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

After finding out about the main age of the target audience, I went on the BBFC website in order to find out about a suitable rating which we could adapt to the film. I decided to that a 15+ film would attract the most of our audience, whilst also giving us some creative freedom and not limiting us. Here's what the BBFC said about this particular rating:

We made sure not to include anything which would be deemed 'unsuitable' for this rating, therefore we decided to limit the amount of blood in our opening, whilst still making the film tense ans suspenseful. 

In order to make our thriller appealing, we decided to:

• Create a psychological thriller: taking the questionnaire in to account, we decided to deceive and confuse the viewer by including the parallel timeline of the serial killer
• 'Hint' at strong violence: I thought that making the viewer think would be more satisfying to the independent film fans instead of presenting the whole plot on the screen.
• Locate the film in a familiar surrounding to the target audience: I feel that by making the thriller in a detention, the target audience would be able to identify with some of the characters in the film, attracting them to it.
• Use an unconventional protagonist: in order to make the independent audience feel attracted to the film, I made the female protagonist a contrasting image to the female stereotype. I feel that this would have shocked the market and therefore attracted them to the film.
• Variation of shots: In order to make the film appeal to both mainstream and independent audiences, we used a variety of camera shots and lengths. Unlike many thrillers, we decided to make the opening sequence more establishing - giving the audience something to root for from the very beginning of the film. Furthermore, if we only user a limited amount of types of shots, I feel that we would make the film appeal unsuspenceful, defeating the purpose of a thriller.
• Create a gritty environment: by making the most important scene of our film appeal to fans of thrillers, we decided to film it in the bathrooms. This is because it looks gritty and suspicious which we thought would be effective for making our audience cringe as they saw the blood pour down the drain in a paint-chipping, grey bathroom.