way.

The target audience, aged between 16-24, can relate to the main character Fiona, because she is around the same age. The close up of Fiona’s face would also make it easier for the target audience to relate to the film because this shows them that she is just a normal teenage girl, like girls they would come across in day to day life, rather than a teenage celebrity, who they would more likely idolise and aspire to be like. They can also relate to her mood in the film opening to similar times in their lives as they would have encountered stressful situations that they wanted to escape from. The audience would also be inclined to watch more of this film to find out what happened to Ife, and the reason as to why Fiona was the person to find him.

We also thought about the mise en scene and the fact that it’s by the side of the canal makes it alone and isolated, therefore we get the feeling that the only reason why a teenager would be here would be because they are sad or upset, or even to look for a quiet place to think about things. The target audience would understand our point in this, where as an adult may wonder why a teenager girl is wandering around by the side of the canal by themselves, this would make them think that the girl would get attacked or something bad will happen to her and this is not the point we want to make. However, to make sure that we didn't put this point across we thought about the weather and ensured that we only filmed when it was nice and sunny to show that Fiona is just walking down the side of the canal minding her own business. We therefore didn’t want to use pathetic fallacy to mirror the way she is feeling otherwise this would make Fiona’s scenes look like it’s all doom and gloom, when in fact, we wanted to add that little glimpse of happiness and normality that not everything can and will be edited to look like the typical build up of tension to find the dead body like most Hollywood films are.
We used a black and white effect which could also attract our audience because it makes the film stand out, and would invoke questions from the audience and create a sense of mystery. The audience would wonder why the entire film opening was in black and white, and whether the whole film was either a past memory or was deliberately put in black and white to help portray some points of the film. It also creates the sense that the film opening is retrospective, and the main character is in fact, looking back on previous events.

Also looking at the cross cutting between the two clips, we found that it would create a sense of separation to the audience as they would not know, until the end, that the two events were happening at the same time. This also helps tie in the mysterious atmosphere that is created with the black and white effect.
The soundtrack we used in our film opening portrays the type of reflective mood the audience could relate to, but at the same time creates the sense of an impending climax, which the audience finds out at the end of the opening is Fiona’s discovery of Ife’s body.