Evaluation- How did you attract your target audience? Jennifer

Evaluation- How did you attract your target audience?

For our film "like it was yesterday" our exact target audience was 17- 32 years olds because out of the wild range of ages we thought this that age range would be the most interested in out thriller film. Another reason why we chose this exact target audience for our film is because we wanted to reach for a more broader range as older teens to middle aged as a wide range of people to impress; but we wanted a challenge. We also that they were the most likely to understand and relate to the storyline of the film. So because we had a specific target audience we tried as much as possible to attract them to the film and the different aspects of the film such as the location, costumes of the characters, surveys, interviews and etc. When were look specifically at how the film would attract this age range; we used location as an aspect to do so.

 A location in the film that would attract the audience is the alley way towards the foster home that Porsha is going to and this is because it creates suspense and would make the audience be curious on where she's going; the younger audience from the age group such as the teenagers and young adults would see this alley way as something to be excited about as it would captivate their attention to continue watching the film. However the older audience from that age range such as those in their late 20's and early 30's may feel connected to the poor girl and be worried that where she's going is dangerous making them worried. So in general the alley way captivates the audience attention attracting them to the film. As we continue the shooting of the film other locations that would be viewed are going to be forests and a supermarket. The forest is going to be at the back of the foster home and this is where Porsha continually goes to feel safe away from her evil sisters. We want to attract our target audience with this location because its a forest and normally in forests is where bad things happen however we wanted to change that and make the forest where Porsha can feel safe and gain some pleasure in life with some atom of peace and we suspect that the audience would find that interesting. On the other hand the supermarket is used for a different purpose. The target audience can definitely relate to a supermarket because it a fact that they all go there to buy items; but in this movie the supermarket will be a place where Porsha finds herself in much danger as the sisters violently attach her with kitchen utensils from that aisle. In terms of mis-en-scene what we would change if we were to continue this film is to add more creative props instead of just the typical ones like knifes and guns. This would make our thriller film more captivating and scary.

In addition to how we attracted our target audience is by conducting surveys and this survey asked a variety of questions that make us understand out target audience even more. we asked questions such as what location do you want to see in film? ,How they feel about abuse?, The type of soundtrack they want to hear? and etc. when we got the results we made sure we included their opinions in the film. Such as the location we added the supermarket into out plans because we wanted to please and attract out target audience. Since this is a broad target audience it was obvious that the older generation from our target audience got the majority of the influence to make the supermarket a reality in our film but we didn't want to ignore the younger generation so we added Porsha, Jessica and Layla being at the club; and this made it fair for our target audience in general. In our survey results most of out target audience asked for more street and hip hop soundtrack because they said they were tired of the same suspense soundtrack that stays on for the whole of a thriller film. So because of this we decided to add Tupac escape to heaven instrumental soundtrack to meet their expectation. When we asked the audience how they felt about abuse being portrayed in films 100% of them said that it was okay to be viewed as long as the film doesn't encourage abuse. This is exactly what we did as we portrayed Porsha being abused by her foster sisters as a cruel and wicked thing. We made sure that the storyline consisted of a consequence that Jessica and Layla deserved. However in our survey there are things that  our target audience wanted that we didn't meet. There was a question that asked which ages they would be prefer to see in our film. In our results most of the audience asked that the film had a variety of ages to keep the film unpredictable and also to make it fair for anyone who is watching the film to relate to the characters. The age variety of characters in this film is limited as there are only teen to middle aged characters in the film. So what we would change in this film if we were to continue it is to add young children and the elderly to please our target audience and to make the film not be like a typical thriller film but a different one.

 In addition to how we attracted our target audience is by research; we wanted to analyse and know how our target audience would feel about the film we made so we selected two boys and two girls and videoed them watching the opening scene of our film. From what we observed the boys and girl were calm when right at the beginning of the film when Porsha got on the bus and walked to her foster home. When Jessica and Layla were introduced in the movie we noticed girls and boys had a look on their faces likes these girls are going to be trouble in the film. Then when they told Porsha to come upstairs with them to show her around one of the boy shouted that Porsha shouldn't go with; this is because he feared for what they would do to Porsha. In the part of the movie when Jessica and Layla stopped in the middle of the stairs one of the girls shouted that  Porsha should run. When the POV shot appeared on the scene of their hands to push Porsha one of the girls closed their eyes because they didn't want to see the fall down the stairs Porsha would have. The two boys and girls who watched the part when Porsha fell down the stairs had a shocked facial expression on their faces and were very sympathetic towards Porsha. when the sisters slowly when down the stairs; one boy of the boys shouted that Porsha should get up and run. All the boys and girls gasped as Jessica pulled out the knife and was scraping it on the wall. At this point of the boys and girls shouted that Porsha should run. At the end of the opening scene when the two sisters drag Porsha up and put the knife at her neck; the reaction from the two boys and girls were as if they thought Porsha was going to die at this very moment. We were pleased with the reaction we got from out target audience because it was as if they were there and also that they knew how Porsha felt in those particular scenes. They also had reactions that we wanted such as the fact that they were afraid fro Porsha as they didn't want her to die. However what we didn't like the fact that the audience could immediately predict what's going to happen in the film so the changes we would make because of this is to makes the sisters seem like nice people when their first introduced so that the perception of them by the audience is opposite to what they expect.