Evaluation AS 4

Q4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

A target audience is important as it allows me to recognise the scenes appropriate for my thriller so that during filming I am aware of what I can and can't include. My target audience is 15 which means that I am able to explore many techniques freely without having to limit what to include, however some scenes may be inappropriate for example if there are scenes of an extreme extent it wouldn't allow me to use the scenes.When my group and I were creating our opening sequence we took into consideration that the scenes used needed to be appropriate to our target audience. Having a target audience allows us to know what levels of features we can include in our opening sequence so that it’s not too extreme for our slightly younger audience. We needed to be careful of the amount of strong language, gore and violence used as too much of it wouldn’t be appropriate for our target audience and perhaps be too much, ending in the result of being too scary. We made our target audience the age of 15+ because we felt that it would welcome a large variety of age’s to watch our thriller, for example where we have included someone breaking into the house and a dead body of a young girl in or opening sequence, it would be insensitive to use for an audience for 12+ or under. Therefore we felt at 15, teenagers are able to handle a great deal more without being scared and would be able to cope with the more fearful scenes well.

The target audience should feel engaged with my opening sequence throughout because my group and I included strong elements to hold their attention and to gain their liking towards our work. For example, I have included two characters that are very likeable. This is because they represent a happy home and in love, they’re celebrating their anniversary so it makes the audience happy to know that these peaceful characters are happy, helping them to develop a relationship with our characters and so when something bad happens, it makes them want to help. I have also included some useful camera angles such as close ups to show the facial expressions of the vulnerable characters, this often shows the fear coming from them and as a result of this, the audience feel sympathetic towards our characters as they have therefore developed some sort of liking towards them. Another element that has helped to develop the relationship between the audience and the characters is the sound track. This can be heard when our male character, ‘Dave’ has returned home from work and discovers his dead wife... Whilst Dave is running to the bottom of the stairs trying to escape, the heavy beat of his heart can be heard. The use of this diegetic sound really emphasises the characters panic and fear, this makes the audience tense and feel sorry for our character and desperate to help. Due to these elements, I believe that our audience would find a connection and relationship with my characters and therefore our opening sequence would appeal to them.