Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

We attracted our audience through our use of a modern, realistic setting and plot. The decision to film the opening of the thriller in a garage was a conscious choice to involve the audience and to help them relate to the plot. A low budget film would have a larger impact on the audience if it was somewhere familiar to them rather than a Hollywood production in a very unbelievable location as the familiar place would seem like a ‘nightmare scene’.

Another way of attracting the audience is marketing; we would market the film on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace because these websites are growing in popularity  and therefore, many more teenage girls are using them. Youtube and Tumblr are also good places to market the film as these sites will help the film gain popularity.

The opening of the film has many jump cuts and fast cuts which make the style of editing seem more modern and tense, this is inspired by ‘Skins’ as the program is filmed and edited in a very modern yet unrealistic way. When researching into the programs people like if they are interested in skins, I found that most E4 shows such as ‘Misfits’ have the same audience and a similar style of editing and filming- this concludes that a more contemporary style of filming and editing attracts a younger audience.

High street fashion is a large part in the attraction of the target audience, the contemporary costume of Bridget is appealing to the target audience as they can relate to the style and the reality of the situation. The costume is casual which shows that she was having a normal day at college when she was abducted- this shows the audience that she is a normal girl wearing normal costume and this makes the situation more blood curdling for the audience as they would feel the situation could easily happen to them. 

‘Desolation’ is designed to make the audience realise the reality of abduction situations and tap into their collective fear of being mislead by someone you trust most. The film is a psychological thriller aimed at bringing up the audience’s inner fears and nightmares and making them look realistic. The reality of the situation was proven when I typed in ‘abduction’ to Google news and found over 5,240 results.