Audience Profile

This is a poster I've created for our film

In the poster, I’ve included a large, central snapshot from the film. The image is of the victim in the film, with a particularly frightened expression. It is slightly blurred, giving the impression of motion, and creating a sense of fast-ace amongst the image. This reinforces the action-like theme, which my research showed as the most popular theme amongst the target audience. This would help to attract that audience further.

I’ve made the edges of the photo darker. I did this to emphasize the darkness of the film, both in mise en scene and character personality, which would attract the audiences who enjoy films of a dark genre, and particularly the thriller theme.

I used red writing set against a black background, immediately indicating the sense of danger, thus reinforcing the genre. The words, written over the image, ask a question to the viewer, which creates a cliff-hanger increasing the sense of intrigue and drawing the viewer in.

I’ve included awards on the poster. They’re awards for independent film festivals, and also a short film competition. A young audience may be attracted to this award, as they may have heard of the competition, be interested in film making, or have entered the competition themselves. 
Our thriller film is an independent film, not just because we used unknown actors and no special effects, but because of the more psychological theme. The main influence of our film was “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” by Niels Oplev, which is an independent thriller film from Sweden.

The sub-genre of our thriller film is crime, which would appeal to many audiences both our young target audience and older audiences. It would appeal to people who would watch such mainstream media texts as CSI, Ocean’s 11, Public Enemies and other crime films involving stealing, as well as independent thrillers such as Red Road.

We used only city locations in our thriller, so as to address a modern day audience. We felt that setting a thriller on crime in a city location was best to emphasize the sense of fear and anxiety within the audience, not just the characters. We felt that audiences who live or work in the city would be able to relate to the anxiety and paranoia that the victim characters portrayed, as the fear of theft (of possession and identity) is common in 21^st century cities.

The audience of our thriller film would be of the 16-24 age group. The film would target students, part-time workers, and the unemployed in particular, because the characters within the film are all of this age and social class. In this way, the film would directly address these types of people.

Our film represents young men, of the male character’s age, as thug-like and dangerous by the character Will Block as he targets and mugs young women. It reinforces the somewhat stereotypical view of teenage boys as criminals and uncaring. Females are represented as strong and independent by the character Scarlett Fraser, as she fights back against the male mugger. This reinforces the progressive view of female characters in film, and therefore challenges the traditional use of females in film.

As well as these representations, our film targets the problem of unemployment amongst young people, and the social issues that this problem creates. Thus, the film addresses a common problem amongst the target audience and therefore is something they can relate to.

The narrative of our thriller film is based and focused around the character Will Block, as the opening introduces the obsessive behaviour of his personality. The narration includes a flashback of Will Block which identifies his behaviour as money-focused, and helps develop the picture of his jealous personality. The action focus occurs when the first mugging takes place.