Question 5- How did you address/attract your audience?

Our thriller was aiming for the indie target audience, (specific details on this below) this was because we felt that it would give us more experience in creating a film, that if we went along with mainstream films.
This is because, there are many mainstream thrillers, like The King of Plagues or Taken, where there is an abundance of explosions, action, dark settings, heroic men and full blown orchestra pieces for the soundtrack. Making it easy to select a setting/soundtrack/character for our thriller.

So we went "off the tracks" and aimed for something different, our survey which we sent out with the thriller agreed that this film wasn't like big blockbuster films. In ours we have a femme fatale, wearing alternative clothes to what a modern teenager would be expected to wear, using something more subtle for the "weapon" (the poison) and making it have a more modern day scenario (unlike Inglorious Basterds, (SPOILER) where its set in WW2 and they kill Hitler) making our film go against the conventions of a thriller film.


One character wear indie style clothing, or alternative clothing. The main character, wears jeans and a big coat (mainly to cover her identity, see right) going along the lines of a indie film. The other characters wear what we would expect most young people to wear, e.g jeans, hoodie/shirt.

The actions that are carried out in the film, don't really depict any genre, they are basic and not much can be drawn from the actions carried out, apart from that the killer, is slow and methodical, e.g creating the poison and pouring the poison into a mug, are both very slow and purposeful movements.

The soundtrack that we use, (below) very much adds to the feel of the film. It too, goes along with the indie target audience as the sound track is non-intrusive and fades in and out creates the sense of anticipation and mystery, also the track was found off a website, meaning it was low budget and using mainly electronic sounds, appealing to the indie teenagers, as it is also a small, amateur film, not using the conventions that the blockbuster films uses.
Many high budget, professional film companies use massive orchestras and world famous song writers costing thousands (Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Bourne Trilogy to name a few) often block out the diegetic sound, having less of an impact on the audience as what is being played on the screen is more important as the soundtrack.


The locations used in Affliction, also interests the indie target audience, as the sets used are basic, cheap and very common, this would interest the target audience as we kept to real-life locations. Like the living room used at the end of the film, can be found anywhere within a house, making it as close to modern day life as possible, therefore appealing to the indie market.






Looking at the target audience in more detail, the film may interest women more than men, as there is a femme fatale featuring in the film, rather than a male main character, but it can still interest the male market (like the "Girl With The Dragoon Tattoo", (left).

Also another reason why women may be more attracted to our film is that the "The Young Poisoners Handbook" (below) appeals to both the female and male market equally, despite the main character being male, so if the main character is female, it would appeal to more the female target audience more, one reason is because men, when rating, dislike women being the main role (seen in the using ratings on IMDb; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103074/ratings)

The cliff-hanger- the friend dies. 

Finally, to hook our audience in, we used a cliffhanger at the end of the opening, to keep the audience interested into what will happen next, will the killer continue killing? What will become of the rest of her friends? What will happen to the killer? Also with the mise-en-scene and characters it will draw in the indie target audience, so not only will the cliff hanger draw them in but the fact that the film runs along side their fashion and behaviour and that the film could happen in life, (like Skins t.v series, unlike Bourne)
Hopefully these questions would be running through the audiences minds as they exit the cinema.